ABSTRACT
Latinx familia is a very richly varied kinship network. Yet, while the Latinx familia is complexly configured and stratified, there is much that Latinx families share in common, including religion, connection to homelands, and trans-language. Raul Homero Villa identifies the cultural and social affirmations of family as barriological practices that gel together the familias that make up the Latinx communities. Whether in the suburbs, urban core, or rural regions of the US, the family unit has proved to be a space of resilience, refuge, and action within a nation that has systematically discriminated against Latinxs with its wage gaps and push-out/lock-out school system policies. Immigrant policy and citizen status continue to be tools used to divide Latinx families. Preservation of the Latinx family has proved historically to be important in defending against exploitative and oppressive policies. Latinx creators have also reconstructed non-sanctioned Latinx kinship networks such as gangs.
