Chancla - by Leslie Priscilla (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A parenting guide that speaks directly to Latinx families with language, history, and lived experience that honors and celebrates our cultura--while helping readers unlearn violence and shame as tools of discipline.

For many in the Latinx community, "la Chancla"--what we learn to see as the warning sign for disciplinary violence--has become a cultural symbol that has spawned relatable memes that many of us laugh about and bond over. But what if it's also a symbol of something more harmful?

In Chancla, educator and Latinx Parenting founder, Leslie Priscilla, invites readers, parents, and the Latinx community on a transformative journey away from cycles of fear, shame, and corporal punishment. With warmth and deep cultural insight, Priscilla explores the historical legacies attached to Chancla while offering a path forward rooted in connection, self-reflection, and ancestral healing. Chancla is the nonviolent parenting practice that celebrates Latinx cultura, while teaching its readers--and their Mamis, Papis, Tias, and Tios--how to heal from generational violence.

Blending personal storytelling, historical context, and actionable tools, Chancla helps readers not only nurture their children, but their wounded inner child. Readers will see themselves in these pages, because ultimately Chancla encourages them to unlearn what they've inherited and make space for what they deserve: homes full of love, safety, and respect.

Review Quotes

"Chancla is the book our families have been waiting for. Leslie Priscilla weaves cultural and personal honesty, historical context, and genuine compassion to help readers understand that breaking generational cycles isn't about betraying where we come from... A true gift for every parent doing the hard, sacred work of healing."

--Jazmine McCoy, PsyD, The Mom Psychologist

"Chancla is a deeply heart-opening and powerful invitation to transform the way we love our children, ourselves, and our culture. Leslie Priscilla's work is profound, sacred, and truly essential as the Latinx community continues healing from inherited historical, generational, systemic, and colonial wounds... Let us unlearn and disrupt the legacies of Chancla Culture together. Leslie's book is crucial to the movement."

--Natalie Y. Gutiérrez, author of The Pain We Carry

"Chancla is a vital reckoning for our times--a love letter to the Latine community that carries the weight of what we have inherited and what we can still change... At a time when the world feels increasingly brutal and unmoored, Chancla offers something urgent and practical: a way to intervene. Not abstractly, but in the intimate, daily decisions that shape who we become and what we tolerate. This is a guide for anyone searching for tangible ways to resist dehumanization and cultivate a better world, beginning at home."

--Jean Guerrero, author of Hatemonger and Crux

"Chancla is the perfect blend of inspiration and information. Leslie hooks us into storytelling and weaves in cultural context that teaches and informs us about concepts that acknowledge generations without shame. For parents and caregivers looking to heal their inner child, connect to culturally-affirming parenting skills, and break cycles with intention, this book is made for you!"

--Adriana Alejandre, founder of Latinx Therapy(R)

"A beautiful starting point for parents who are trying to navigate how to honor our culture and identity without passing down the harmful parts of it. We can preserve the love, the language, the traditions, the pride, while also choosing softness, safety, and healing for this new generation."

--Patty Rodrigues, cultural storyteller, producer, and co-founder of Lil' Libros

"A parenting and reparenting Bible... Leslie Priscilla makes an invitation and call to action to love our children better through fierce empathy, deep roots, and joyful resistencia. This a book that will transform lives, families, systems, and cultures."

--Kim Guerra, author of Badass Bonita

"Exposing how the parenting norms of Chancla Culture (like tiger parenting) are rooted in colonization and domination, [Leslie] points us back to Indigenous ways of childrearing and guides us to heal as a collective... A true maestra of nonviolent parenting--not only for the Latinx community but for anyone trying to heal."

--Iris Chen, Author & Founder of Untigering

"If you are one of the brave few who pursue the most revolutionary path anyone can walk--parenting children filled with the beauty of their culture and free from its shackles--then you cannot travel alone. You must allow Leslie Priscilla to be your guide. She is the one and Chancla--this soul stirring, heart healing, world changing book--is the map."

--Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed and We Can Do Hard Things

"In this rich resource, Leslie Priscilla, a long-time parenting educator, provides Latine families with culturally attuned, decolonial approaches to nonviolent parenting... This book of cultural wisdom helps to pave the way to ancestral healing, healthy family connections, and collective liberation."

--Dr. Thema Bryant, psychologist and author of Matters of the Heart

"Leslie Pricilla has written a text that will help guide our community toward liberation. This book gives voice and shape to the trauma that so many of us carry and offers tangible ways to break cycles of generational harm. Chancla has helped me parent my child and re-parent myself. Thank you."

