The Hermanas Escritoras project started at UC Davis in Spring 2024. We met in a class that Anna developed and taught that brought together autohistorias, music, and our images. After the course, we started meeting as a group in the summer. Together, we decided on our objectives and began planning our group, mission, and logo. Today, the Hermanas Escritoras project is part of a muxerista (Tijerina Revilla, 2004) ethnography that weaves together long-lasting relationships, femtorship, and care for each other all while seeking to make writing in STEM more accessible and dismantling White Language Supremacy ideologies. We intentionally and unapologetically center our ways of being, knowing, and power in our group and writing. 

The Hermanas Escritoras have collaborated on first year composition curriculum design by helping co-create the syllabus and activities. In addition, we collaborate with the Writing Education, Love, and Liberation Group at UCD, a graduate group dedicated to social and linguistic justice in writing curriculum design. Together with the UWP 1 director, we have helped co-create the new learning outcomes for all first year composition courses on campus!

The Hermanas Escritoras project is also part of Anna's doctoral dissertation, which uses Chicana Latina feminist epistemologies to understand the trenzas [braids] of our multiple identities as writers. This project uses autohistoria-teoría, pláticas, and a muxerista ethnographic lens to build the story we want to tell about ourselves as writers. 

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To learn more about the research project, contact Anna Peñaloza at acpenaloza@ucdavis.edu.

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