Chicana Feminist Research Articles

Feminist Mobilization in MEChA: A Southern California Case Study

This article examines the impact of Chicana activism and Chicana feminist mobilization on a southern California chapter of MEChA—the largest and oldest Chicana/o student activist network in the United States—from 1970 through the 1990s. It argues that Chicana activism, and particularly Chicana feminist mobilizations, created the necessary tensions and challenges to transform CSUN (California State University, Northridge) MEChA and its membership. As a result, CSUN MEChA integrated aspects of Chicana feminism into its platform and cultivated Chicana leadership, with an impact beyond the confines of one campus. This article draws heavily from El Popo, the Chicana/o student newspaper of CSUN, as well as from interviews, by the author, of former Chicana and Chicano student activists, to track important discussions and changing points of view over a thirty-year period.

The nowhere of global curriculum

In this article, I describe how a curriculum of dislocation produces subjectivities offered in discourses that centre “First World”/Eurocentric/developed subject positions through nation state frameworks. I knit stories of colonialism and imperialism with my lived experiences as a former student in the postcolonial context of Colombia and as a researcher in a new immigrant destination in USA. Using different forms of texts (vignettes, memories, drawings), I offer the reader stories, images, and scenarios to witness the ways in which the privileged spaces of international schools in the “Third World” and public schools in the “First World” are sites in which epistemic violence takes place. These are stories of dislocation, stories of how the embodiment of coloniality happens through the materialization of a Eurocentric modern curriculum of the global. This piece is not only a critique; it tells a story of healing. Based on the work of Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, I enter a new path to knowledge or conocimiento to create a different interpretation of my story. Weaving personal narratives, collective history, theories, and autobiographical vignettes into theoretical prose creates what Anzaldúa calls an/una autohistoria-teoría.

From failure and allyship to feminist solidarities: negotiating our privileges and oppressions across borders

ABSTRACTIn this essay we use performative writing to explore the (im)possibilities of feminist alliances across difference drawing upon our lived experiences in an advising relationship between a cisgender queer Chicana feminist advisor and a cisgender Kuwaiti-Palestinian heterosexual female doctoral advisee. Drawing upon the trope of failure, we explore the importance of performing an intersectional feminist ethic when working transnationally to create feminist alliances that are grounded in shared experiences of Otherness rather than specific identities. Following the work of Halberstam and McIntosh and Hobson, we consider the productivity of performances of failure as key moments of critical reflection for feminist allyship.

The politics of erased migrations: Expanding a relational, intersectional sociology of Latinx gender and migration

AbstractSociologists of gender and Latina/o migration and Chicana feminist scholars in Chicana/o Studies have made extensive interventions in the academic project of recovering the experiences of women in migration studies across disciplines. I consider these contributions and advocate for an interdisciplinary research agenda that continues expanding relational scholarship by developing the concept of the politics of erased migrations, an analytical tool to theorize why and how the embodied experiences of Latinas are marginalized and misrepresented in academic research. Latinas experience various physical and symbolic migrations—across and within national borders, social and political contexts, identities, academic disciplines, methodologies, and social movements. Yet Latina feminist experiences, knowledge, and political movement largely remain at the margins of these borders. Through a review of prominent research on gender and migration centered on heteronormativity, reproduction, and the nation‐state, I demonstrate the possibilities of the politics of erased migration as a theoretical intervention in expanding a relational, intersectional sociology of Latinx gender and migration. This paper carries implications for shifting the field of Latinx gender and migration from a focus on current oppressive conditions to one that also imagines new avenues for social justice and alternative social worlds.

Tenets of Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy: teaching for critical consciousness, nourished resistance, and healing

ABSTRACT For marginalized communities, schooling is mired in social/bodily control, tracking, and cultural erasure circumscribing difference/culture as obstacles, as opposed to sites of wisdom, connectedness, and critical consciousness. Authors shape a transformative pedagogical framework across teacher education and partnering schools by utilizing spiritually embodied, land-based Chicana Feminist and Indigenous Epistemologies. We outline six tenets of Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy which: 1) construct education politically, 2) enact schooling as decolonization/empowerment, 3) center epistemologies, multiliteracies of marginalized groups, 4) foster critical frameworks navigating oppression, 5) engage social action pedagogy, and 6) engender hope, well-being. Scholarship has implications for educational theory and practice at all levels.

