Response to Review of Homegirls in the Public Sphere

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 15(1), 2005 Response to Review of Homegirls in the Public Sphere Marie (Keta) Miranda Bicultural/Bilingual Studies University of Texas at San Antonio Citation: Miranda, Marie Keta. “Response to Review of Homegirls in the Public Sphere.” Children, Youth and Environments 15(1), 2005. I offer my appreciation to CYE for reviewing Homegirls, and I especially cherish the comment that the “book is deceptively easy to read.” As a new scholar, I had trepidations that an experimental text would seem bold and brash given the social problem under examination. Writing at the crossroads of “posts” produces awkwardness and a constant questioning about one’s authority to represent. Does poststructural, feminist, insider/native ethnography—bridging research, theory and politics—produce different knowledge or generate knowledge(s) differently? Are these debates too academic for engaging audiences outside the university? Homegirls is about the problems of representation. When speaking about gangs to a live audience, I usually use a slide show with two projectors and two screens. I frame the problem by juxtaposing one set of slides from mainstream magazines and photography against the other set, which are photos taken by the young women who participated in the research, explaining their social network. Intentionally dichotomous—pitting stereotype against a “real” representation by the young women themselves—it is a way of drawing in nonacademic as well as academic audiences to engage the epistemological problems. At other times, I have read excerpts from Homegirls at bookstores and community centers engaging the theoretical concerns. For example, at a reading at a San Antonio bookstore that features Latino/a authors, there were two women—one middle-aged and the other a woman in her mid-twenties—seated directly in front of me. Constantly looking at them, I tried to register if I should skip ahead, or bring more drama to my voice, wondering whether the engagement with the crisis of representation was of interest to them. The anxiety finally stopped me from reading and I extemporized. Questions began—had the girls read the book? What had they to say? Was I still in contact with the girls? Then, the younger woman raised her voice. “What you’re saying about 415 representing, that’s important.” I agreed. And, too quickly spoke about the public meetings when the girls struggled to have their voices heard. She interrupted. “It’s important because they have an idea about gangs, and they want us to act like they expect us to…this happened to me.” She began her story. When she was a teenager and gang member, the young woman had been interviewed by the press and even appeared on national television. Despite her explanation about gangs, the questions remained the same. She expressed how difficult it is to break the dominant image and the way in which lowincome communities are portrayed to “get the gang story.” Her response was eloquent, conveying the very terms of identity politics since the late sixties. Emerging from the streets and the campuses, identity politics addresses the power of representation. Thus, I mark not a “post,” but register identity politics as the force and challenge that contests U.S. institutions and structures of discourse as the field of struggle. Hence, whatever anxiety and nervousness I had about engaging with non-academic audience, ways of knowing, signifin’, signin’ and representin’ express the battle of urban youth for acknowledgement and recognition. Marie "Keta" Miranda is Assistant Professor of Mexican American Studies in the division of Bicultural/Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. ...