Cotheorizing Healing With Undergraduate Queer and Trans Latina Survivors of Power-Based Violence
Abstract
Current research on healing from power-based violence highlights the importance of integrating victim-survivors’ personal culture and identities into healing approaches, yet few studies actually focus on the culturally distinct healing processes of victim-survivors (O’Brien & Macy, 2016; Sinko et al., 2023). Grounded in Jotería theory (Alvarez, 2023) and Latina/Chicana feminist frameworks (Garcia, 1989), this qualitative study employs queer pláticas as both a methodology and method to center culturally rooted dialogue, reciprocity, and cariño as a political praxis. This study explores how six queer and trans Latina undergraduate victim-survivors conceptualize healing from power-based violence and how their identities, cultural values, and community support networks shape their engagement with institutional support systems.
Findings center these students as active agents in meaning making, emphasizing their role as cocreators of knowledge. Cocreators described culturally rooted campus resources as critical lifelines for achieving safety and healing, particularly when these spaces reflected shared identities and relational care. Cocreators critically assessed institutional resources and made intentional decisions about when, if, and how to seek support. Through queer pláticas, cocreators disclosed experiences of violence and coconstructed understandings of healing, affirmed their intersecting identities, and reimagined pathways to support. Queer pláticas thus functioned as dialogic spaces of cocreation, where healing was not just reflected upon but also actively occurred.
Implications call for higher education institutions to broaden victim-survivor support beyond reporting and compliance by centering healing, increasing representation across staff and faculty, and recognizing identity-based communities as vital supports for queer and trans Latina victim–survivors.