It is imperative that in conversations about literacy instruction teachers incorporate curriculum dedicated to youth empowerment, especially for emergent bilingual and LGBTQ youth, as recognizing and honoring students' linguistic and epistemic privileges entails taking their claims about the world seriously. In this article, the author discusses how Virginia (Vicki) Grise and Irma Mayorga's "The Panza Monologues" were used in a high school Chican@/Latin@ Literature class to spark critical thinking and multilingual monologue writing around emergent bilingual students' lived experiences. The practices documented in the article illustrate the value of developing a translanguaging stance and centering Chicana feminist queer cultural production in English language arts (ELA) courses.