Letters to Paulo (Freire)

Congratulations to the editors and contributors to the wonderful homage, celebration and scholarship included in Letters to Paulo, which has just been published by Peter Lang. Tania Ramalho, Juha Suoranta and Shirley R. Steinberg have brought together more than 60 colleagues from a range of experiences, identities and nations to highlight what Paulo Freire and his work, vision and life meant to them in the form of personal letters. A truly wonderful project, and it was a pleasure to be involved. Gina Thésée has the lead letter (a really powerful text), and an excerpt is included below; and Paul R. Carr also contributed a text. The introduction and table of contents from the book are below. Lastly, although we never met Paulo Freire—but know several colleagues who did collaborate with him—, we are extremely inspired by his philosophy and values, and our UNESCO Chair DCMÉT, in a humble way, seeks to engage with the transformative framework that he cultivated over the course of several decades.

BOOK: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1588004#part01

Introduction

This book is an anthology of letters addressed to Paulo Freire, written by those whose hearts and minds have been touched, shaped, and transformed by the profound insights of his work and life. It aims to create a vibrant tapestry of diverse voices and perspectives worldwide, weaving together personal anecdotes, scholarly analysis, and passionate testimonials about encounters with Paulo Freire and his ideas.

We honor Freire’s intellectual and emotional presence, allowing his spirit to guide us in shaping a better future for education, society, and humanity. The book’s authors—educators, activists, artists, and students—each share a unique story, perspective, or experience.

Tania Ramalho and Juha Suoranta conceived the book idea after first meeting at a restaurant near the train station in Tampere, Finland, in the winter of 2022. Freire was the vital link that connected us, offering a shared purpose that transcended our brief acquaintance and laid the foundation for friendship and meaningful cooperation. After deciding that letters to Freire would inspire both writers and readers, we developed a call for papers and invited Shirley Steinberg, a renowned critical scholar and the 2024 recipient of the American Education Research Association’s Paulo Freire Legacy Award, to join the project.

However, writing letters to Freire was less novel than we first anticipated. In a personal email, Freire’s wife/partner, Ana Maria “Nita” de Araújo Freire, pointed out that this approach “had already been done.” While this could have been discouraging, we saw it not as a limitation but an invitation. The recurrence of the epistolary form suggests that people continue to feel a profound need to respond to Freire, not merely to honor his memory, but to test and renew his ideas, considering their struggles. Writing a letter allows for a situated, affective, and dialogical engagement that mirrors Freire’s method: rooted in the lived realities of the oppressed and animated by a hope for transformation. These letters are not acts of nostalgia; they are acts of reactivation and reinvention of Freire’s pedagogical imagination and critical spirit.

Indeed, in these turbulent and uncertain times, marked by democratic backsliding, epistemological confusion, and the deepening of structural inequalities, it becomes necessary time and again to return to those inspired by Paulo’s words and deeds. Though physically absent, his voice echoes with uncanny clarity amid today’s crises. Writing to Freire is a way of reaffirming hope, reigniting pedagogical imagination, and resisting despair. It reminds us that the struggle for liberation is never over and that education, grounded in the ethical and political commitment to humanization, still can transform individuals and the world. The letters are thus not just tributes—they are acts of continuity, defiance, and hope.

Paulo Freire was an educator who valued dialogue and believed in the transformative power of words. Throughout his career, particularly in its later stages, he favored discussion and letter-writing formats in his work. As Nita Freire notes, “Without denying the value of traditional essays, he chose the less common form of letters, believing that texts composed this way are the most communicative” (p. 192). Paulo sought to be as transparent as possible in expressing his ideas and thus often chose the letter form.

His first letter book, Pedagogy in Process: Letters to Guinea-Bissau (1978, Cartas à Guiné-Bissau: Registro de uma Experiência em Processo), describes his and his team’s efforts to assist Guinea-Bissau’s new government in creating a literacy campaign to support nation-building after Portuguese colonial rule. This was followed by discussion-based books co-authored with Ira Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education (1987), Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation (1989), and Myles Horton, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change (1990).

Later, Freire published two more letter books: Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work (1996, Cartas à Cristina) and Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach (1998, Professora Sim, Tia Não). After his passing in 1997, two posthumous works were released: Pedagogy of Indignation (2004, Pedagogia da Indignação: Cartas Pedagógicas e Outros Escritos) and A Casa e o Mundo Lá Fora: Cartas de Paulo Freire para Nathercinha (2016, The Home and the World Outside: Letters from Paulo Freire to Nathercinha). The latter is a collection of letters that Freire wrote while in exile in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1970 to 1980, addressed to his 9-year-old cousin Nathercinha, who lived in Rio de Janeiro. This work offers a unique perspective on Freire’s life in exile and demonstrates his ability to cultivate meaningful relationships through dialogue and written correspondence.