Testimonialista Pedagogues: Testimonio Pedagogy in Critical Multicultural Education

Teacher educators employ a variety of approaches to multicultural education. This article describes how we have our students grapple with their positionalities, to socially locate themselves and then to question the how and why of what they learned by employing testimonio, a genre of qualitative research that has its epistemological roots in Chicana feminist thought, as pedagogy. We discuss how we use testimonio in our classes and how students can use the process of creating and sharing their testimonios to cultivate a multicultural education (MCE) perspective and begin crafting their own culturally relevant pedagogy.

‘To my relations’: writing and refusal toward an Indigenous Epistolary Methodology

In this article, the author presents an Indigenous Epistolary Methodology (IEM) to reflect on what it means for Indigenous women to engage the notion of refusal in traditional writing methods and qualitative research. The author proposes that an IEM, nestled within her familial genealogies, Indigenous Knowledges and Chicana Feminist Epistemology can provide a more expressive account of her relations as a mothering Indigenous and Chicana Woman of Color in academia.

Establishing a Chicana feminist bildungsroman for young adults

ABSTRACTMexican American literature for adolescent readership deserves scrutiny as much as appreciation. Young adult novels The Tequila Worm (2005) by Viola Canales and Under the Mesquite (2011) by Guadalupe Garcia McCall exemplify a literary form this article labels the Chicana feminist bildungsroman. The characteristics of this new genre are narrating the coming of age of a Chicana protagonist over an extended period of time, portraying the protagonist’s developing a socially engaged understanding of dual identity as a Mexican American, and connecting individual development with valuing of family, community, and collectivity. Further classifiable in the künstlerroman genre, the books link with The House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros. This analysis demonstrates the importance of inclusive literature and culture in schools and the prominent position that Mexican American literature merits in young adult literature as a discipline.

Introduction: Revisiting Beauty

Introduction:Revisiting Beauty Natalie Havlin (bio) and Jillian M. Báez (bio) As Central America's smallest, but most densely populated country, El Salvador sits at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. In some ways, El Salvador is a progressive nation following its civil war (1979–1992), spurred by military repression and income equality. For example, despite its small geographic size and poverty, El Salvador is internationally known for refusing to accept Monsanto's genetically modified seeds (Malkin 2014). Monsanto, a large and powerful corporation based in the United States, holds a monopoly over seeds sold to farmers throughout the globe. However, El Salvador is also the most violent nation in the Western hemisphere (Data Team 2017) fueled by political corruption, economic depression (partly due to changing the currency to the U.S. dollar in 2001), and patriarchal and homophobic norms governing post–civil war Salvadoran society. While the violence of Salvadoran gangs—largely comprised of disenfranchised and undocumented youth growing up in U.S. cities who are frequently deported to El Salvador—are often reported in U.S. news outlets, non-gang-related violence is less known outside of El Salvador. For example, trans people face the most violence in El Salvador than in any other nation in the world (Renteria 2017). Trans women are most often attacked because of their appearance and whether or not they pass for cis women. Beauty practices are at the heart of this type of violence because one's life is dependent on conforming to local, hyperfeminine beauty ideals. We open Beauty with this specific case as a reminder that beauty is not a frivolous concept nor practice. In many corners of the world, if and how one chooses to challenge beauty regimes cannot only lead to marginalization [End Page 13] but also sometimes violence. As such, this issue emphasizes the materiality of beauty. The politics of beauty have been heavily debated within feminist studies and LGBTQ studies. While some feminists critiqued beauty as an extension of patriarchal gender regimes, other feminists reconceptualized beauty as a form of play and identity expression (Church Gibson 2013). At the same time, women of color feminists, particularly black and Chicana feminists, such as bell hooks and Amalia Mesa-Bains (2006), and María Elena Cepeda (2008), acknowledge the significance of beauty—not only as personal adornment but also as a mode of survival. Moving away from white second wave feminists who dismissed beauty as mere compliance with patriarchal expectations, some women of color feminists embraced beauty as a site of agency. In response, LGBTQ studies and critical disability studies critique heteronormative beauty regimes and explore the potentials of non-gender-normative stylizations and more inclusive modes of recognition. This issue of WSQ places new interventions in gender and sexuality studies in conversation with these debates. The pieces in this issue take a critical and transgressive approach to gendered and sexualized conceptions of beauty. What is gendered beauty? How can we know that something is beautiful? Is the pursuit of beauty a fruitful endeavor in gender and sexuality studies? How is beauty being redefined, especially in light of race, disability, class, gender, sexuality, and economics? How are dominant beauty regimes steeped in racism, gender binaries, sexism, able-bodiedness, homophobia, colonialism, and capitalism? How do marginalized communities engage in beauty practices as forms of survival and resistance? How does beauty undergird countercultural movements? What is the relationship between beauty and aesthetics? Early germinal feminist scholarship dismisses beauty as a form of patriarchal subjugation. For example, in her classic text The Beauty Myth (1990), Naomi Wolf calls attention to the unrealistic beauty standards expected of women in our male-dominated society. In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993), Susan Bordo builds on Wolf's critique and links popular culture representations of beauty to female pathology, particularly eating disorders. Bordo also notes that women's beauty regimes are not only sexist, but also largely Eurocentric. Black feminists also note the Eurocentrism in dominant beauty regimes, but at the same time note that beauty politics are complicated in Black communities. For example, Maxine Leeds Craig in her book Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black [End Page 14...

