Río Bravo: A Journal of the Borderlands
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We Expected a Normal Latinx, Not a Chicano Like You
Get PDFWhile increasing the number of Latinx faculty in higher education remains a worthwhile goal, the term Latinx faculty carries its own dynamics of erasure, exclusion, and colonization. In this testimonio I explore the undertheorized tensions and contradictions embedded in the term Latinx faculty. By examining the reductionist and essentialist use of this term by faculty, administrators, and search committees in historically White institutions (HWIs), I show how this term reinforces colonial power structures through the erasure of complex and fragmented Chicana/x/o identities. Using testimonio as a method, I contextualize, analyze, and problematize the label Latinx faculty as an exclusionary term that defends racialized hierarchies by privileging specific types of acceptable or “normal” Latinx identities while upholding the hegemonic power structures of White supremacy. This testimonio adds to and challenges emerging literature on diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education by theorizing and problematizing the binary of Latinx/non-Latinx as deployed in HWIs by White faculty. Through this theorizing, I also generate space for exploring the complex performativity of my own identity within the constraints of the colonial logics imposed on me by White supremacy in the university
Femtoring Trenza: Employing a Plática~Testimonio Approach to Co-create Knowledge and Survive Academia
Get PDFThe three of us share how our praxis of plática methodology and our divulging of feminista testimonios allowed us to co-create knowledge and challenge the corrosiveness we have experienced in academic spaces. We center the foundational work of Women of Color scholars who have paved the way to discuss the role of community building and solidarity in higher education. This work weaves testimonios that speak to our lived experiences with femtoring (feminista mentoring) as foundational to our survival and navigation of academia\u27s trenches. Further, we discuss the co-construction of knowledge resulting from our reciprocal femtoring relationships, naming solidarity, accountability, and concrete examples of transformative practice as foundational elements that comprise the trenza [braid] of femtoring. Through pláticas, we name the systemic barriers that have historically marginalized us as scholars whose identities/ways of knowing challenge hegemonic, epistemic, and pedagogical canons. We explicitly discuss how these forms of oppression fragment the mindbodyspirit. Further, we uplift femtoring as a practice of solidarity, accountability, meaning-making, and shared conocimiento [knowledge], allowing us to resist academic violence–staying mindful of our practice as professors and scholars
Gifted Programming Identification Procedures: A Hidden Curriculum
Get PDFWhat is giftedness? Centering research on Diné (Navajo) perceptions of giftedness (Hartley 1991), this paper posits that gifted programming identification procedures often epitomize a unique and dangerous hidden curriculum founded on White, Westernized narratives surrounding intelligence. Drawing from theory on critical positionality (Johnson-Bailey 2012) and hope (Duncan-Andrade 2009), two tables are presented: one to examine hokey versus critical gifted programming practices, and one to examine dehumanizing versus humanizing gifted identification procedures, with corresponding implications and questions to consider further. Toward decolonizing the field of gifted education, these tables are intended to generate discussion on what happens when diverse ways of conceptualizing giftedness decenter Western ways of understanding, informing, and ordering the field of gifted education
The Destroyer & The Destroyed: The Testimonio of a Fragmented Mestizx Jota Entrapped Inside a White Straight(jacket)
Get PDFBuscando compartir un “aja”/conocimiento, I follow the huaraches of Xicanx and Mestizx feminist storytellers by sharing theory in my flesh. A testimonio by a fragmented Mestizx jota entrapped inside a white straight(jacket) constructed by my internalized colonialism. I share this testimonio as a tool to situate my body and articulate the ways my entire being has been broken into pieces by hegemonic power structures. Following Anzaldúa’s (2002) offering to redeem heart-rending memories and transform them into knowledge to empower our communities, I begin by navigating metaphorical/geographical borders of identity to reveal inside painful fissures a “papelito guardado” (Latina Feminist Group 2001). Through poetry and visual art, I uncover my self-inflicted fragmentation and discuss how internalized colonialism provided the tools to split my identity in two—the destroyer and the destroyed. I conclude this paper using a decolonial imaginary (Pérez 1999), by sharing a short story about how I wish my childhood had been in Mexico. An imaginary without the necessity of hiding my jotería and transness
Inter/weaving, Inter/lacing Consciousness & Resistance: Decolonizing Practices, Intersectionality & Aesthetics
