ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a first-person account of how historical influences, gender, and economic social arrangements shaped the CuChiRican identity and lived experience of a Latina refugee, psychologist, researcher, and advocate for health equity. Through her 8-year-old eyes, we join a foretelling escape upon her newly minted red bicycle adventure to forbidden territory. Vivid details of the historical, social, political, and family contexts of a childhood in the La Tierra de Los Tinajónes, the Land of the Jars, and later in the United States bring alive a journey of discovery and of questioning expected norms of obedience, modesty, and feminine limitation. We witness a young woman’s developing aspirations and those who inspired her – including a surfeit of angels – and how they become integral to the fabric of her subsequent life’s work. This story relates the complexities of negotiating identity and developing agency in the face of adversity through various life stages. A relentless questioner, the author finds a path through the integration and alignment of the heart and the head.
