Women writing the Americas: literature, ecology, and decolonization

This essay analyzes how multiethnic women writers of the Americas draw a map of a critical geography by delineating the interrelated brutalization of human beings and the environment at the colonial-decolonial interface. Its theoretical approach is comparative, interdisciplinary, and intersectional and embedded in Cultural/ Post-Colonial Studies and Ecocriticism with the objective to problematize the issue of identity, ethnicity, and gender in correlation with the land qua place and style of life within a capitalist system. The objective is to reveal and examine the decolonial attitude in texts by multiethnic women writers of the Americas: what is decolonization and how is it translated into the narrative structure, style and theme?

Embodied Resistance: Multiracial Identity, Gender, and the Body

This article explores the importance of the physical body in the development of gendered racial and ethnic identities through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 11 multiracial/multiethnic women. From a critical mixed race and critical feminist perspective, I argue that the development of an embodied and gendered multiracial and multiethnic identity is a path to questioning and resisting the dominant monoracial order in the United States. Interviews reveal that respondents develop these embodied identities both through understandings of themselves as gendered and raced subjects and through relationships with monoracial individuals. The process by which these women understand their physical bodies as multiracial subjects illustrates a critical embodied component of the social construction of race and ethnicity in the United States.

Implementation of Parental Strategies to Improve Child Vegetable Intake: Barriers and Facilitators

Purpose. To qualitatively assess barriers and facilitators to implementing specific behavioral strategies to increase child vegetable intake during home dinner meals by low-income parents. Method. Parents (n = 49) of children (9-12 years) were asked to implement 1 behavioral strategy following each of 6 weekly cooking classes at community centers. Example strategies included serving vegetables first, serving 2 vegetables, and using a bigger spoon to serve vegetables. The following week, parents discussed how they used the strategy and barriers and facilitators to its use. Discussions were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded separately by strategy using NVivo Pro 11 software. Inductive, comparative thematic analyses were used to identify themes by strategy. Results. Most participants were multiethnic women aged 30 to 39 years with low food security. Time and scheduling conflicts limited involvement of children in vegetable preparation (Child Help strategy). The type of foods served and an unfamiliar serving style inhibited use of the MyPlate and Available/Visible strategies, respectively. Children’s dislike of vegetables limited use of the Serve Vegetables First and Serve 2 Vegetables strategies. Ease of use promoted use of the Bigger Spoon strategy. Conclusion. Educators could tailor application of specific parent strategies for low-income families based on child and environmental characteristics.