--Erika Sánchez, author of Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and Crying in the Bathroom

"Leslie Priscilla bravely asks us to imagine a different future for our families and communities-one rooted in healing, softness, and understanding instead of the old systems and rituals that continue to fail us. Tenderness, care, and love are not only what our communities deserve, but what are imperative to our survival and success."

--Diane Guerrero

"Leslie Priscilla's Chancla is a powerful remembering of heart and dignity. This book calls us back to a way of parenting rooted in connected and respect. In doing so, her medicine ripples far beyond the present moment--touching the next seven generations and planting a legacy of love they will carry forward."

--Asha Frost, Indigenous Medicine Woman, author of You Are the Medicine

"Leslie Priscilla's CHANCLA is about liberation--from the chains on our bodies to those on our spirits, minds, and emotions... Time to break the chains!"

--Luis Rodriguez, author of Hearts and Hands and From Our Land to Our Land

"Much more than a parenting guide, Chancla is an invitation to heal. Chancla is a book you'll keep at your bedside and give to friends and loved ones for decades to come."

--Robyn Moreno, author of Get Rooted

"Priscilla does the deep work of tracing how pain moves through generations and how we can interrupt it through embodied, cultural reclamation rather than through continued shame. This book understands that healing our children begins with healing the body that raises them... Essential reading."

--Dr. Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother's Hands

"Priscilla invites us to receive the gifts of our ancestors with one hand, and with the other, to gently lay down the harm they could not name. This book is essential reading."

--Kat Armas, theologian, speaker, and author of Abuelita Faith and Liturgies for Resisting Empire

"This book is a much needed contribution to the lexicon of breaking from generational trauma in Latine families."

--Prisca Dorcas, author of For Brown Girls and Tias and Primas

"With Chancla, Leslie Priscilla does what few have been willing to do: she names the harm that lives inside the love we were raised with, and she does it without betraying our culture or our families... Leslie is one of the most important voices in this conversation, and this book is the proof."

--Ana Flores, founder of #WeAllGrow Latina

"Chancla is for anyone ready to break generational patterns with intention, dignity, and fierce love. A deeply healing and transformative read." --Dr. Jennifer Mullan, author of Decolonizing Therapy

"As we ask how to heal from the continual violence of colonialism in our families and communities, this book is a guide to help us look deeply into ourselves to ask what it will take to become the cycle-breakers we long to be. Chancla is a trusting guide, full of stories, histories, and lessons for us to move forward with in a heavy world. May we lean in." --Kaitlin Curtice, author of Native and Everything Is a Story

"Breaking cycles is hard work, but Leslie Priscilla makes it feel possible... An absolute gift to Latinx parents everywhere." --Reyna Grande, author of Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can't Forget

"How many of us have made jokes about la chancla, not understanding the deep impact it has on our mental health and relationship to our children. Leslie Priscilla has written a beautiful book that captures and sees our cultura fully...our wounds, our warmth, and our capacity to heal generational cycles." --Yolanda Renteria, LPC and trauma specialist

"Leslie Priscilla powerfully reenvisions la chancla as a tool for healing and resistance." --Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her, The Resilience Myth, and All We Want is Everything

"Mixing the personal with analytical, laughter with tears, prose with diagrams, Chancla is more than just a self-help book; it is a celebration of and challenge to our beautiful Latinx culture." --Gustavo Arellano, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

"With cultural depth and emotional clarity, Chancla helps readers understand how parenting patterns are often inherited adaptations to trauma rather than conscious choices. Leslie Priscilla offers both insight and practical pathways for breaking cycles of fear and building families rooted in safety and connection. Chancla is a vital resource for anyone committed to healing patterns of generational violence." --Dr. Mariel Buqué, PhD, author of Break the Cycle & founder of Break the Cycle - BTC(R)

About the Author

Leslie Priscilla is a first generation mother to three bicultural children. She identifies as both Mexican-American and a Detribalized Indigenous mujer. Priscilla shares her medicine by offering coaching, workshops, support, and advocacy for Latinx/Chicanx families locally, nationally, and internationally both in-person and online via the Latinx Parenting organization. She founded this bilingual organization and movement intentionally rooted in children's rights, social and racial justice, the individual and collective practice of nonviolence and reparenting, intergenerational and ancestral healing, cultural sustenance, and the active decolonization of oppressive practices in our families. Priscilla currently lives in Santa Ana, California with her family.