In the United States, Sonia Nieto’s Dear Paulo: Letters from Those Who Dare Teach (2008) and Tom Wilson, Peter Park, and Anaida Colón-Muñiz’s Memories of Paulo (2010) contributed many messages to and about Paulo Freire. The present volume will mark the early aftermath of his 2021 centennial year. The spirit of the letters submitted to this volume is the same as the earlier texts, testifying to Paulo Freire’s impact on lives and praxis and honoring his critical pedagogical philosophy.

As editors, our goal was to document the global impact of Paulo Freire’s work. Recognizing the steady yet gradual spread of his thinking worldwide—often through translations—we understood that his ideas, especially those from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), had likely reached a varied audience, even in different forms. Over time, Freire’s work has become a vital part of the literature on social and educational change, influencing discussions on education, justice, and empowerment. His ideas continue to shape how educators and activists address the challenges of inequality and oppression around the globe.

The included letters refer to Paulo Freire’s robust concepts and often to the life events through which they have reached each author. Individual letters demonstrate unique circumstances that lead to learning about and becoming conscious of the predicament of the oppressed, caught in an often invisible but always violent existential relation with the oppressor and oppressing conditions.

Most letter writers encountered Paulo Freire at university, sometimes in close mentoring relationships with professor-advisers. We are fortunate to have the letter from a factory worker, Paiva Neves, who is now a writer and a primary education teacher in Ceará, Brazil. He first learned about you in his youth through his shoemakers’ trade union. Paiva Neves re-wrote and published The Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Cordel, a traditional popular poetry genre in the Northeast region of Brazil, where Freire grew up.

Part I of the book, Becoming Freirean—Learning, Unlearning, and Reimagining, gathers powerful personal and political narratives of discovery, reinvention, and transformation through Freire’s ideas. Authors reflect on how Freire’s pedagogical philosophy disrupted their assumptions, reshaped their professional identities, and catalyzed lifelong commitments to critical consciousness.

Part II, Pedagogy and Oppression—Naming, Resisting, Transforming, addresses core Freirean concepts—conscientização, dialogue, humanization—and rearticulates them considering current social and political challenges. Contributors wrestle with injustice, inequality, and the legacy of coloniality, turning to Freire as a compass for radical transformation and ethical resistance.

Part III, Struggles for Justice—Pedagogies of Inclusion, Liberation, and Dignity, encounters Freirean pedagogy as lived praxis in the struggle against marginalization. These letters foreground work with and for people with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, the rural and urban poor, and oppressed cultural or ethnic groups. The authors engage Freire as a theoretical and ethical companion in their fight for inclusive, emancipatory education.

Part IV, Freirean Pedagogy for an Uncertain Planet—Technology, Ecology, and the Digital, meets the dilemmas of the 21st century: AI, ecological degradation, epistemological collapse, and digital hyper-connectivity. These letters probe what it means to remain human—and humane—in the digital age and how to reclaim the political power of pedagogy amid techno-capitalist acceleration and climate urgency.

Part V, Dialogues of Solidarity—Global Citizenship, Faith, and Politics of Love, gathers letters that channel Freirean thought into movements for global citizenship, spiritual resistance, prophetic education, and radical love. These authors speak from classrooms, churches, communities, and borderlands—always returning to the dialogical essence of Freire’s work as a form of collective becoming.

The five sections offer a kaleidoscopic view of Paulo Freire’s enduring relevance. From deeply personal awakenings to global analyses of injustice, from grassroots pedagogies of inclusion to the challenges posed by digitalization and ecological collapse, these letters illuminate how Freire’s legacy lives on—not as static doctrine, but as a living, adaptable ethic of liberation. They demonstrate that critical pedagogy is not a fixed set of methods, but an ongoing, dialogical struggle to read and transform the world. This collection, in its plurality of voices and locations, reminds us that to invoke Freire is not only to honor a thinker but to join a global conversation—a collective act of hope, resistance, and reimagining.

As the letters exemplify, Paulo Freire’s philosophy and pedagogy resemble shapeshifters that continually inform the theory and practice of change-makers operating in various fields where oppression needs to be identified and addressed through conscientization and action. As editors, we express gratitude for the response of all the writers who carry the torch that Paulo ignited around the globe. We hope their letters inspire readers to become critically conscious and act in their own contexts, no matter how challenging or complex.

The essence of these letters is to honor Freire’s legacy and renew it through lived experiences, creative struggles, and hopeful visions. Each contribution serves as a reminder that education is never neutral and can perpetuate domination or foster liberation. We invite readers to engage with these voices as companions on their journeys toward justice, dignity, and collective transformation. Let this book stand as both a tribute and a call to action in a world still marked by inequality and silencing.

