The Chicana/o/x Dream: Hope, Resistance, and Educational Success

2018

Dissertation , 2019

The purpose of this study was to provide a deeper understanding of the lived experiences and identity formation of Indigenous Mexican students in U.S. higher education. Latinx critical race theory and critical Latinx Indigeneity served as conceptual frameworks for this study, and a decolonial lens was employed to distinguish the unique educational experiences of Indigenous Mexican students from the broader Latinx student population in the United States. A testimonio research design was used to explore two research questions: (a) What is the role of higher education in the identity formation of Indigenous Mexican students? and (b) How do Indigenous Mexican college students challenge or disrupt colonial perceptions about Indigenous people on their college campus and in their communities? Twelve Indigenous Mexican (Mixtec/Ñuu Savi, Zapotec/Bene Xhon, and Nahua) college students and graduates participated in the study, which involved participation in a 90-minute oral testimonio interview. Through a constant comparative analysis of the data, multiple readings of the participants’ transcripts and testimonios, and feedback from the participants, four themes emerged: (a) defining Indigeneity in diaspora, (b) higher education as a consciousness-raising space, (c) tensions within Chicanx Studies and Chicanx-based campus organizations, and (d) the urgency for public Indigeneity on and off campus. Findings revealed how participants publicly affirmed their Indigenous identities during college, particularly when exposed to courses in Ethnic Studies, Chicanx Studies, and Anthropology. Findings also shed light on intra-Latinx discrimination and its impact on Indigenous Mexican decisions to advocate for their respective Indigenous communities both on and off campus. The study contributes to the limited body of research on Indigenous Mexican students and their experiences in U.S. schools. It also begins to interrogate the ways Indigeneity is represented within Chicanx Studies curricula and Chicanx-based campus organizations from the perspective of Indigenous Mexican college students.

The legacy of colonization breeds alienation and detachment from history and community. For Chicanos in universities, the solution for the alienation that Aguirre expresses begins with understanding how powerful ideological forces sustain structured inequality while they promote selfhatred and identification with the master. Córdova makes the case that by embracing both our communities and the roots of Chicano and Chicana Studies, we find the passion, commitment and self-discipline to find a voice and presence in the university that is meaningful not only personally but also to the communities that we serve.

Journal of Latinos and Education , 2017

This article draws from a longitudinal study of 38 in-depth testimonio interviews with 10 undocumented Chicanas/Latinas from 2008 to 2014, first as college students and then as professionals. A Chicana feminist theoretical perspective in education was utilized to explore how undocumented Chicana/Latina ways of knowing emerged in the ways they worked with and for immigrant communities as professionals. The study found that participants drew from their multiple identities, social locations, and life experiences as undocumented Chicana/ Latina women to engage in pedagogies of resistance—everyday forms of teaching and learning that challenge the subjugation of undocumented communities, and are shaped by personal and collective experiences, knowledge, and identities. The study found that participants utilized mestiza consciousness, convivencia, and bodymindspirit to employ these pedagogies of resistance in their professional work with and for immigrant communities.

The Urban Review, 2007

Using Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and CainÕs (1998) theory of identity and their concept of figured worlds, this article provides an overview of how twenty-four Mexican Americans came to produce Chicana/o Activist Educator identities. The desire to raise consciousness (teach for social justice pero con ganas) and ''give back to the [their] community'' became a very important part of this identity. Using an ethnographic interview as well as a life history interview methodology, this article specifically focuses on the participantsÕ conceptual and procedural identity production in local Chicana/o activist figured worlds (usually in colleges and universities). In these local figured worlds, the participants produced a more complex process of identity production that was both conceptual and procedural. The article concludes with broad implications for urban teacher education. KEY WORDS: identity; figured worlds; Chicana/o. ''The name Chicana is not a name that women (or men) are born to or with, as is often the case with 'Mexican,Õ but rather it is consciously and critically assumed and serves as point of redeparture for dismantling historical conjunctures of crisis, confusion, political and ideological conflict and contradictions... (Alarco´n, 1990: 250). Alarco´n aptly points out that Chicana and Chicano are not identities that people are born with, but that they come to consciously assume. Assuming Luis Urrieta, Jr. is assistant professor of cultural studies and education and Fellow in the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Chair in Education at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests are in identity, agency, and social movements in education with a focus on Chicana/o and Indıǵena (PÕurhe´pecha) education, citizenship and social studies education.

