“El Valor de una Mujer”: Latina Mothers’ Reconstructing Womanhood, Motherhood, and Family Through Multimodal Composition

• In Event: Latino/a Students Using New Digital Technologies to Develop Hybrid Literacies and Craft Agentive Selves

Abstract

The language and literacy practices of Spanish-speaking immigrant women have been the focus of studies informed by language socialization and anthropolitical linguistics approaches (González, 2001; Delgado-Gaitán, 1990; Valdés, 1996; Zentella, 2005) with a great emphasis on their roles as caregivers. Gender ideologies and identity work has also been explored in their trajectories and investment in English language learning (Menard-Warwick, 2004; Norton, 1995, 2000; Warriner, 2004), in their writing and composition practices (Hurtig, 2005; Sánchez, 2007) and in their family literacy practices (De la Piedra, 2011). However, the incorporation of technology and multimodal composition in these facets of immigrant women’s lives remains under studied. This limits our understanding of the role of technology in the complex ecologies of language socialization and learning in immigrant households.

Drawing on perspectives of multimodality and New Literacy Studies (Coiro et al., 2008; Kress, 2003; New London Group, 1996), this paper examines how the Latina mothers crafted and enacted identities as authors through the composition of multimodal texts with digital tools. It examines their processes and products, as they related to their views and lived experiences on child care, family values, and the role of women in family and society.

Using a case study approach (Stake 1995; Merriam, 1998), this paper follows four focal participants in enrolled in a Web Design class, taught in Spanish, in the Southwest U.S., during the spring of 2010: Leticia, Gloria, Sara and Joselyn. Selection criteria include the following: a) all of them were raising school-age children; b) they all spoke Spanish as their dominant language, and c) they all had been born in a Spanish-speaking country (Mexico, Guatemala and Ecuador). Using thematic coding, audio-recorded classroom interactions and interviews were coded to identify patterns and meaning-making of the composition process. Their texts were coded seeking for themes describing gender roles, motherhood, and instances of self-positioning (Davis & Harré, 1999).

Analyzed texts included a) a slide show created by Leticia at home on the roles and values of women in society; b) photo montages created by Gloria using songs and music composed by her husband; c) Joselyn’s website providing advice for new mothers; d) drafts of Sara’s website providing advice and her philosophy for world peace; and e) slides crafted by each participant as part of a collective slide show to be presented at the group’s graduation ceremony.

Preliminary analysis shows how Latina writers and composers construct powerful identities through their design of digital texts in ways that challenge the deficit perspectives in discourses about culturally and linguistically diverse learners (Hull, et al., 2009; Vasudevan, 2006) and about immigrant parents (Zentella, 2005). Through the composition and design process that participants engaged in, they were able to draw from their transnational funds of knowledge, reaffirm their collective experience as mothers, caregivers, and women, and crafted texts that represented this expertise. This demonstrates how identities are fashioned, lived and enacted through social practice (Barton et al, 2007; Holland et al., 1998) and through design of agentive selves (Hull & Katz, 2006).

Author

• Silvia Cecilia Nogueron-Liu, University of Georgia