No full textThe host editors of this issue are faculty in a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI)
Repast: A collective autoethnographic process of meaning making
Get PDFFor over six years, our writing collective has drawn upon our multivarious experiences and existence to examine and question our presence, purpose, motivation, and place at an HSI at the USA Mexico border. We thrive in our plurality and our disparate discourses have created an enduring sense and space of safety and belonging. However, this sense/space is not impervious and events as monumental as the global pandemic, as horrific as the images of wars, as devastating as the ravages of climate change, as destabilizing as divisive politics, as personal as new professional expectations, all have become intrinsic part of our bearings and may strain as our commitment to continue dialoging is challenged
The Decolonial Offerings of Collaborative Autoethnography with the Nahui Ollin
Get PDFOur stories do not speak for everyone, and they were never intended to. However, weaving our stories adds strength and weight to reclaiming the knowledge and ways of being that colonization sought to destroy. We used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) because it strengthens the power of a single story by weaving it with others to cultivate their medicine (Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez 2016). When used with a decolonial framework, CAE can disrupt settler colonial logics and whiteness (Davalos 2021). Additionally, CAE with a decolonial framework challenges hegemonic power structures by disrupting dominant ideologies and power differentials in research as well as by reclaiming our generative knowledge with the land (Davalos 2021)
Invisible Resistance: BIPOC Girls and Gender-expansive Youth in Foster Care Resisting School Push Out
Get PDFThis article explores that girls and gender-expansive youth who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in foster care resist oppression in schools. Research demonstrates that this population is disproportionately impacted by systemic oppression which contributes to poor academic outcomes. The child welfare system, largely operating on gendered and racialized stereotypes, targets women of color, resulting in higher rates of foster care involvement for girls and gender-expansive youth. In schools, the same stereotypes are used as reasons to surveil and punish youth, channeling them into juvenile detention. However, BIPOC girls and gender-expansive youth in foster care are rendered invisible in school discipline literature. This paper, adapted from my dissertation, utilizes observations in K-12 education to explore youth resistance to hegemonic power structures in school, and illuminates the importance of leveraging positionality when supporting youth. While my research is ongoing, this piece demonstrates that youth in foster care are made to protect themselves in school in ways that are deemed unacceptable, and subsequently criminalized. Ultimately, this work indicates the need for both school reform and structural social change to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline
A Fronterizo Father: (Con)Viviendo en los mundos del otro lado
Get PDFThis memoir-like essay highlights the disruption of a relationship between a father and a son on the Texas-Mexico borderlands which is caused by immigration status, education, class, sexuality, and type of communication. The essay begins in a contemporary and key moment that transports the author to analyze his relationship with his father and pinpoint what it was like to grow on both side of the Frontera simultaneously. With the hopes of achieving the American Dream, the father of the author tries to fulfill the role of the breadwinner without realizing that the lack of nurturing language and not being able to live in the same country affected the relationship and the emotions of his child. This essay serves as a reminder of the psychological and emotional trauma that people on the borderlands endure in order to survive while being critical of the various geopolitical and social structures influencing these relationships. This essay aims to open conversations about the importance of fatherhood and fathering on the borderlands as a phenomenon, especially when the fathers fulfill this role while being physically and emotionally absent from a child’s life
An Anzaldúan Triptych: with Homage to Federico García Lorca
Get PDFIn perhaps her most well-known poem, “To live in the borderlands means you,” Gloria Anzaldúa insists that “hondenying the Anglo inside you / is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black.” That Gloria foregrounded her Chicana—or ChicanX—identity in her writings is indisputable, as even her title Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza indicates. I must admit, however, that sometimes it concerns me that, even if she played a role, perhaps unwittingly, in the construction of such, her identity has been largely reduced to that of “Chicana,” with “queer” occasionally thrown in for good measure, while other aspects of her complex identity—her Leftist politics, her Pagan spirituality, etc.—have been obscured