Educational Foundations, 2010

Using critical race theory as a framework, the article utilizes counter-storytelling to examine the different forms of racial and gender discrimination experienced by Chicana and Chicano graduate students. After describing the critical race theory framework and counter-storytelling method, the article moves to a story of two composite and data-driven characters, Professor Leticia Garcia and graduate student Esperanza Gonzalez. Various theoretical and conceptual issues such as self-doubt, survivor guilt, impostor syndrome, and invisibility are woven into Esperanza’s graduate school and Professor Garcia’s pre-tenure experiences.

2014

Chicana feminist praxis drives the work of Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), in which we celebrate multiple forms of knowing and creating. As a critical intellectual, creative, and political space, the journal stages conversations necessary to the development of liberatory ways of thinking and being in the multiple worlds we navigate. The issue you now hold in your hands evidences the ways in which we come together across disciplines to produce necessary interdisciplinary and cross-genre critical and creative work. Volume thirteen, issue two houses the focused issue on institutional violence, and we want to situate it within the context of Chicana/Latina Studies; this issue is the largest to date. In these pages, we bring together our editorial vision for the journal as a whole, together with the work of the MALCS Ad Hoc Committee on Institutional Violence. The first section articulates the ongoing work of the journal, through critical and creative writing in dialogue with the sections that follow, which is constituted by writing solicited by the Ad Hoc Committee. The artwork of Deborah Kuetzpal Vasquez bridges the various sections of the issue, with Citlali, The Chicana Superhero, embodying the fuerza of our feminista commitments and consciousness. We acknowledge the Ad Hoc Committee for their vision, their passion, and their desire to make this issue a reality. For the final product and the energies that went into its production, we recognize the collective efforts of many who have labored behind the scenes such as members of the national advisory and editorial boards as mentors and reviewers. 20 CHICANA/LATINA STUDIES 13:2 SPRING 2014 WORK THAT MATTERS I. Resilience, Persistence, and Change: Shifting and Contesting Tradit The first section of this issue articulates the collaboration that characteri our editorial vision. The contents of this section originated both in-hou and from contributions put forward by the Ad Hoc Committee. Part of work we do as editors is through juxtaposition and ordering: placing th pieces together allows us to situate the focused issue as part of an ongoi and institutionalized Chicana/Latina resistance (as the journal of MALC the heteropatriarchal violence so compellingly articulated by the committe example, the two book reviews by Yvette Flores and Larissa M. Mercado-Ló which spotlight Chicanas with careers in science, mathematics, and engine and the intersections of race and class for women in academia, respectively document our presence and persistence in institutions of higher education "The Staging of Heteropatriarchal Violence and its Traumatic Aftermath i Adelina Anthony's Bruising for Besos and Dulce Maria Solis' CHELA," Ti Ana López explores the ways in which the playwrights use testimonios to d and document heteropatriarchal violence. Because the performative aspect to these interventions, López employs dramaturgical analysis to discuss how authors and performers understand the liberatory and potentially transfor aspects of the drama. That the work of three Tejanas: i'rene lara silva, Amalia Ortiz, and San An own poet laureate, Carmen Tafolla, is featured in this issue stands as a test to the importance of the home-place of the journal, as well as the commun that are developed both within and beyond its pages. Along with the inim Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, and the artist/activist collective malintZINE, poets speak directly to the theme of the focused issue. Two of them docum and critique various forms of institutional violence. MalintZINE s "De/ Romantic Revolutions" is a commentary on heteropatriarchal sexual violen and objectification from within the ranks of supposed allies, while Ortiz's

Latino Studies, 2006

Setting out to examine the Chicana/o school experience, Marcos Pizarro undertook a massive research project in urban East Los Angeles and rural Washington state school districts. Through in-depth interviews with high school, community college and university students over many years, Pizarro searched for answers to why so many Chicana/o students are failing in schools, why so many schools are failing Chicana/o students and what can be done to address this failure. These questions of Chicana/o school experience, which have been of vital concern to Chicana/o studies scholars, educators and community members alike for decades, were provoked in Pizarro by his years of research and activism in public education. Chicanas and Chicanos in School invites scholars, policy makers and those working with Chicana/o students to listen to the stories of the students themselves and to think about what schools can do to understand how the hidden and overt processes of racialization operate within the school setting, and what can be done to correct these in order to empower Chicana/o students to succeed in school. This book makes an important contribution to contemporary Latina/o studies, and offers a data driven explanation to how processes of racialization structure school performance. Pizarro places race and power