Tania Ramalho, Shirley R. Steinberg, and Juha Suoranta

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Part I Becoming: Learning, Unlearning, and Reimagining

Letter 1: Dancing on the scene of our radical anger: Seeking for radical love? (Gina Thésée)

Letter 2: Bringing politics into teacher education (Carmel Borg)

Letter 3: There’s no undoing what we’re learning (Paul R. Carr)

Letter 4: How I discovered Paulo (Asoke Bhattacharya)

Letter 5: In gratitude to Freire, my critical companion (Nadia Khan-Roopnarine)

Letter 6: Musing thoughts as I think of you (James D. Kirylo)

Letter 7: Letters to Freire (Mirka Koro and Amalie Strange)

Letter 8: Passing Paulo’s baton (Robert Lake and Kortlyn McPeek)

Letter 9: The authority of dialogue: Reasons I consider myself a Freirean (Hannes Lundkvist)

Letter 10: Courage to keep asking the right questions (Ville Mäki and Sari Hietamäki)

Letter 11: Carta ao educador Paulo Freire (Paiva Neves)

Letter 12: Para un amigo que no pude despedir (Jaime A. Paredes)

Letter 13: The maestros (Dennis Parsons)

Letter 14: Um caminho possível para dialogar com Rudolf Steiner na pesquisa acadêmica (Rosely Aparecida Romanelli)

Letter 15: You have not been forgotten, good friend (Dorota Silber-Furman and Andrea Arce-Trigatti)

Part II Pedagogy and Oppression—Naming, Resisting, Transforming

Letter 16: Paulo Freire’s legacy of educated hope and the necessity of critical pedagogy (Henry Giroux)

Letter 17: Making revolutions of the heart (Antonia Darder)

Letter 18: Encamping on my Island of social justice: How/Do I build a bridge? (Teresa Anne Fowler)

Letter 19: Superação da pobreza multidimensional com auxílio das obras de Paulo Freire (Guilherme Perez Cabral e Ana Elisa Spaolonzi Queiroz Assis)

Letter 20: Living conscientização (Tricia Kress)

Letter 21: Wiping the dust from my eyes (Jesper Kristiansson)

Letter 22: Using Freire’s pedagogy to unveil the injustices of neoliberalism (Stephen McCloskey)

Letter 23: Conscientizing to the absolute: Tradition and praxis (Ali Qadir)

Letter 24: Remembering your militant-revolutionary pedagogy (Scott Ritchie)

Letter 25: Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of hope amidst the ruins of neoliberalism and the rise of authoritarian populism (Valerie Scatamburlo-D’Annibale)

Letter 26: Freire’s revolutionary ideas still disturb the powers that be (Juha Suoranta)

Letter 27: A post-letter to Professor Freire (Maria Luiza Sussekind)

Letter 28: Your ideas that influenced me the most (Myriam N. Torres)

Letter 29: Turning anger into critical hope (Lucy Wenham)

Part III Struggles for Justice—Pedagogies of Inclusion, Liberation, and Dignity

Letter 30: To Paulo: Warrior, wayfarer, friend (Peter McLaren)

Letter 31: Burned by the fire of paradoxes (Christine Daniels)

Letter 32: Paulo Freire, presente (Julio Emílio Diniz-Pereira)

Letter 33: Influência das obras de Paulo Freire no processo de formação e capacitação de docentes angolanos (Eurico Wongo Gungula, João Manuel Correia Filho, and Arnaldo Faustino)

Letter 34: The Changemaker Project: Problem posing in action (AnnaLise Hoopes)

Letter 35: Conscientization: Personal micro-narratives from neurodivergent borderlands (Gayitri Kavita Indar)

Letter 36: What would Paulo do? (Clara John)

Letter 37: A dialogue on the oppression of ʻĀina and Kānaka (Kourtney Kawano)

Letter 38: O legado de Paulo Freire e a luta pela educação inclusiva em Angola (Dayannis Davis Blanco and Arnaldo Faustino)

Letter 39: Carta de um educador em agroecologia à Paulo Freire (José Nunes da Silva)

Letter 40: Uma carta escrita nas asas de um pássaro (Nima Spigolon)

Letter 41: Critical action through critical hope (Marie Stamps)

Part IV Freirean Pedagogy for an Uncertain Planet—Technology, Ecology, and the Digital

Letter 42: Existentialism, social constructivism, and the universal human ethic (John P. Portelli)

Letter 43: Ecopedagogical needs, challenges, and reinvention possibilities of your work (Greg William Misiaszek)

Letter 44: What would it mean to humanize AI? (Kelly Bare)

Letter 45: HeartMind awareness or on the translation of the word consciência (David R. M. Saavedra)

Letter 46: Subjects meet in cooperation in order to transform the world (Ari Sherris)

Letter 47: Toward a holistic framework of everyday peace (Anna Sofia Suoranta)

