This article features personal narratives that condemn ideologies that work to render invisible the identities of translingual individuals. The author engages members of the language and literacy field, particularly teachers and researchers, in conversations that will not only denounce antiminoritized groups rhetoric but also counter prejudiced standpoints about the validity and appropriateness of their literacies. The author describes and critically analyzes principal contemporary language theories, practices, and pedagogies in the preparation of English as a second language and bilingual education teachers she encountered in her academic journey, as an English teacher and learner. Through autoethnographic and multimodal sensory layered-account methods, she highlights issues of power and linguistic hierarchies entrenched in the language philosophies and pedagogies she experienced, while illustrating how translingual individuals "do" literacy. The author supports her analysis with vignettes, a poem, proverbs, pictures of artifacts, and photographs and defies traditional academic expectations about literacy processes, while exemplifying translinguistic writing. Findings are framed around narratives about bridging ideological beliefs into practical realities in the classroom, personal value systems and dispositions regarding language and literacy, turning critical experiences into meaningful research and practice, and the significance of a likeminded and supportive community of practice.