La Llorona on Stage: Re-visiting Chicana Cultural Paradigms in Josefina López's Unconquered Spirits

This article examines the bad woman archetype of La Llorona and how it has been used to destabilize patriarchal discourses in Chicana theatre. Chicana feminist playwrights appropriate, subvert, and transform La Llorona in such a way as to create discourses of resistance, deploying the female body as a tool for cultural upheaval and using theater practice as a weapon of sociopolitical resistance. By presenting versions of these malas mujeres that are created outside of the male gaze, playwright Josefina Lopez offers complex portrayals of rigid cultural paradigms that limit the possibilities of Chicana womanhood. After a brief overview of the Llorona myth as it pertains to Chican@ theater, this article uses Lopez's Unconquered Spirits (1995) to explore how the myth of La Llorona has been performed across time and theater spaces. Lopez's play demonstrates how body and performance work in unison to reconfigure cultural paradigms, in this case La Llorona, to shape each character's own re-imagined identities.

Latina Student Mothers’ Trenzas de Identidades in the Community College

Latinx are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the country and their growth is visible in higher education. Using focus groups with student mothers, we examine the narratives of four Latina student mothers pursuing higher education at the community college. Using Chicana Feminist Theory as our theoretical framework, we apply trenzas de identidades (Godínez, 2006; Montoya, 1994) as a metaphorical and analytical tool to understand the experiences of Latina community college student mothers. The student mothers’ trenzas de identidades demonstrate the ways their mother, student, and professional identities intersect and influence how they experience and navigate the educational pipeline. We call upon higher education faculty and administrators to reject deficit ideologies of Latina student mothers, and we offer recommendations for creating a receptive environment for them.

Curriculum of the Mestiza/o Body: Living and Learning Through a Corporal Landscape of Resistance and (Re)generation

ABSTRACTThrough a Chicana Feminist and Curricular Reconceptualist lens, this article theorizes a Curriculum of the Mestiza/o Body as return to historicized, corporal knowing which takes shape, form, flesh and language in the Mestiza/o Body in order to nourish and arm especially Mexican/Mexican-American (Mexicana/o) young people toward equitable, hopeful educational futures of dignity and wellness. This work is informed within the intellectual, survival legacies of a land-based indigenous-heritage People who have long railed against erasure and distortion within oppressive Eurocentric and hegemonic social constructs. This paper presents a resistant, healing, and regenerative school curriculum, mirrored in the cellular workings of the body itself, through which young People of Color, and especially Mexicana/os, “guilty of nothing but their born color, guilty of being innocent” (Baca, 1990, p. 46) are brought into a learning landscape wherein their—our—histories, ways of being, thinking, learning, and loving are central bloodlines of classroom practice.

“Allow Me to Speak”

Intimate partner violence is experienced by millions of women. The experience becomes complex when confronted in a different country, especially for Spanish-speaking Latina immigrants, representing a challenge in their path to survival. This ethnographic study was based in Chicana feminism and Mujerismo epistemology. From the Mujerista framework arises the concept of permítanme hablar and la lucha, which emphasizes the importance of the women’s narratives from their own contexts. Consequently, the need of reclaiming from their stories alternative forms of intervention by service providers and those who develop programs as well as social policies in favor of their communities.