Letter 48: Technology and the de-politization of education (Katariina Tiainen and Crystal Green)

Letter 49: Like Gandhi—only with clothes (Dawn Wink and Joan Wink)

Letter 50: Dialogues in thoughtspire: Imagining EduCoins in a Freirean world (Mila Zhu)

Part V Dialogues of Solidarity—Global Citizenship, Faith, and Politics of Love

Letter 51: A letter to my mentor Paulo Freire: A “pedagogy of possibility” (Ana Cruz)

Letter 52: Paulo Freire’s pedagogy: A catalyst for global citizenship education (Emiliano Bosio)

Letter 53: Liberating jesus and the prophetic Church (Eric A. Karahalis)

Letter 54: On the origins of critical pedagogy, trans, and the prophetic Church (Manuel Joseph Ellul)

Letter 55: Remembrance of a personal conversation with Paulo Freire (Dada Maheshvarananda)

Letter 56: Your spirit through friends I remember (Peter Mayo)

Letter 57: Hope and critical praxis in teacher education (Yasemin Tezgiden-Cakcak)

Letter 58: A dialogue with Freire in the twenty-first century: Global pedagogy of solidarity, love and resistance (Spyros Themelis, Gibson Zucca da Silva, Jethro Shirly-Smith, Abiodun Akinola, and Henry Esomchi)

Letter 59: A Paulo Freire (Pedro UC Be)

Letter 60: Reflexivity and conflict of role expectations in life, career, and community (Honggang Yang)

Letter 61: “Existential risks” that I assumed with my head held high (Yan Caramel Zehuri)

Letter 62: Tus palabras siguen siendo una guía que ilumina el camino hacia la justicia social (Luis Huerta-Charles)

Letter 63: Freire’s acceptance speech at the 1986 UNESCO Prize for peace education (Tania Ramalho)

Letter 64: Afterword: Culinary memories of Paulo and Joe and the importance of rice and bean (Shirley R. Steinberg)

An excerpt from

Letter 1: Dancing on the scene of our radical anger: Seeking for radical love?

Gina Thésée

Dear Paulo Freire,

I am writing this letter to you from the place where I am hunkering down, as an angry Black Woman, a Maroon of Caribbean origin. I acknowledge the cultural framing (especially in North America) of such an image may have become toxic, so please read on, as well as please know that I am not in favour of destructive, hurtful, and aimless bitterness. I am writing this letter to you from a dystopian time and world, where humans stand closely between three potential hells: the climate hell, the nuclear hell, and the hate hell. Your thoughts seem to me even more pertinent, consistent, and urgent than ever, to grapple with education as a necessary Utopia in action to transform the dystopian world in which we are living, and to push back against the hells that abound around us. You are one of the main authors with whom I have been marching for the last decades. I invite you to dance with me in a very strange scene, the scene of my anger, your anger, our anger.

Beyond words, the title of my letter is a metaphor of a dance scene. Throughout my years of life, dancing has had a very special significance for me, not only in relation to my body (physical dimension) but also in relation to my heart (emotional dimension), my mind (intellectual dimension), and my soul (spiritual dimension). The art of dancing is a language, not in a linguistic sense, but beyond words, sentences, or rules of grammar, moving with music in our common humanity. When dancing, my body expresses the filiation with all living beings on Earth; my mind seeks the Air of intellectual conscientization, transformation, and emancipation; my heart exults, like Water of life, the reliance on other human beings; my soul keeps the Fire of Life alive. I see dancing, as you see the “act of knowing,” that is to say, as a “revolutionary cultural action,” as a “cultural action for freedom”! (Freire, 2003, p. 39; Freire, 1979, p. 1). As an act of knowing, dancing depends on a proprioceptive chain, closely related to emotions, formed with nervous structures that send to the brain all the information required at every moment to seize and interpret the position, the posture, and the movement of the body in a particular space. The cultural diversity of the dances around the world offers a complex emotional design, arising and shining from the primary emotions, like anger.

My anger

I wonder why I did not “read” or “feel” your anger before my re-reading of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, on the 50th anniversary of the first edition? Even though I knew of your indignation, your denunciations, your criticism of banking education, your continuous struggle against social and educative injustice, and your advocacy for transformative and emancipatory education, the importance for you of dialogue and dialectic praxis, and of the importance for you of education as action of freedom, your goal of awakening a critical consciousness. I have read about your philosophy, your epistemology, your social theory in education, and, of course, your critical pedagogy. I thought that I understood your thought, and yet, anger was far away from my understanding; anger had nothing to do with my representation of who you are. Of course, “Freire cannot simply be read. Freire demands commitment” (Nunez Hurtado, 2007, p. 51). I felt like Peggy Rivage-Seul (2010, pp. 47–48): “After three years of serious intellectual work on the philosophy of Paulo Freire, I had missed his central point” (p. 47).