I am a black female english teacher. An authoethnographic perspective to teacher education

Abstract

This autoethnographic study explores my lived experience as a Black female preservice English teacher within a predominantly white, male, cisgender bachelor's degree program at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas in Bogotá (Colombia). Drawing on Fanon's concept of the Zone of NonBeing and my own Testimonios, the study examines how colonial and epistemic violences render Black bodies, feminities, and knowledge systematically absent or marginalized within curricular practices and institutional discourse. Situated within disciplinary norms structured by whiteness and maleness, I analyze the identity masking strategies I employed to navigate academic spaces where my being and knowledge were persistently devalued. Using narrative inquiry as a methodological and epistemological approach, I map the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and coloniality that shape my formation as a usure English Language teacher. Informed by hook’s notion of theory and Gutierrez’s conceptualization of border spaces as sites of transformation, this manuscript positions storytelling as both epistemic resistance and a practice of healing. Through my live narratives, I challenge exclusionary educational discourses and advocate for the creation of affirming epistemic communities that recognize, value, and sustain Black female ways of knowing in English language teacher education.