Primero Madres: love and mothering in the educational lives of Latina/os

ABSTRACTThis article examines the historical and contemporary role of Latina madres in the educational lives of their children and communities. Latinas, in their work as mother-activists, have played critical roles in the schooling lives of their children, seeking educational equality for their communities in general, amidst the growing racial politics they contended with within US schools. I aim to examine here how these mothers challenged traditional conceptions of feminism, as they bridge a politics of motherhood and activism for survival in their everyday lives. These mothers transform their children’s lives – and by extension their own lives and the lives of their community – through discourses of love that complicate traditional gender roles and forge new articulations of feminist solidarity. I utilize Chicana feminist theory to highlight the intersectionality of Latina identities to examine the quotidian struggles of women occupying multiple roles in the face of inequality in contemporary US society.

Occupying Our Space: The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

Occupying Our Space: The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

A Call for Onto-Epistemological Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Care: Centering Global South Conceptualizations of Childhood/s

In this chapter, we call for onto-epistemological diversity in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Specifically, we discuss the need to center the brilliance of children and communities of color, which we argue, can be facilitated by foregrounding global south perspectives, such as Black and Chicana feminisms. Mainstream perspectives in ECEC, however, have been dominantly constructed from global north perspectives, producing a normalized White, male, middle-class, heterosexual version of childhood, where minoritized children are viewed as deficit. Although there have been important challenges to the discourse of a normalized, deficit child, we argue much of this work has remained grounded in global north positionings, which separate theory from the lived realities of children of color. As such, we introduce Black and Chicana feminisms as global south visions to transform approaches to research and pedagogy in ECEC and, in turn, disrupt inequities.

Healing Images and Narratives: Undocumented Chicana/Latina Pedagogies of Resistance

ABSTRACTThis 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.

Practice and Praxis: Chicana Feminism and the History of the Chicana/Latina Studies Journal

A history of the Chicana/Latina Studies journal, published by Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) organization, in evidence of the organization's expression and evolution of its Chicana feminist thought. The article argues that the journal's Chicana feminist theories and ideas led to an explicit Chicana feminist editorial praxis. This history is traced from the MALCS organization's working papers, Trabajos Monográficos, released in the mid-1980s, to its form as Voces journal and the Series in Chicana Studies working papers in the 1990s, to its final emergence as the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, biannual academic journal Chicana/Latina Studies.

(Re)conceptualizing Love: Moving Towards a Critical Theory of Love in Education for Social Justice

Through reflection on critical incident involving a social justice educator, this reflexive essay examines the role of love and its implications on social justice education, pedagogy, and praxis. Within the U.S. context, there is a considerable misunderstanding of what love is. Normative discourse on love within in our society is almost exclusively relegated to romance and familial relations. However, through personal reflection and a review of interdisciplinary literature, I argue that normative discourses on love are not innocuous, but instead hegemonic and serve as an ideology to perpetuate individualism and white supremacy. Drawing upon critical theorists, including Black and Chicana feminist, I suggest that love must: 1) Be reconceptualized in order to meet the demands of justice, 2) Based in Black and Brown lived experiences, 3) Be embodied for social justice 4) Tend to the whole person, and 5) Be measured by how effective our pedagogy and practice stymy alienation and heal. Lastly, I offer my personal reflection guide that assisted my move toward a critical theory of love.

Scenting Saintliness: The Ailing Body, Chicana Feminism, and Communal Identity in Ancient Christianity

This article brings together literary theorist Suzanne Bost's analysis of health, illness, and the body, as described in Chicana feminist literature, and a Christian hagiography from the fifth century, the Life and Activity of the Holy and Blessed Teacher Syncletica, in order to argue that the Life and Activity describes an ascetic subject who is relational to their desert environment and community. Christian hagiography is determined to construct a Christian subject that can only be described in concert with these relational aspects and then only characterized by its permeability, relationality, and precariousness. Syncletica's holiness is depicted not simply by the very vivid descriptions of her ailing and decaying body and the pain she undergoes but also by her students and fellow ascetics who suffer with her and attempt to care for her. Reading this hagiography alongside Bost's reading of Chicana feminist literature allows for a different interpretation of the function of illness and disease—not as the opposite of health and wellness but as a method for constituting and describing the ascetic community.