Bilingualism, Culture, and Social Justice in Family Therapy

This volume advocates for justice in language rights through its explorations of bilingualism in family therapy, from the perspectives of eighteen languages identified by the authors: Black Talk/Ebonics/Slang, Farsi, Fenglish, Arabic, Italian, Cantonese Chinese, South Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Chilean Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Colombian Spanglish, Madrileño Spanish, Spanglish, Pocho Spanish, Colloquial Spanish, and English. It identifies standard English as the current language most often used across family therapy programs and services in the United States. The book discusses efforts to respond to the rapidly changing linguistic landscape and the increasingly high demand for appropriate therapy services that respond effectively to diverse families in America. It discusses recruitment and training of linguistically diverse family therapists and strategies to promote linguistic equality to support the rights of family therapists, their practices, and the communities they serve. Chapters explore ways to integrate languages in professional and personal lives, including the improvisational, self-taught translanguaging skills and practices that go beyond the lexical and grammatical rules of a language. The book describes the creative use of native or heritage languages to ensure that the juxtaposition of English therapeutic and daily-life landscapes is integrated into family therapy settings. It discusses contextual, relational, therapeutic, and training potential offered by bilingualism as well as the necessary transmutations in theory and practice.

This volume is an essential resource for clinicians, therapists, and practitioners as well as researchers, professors, and graduate students in family studies, clinical psychology, and public health as well as all interrelated disciplines.

marcela polanco, es de Bogotá, Colombia e inmigrante en United States. Su ancestry es African, Muisca, and European Colombian. She speaks Español Colombiano and Immigrant Spanglish. As a family terapista, she is part of the faculty team del Master's en Family Therapy y del Spanglish/Ingleñol Family Therapy training Certificado at San Diego State University located in unceded Kumeyaay land.

  

Navid Zamani is a Persian-American (Farsi & English-speaking) licensed Marriage and Family therapist practicing in San Diego. His work is structured around supporting families experiencing domestic violence, and conceptualizes these experiences from a poststructural, decolonial feminism situated in Narrative practices. His interests in counseling, philosophy, and music are blended together with an interest in relational ethics, the politics of revolutionary love, and leaning into complexity. He currently teaches at San Diego State University and is the Head of Clinical Services at License to Freedom, a non-profit that supports refugees and immigrants from the Middle East who are experiencing domestic violence issues.

 

Christina DaHee Kim is a Korean immigrant who grew up in Los Angeles. She traverses between the worlds of English, Korean, and the mix of two languages, Konglish. Her interest in all forms of communication, including various languages and the non-verbal communication, stem from her exposure to Spanish-, Japanese-, and sign language-speaking worlds. As a recent graduate from the Marriage and Family Therapy program at San Diego State University, she hopes to collaborate and explore relational ethics in diverse relationship dynamics from a postmodern lens.