Testimonio as Curriculum and Pedagogy: Expressing Struggle, Regaining “Self,” and Finding Place and Home

• In Event: Narrative Methods? Beyond Methods “Experts” in Relocating Narrativizing Philosophies in the Curriculum

Abstract

In this paper I use testimonio to explore the regaining of my home, and my “Mexican-ness.” Testimonio speaks to me differently as an emerging scholar, student, and teacher as it makes me question how to utilize my teaching as a bridge to regaining mi identidad perdida or sublimated “lost identity.”
Using testimonio as both perspective and mode of inquiry (Acevedo et al., 2001; Anzaldúa, 1987; Padilla & Martínez, 2005; Valenzuela, 2005), this paper draws from a larger study in which I gather and analyze testimonios about border violence from teachers, school nurses, school law enforcement, administrators, special population teachers, and counselors. Drawing on influences from testimonio and other autobiographical and narrative inquiry such as those described in Clandinin (2013), Jewett (2008), Miller (2004), and Pinar (2004), I am still finding my place as an emerging scholar in this scholarly space.
Specifically here, I focus on my testimonio concerning displacement expressed through my own struggles to the regain my birth name as part of a larger struggle to reclaim my identity as an immigrant, a U.S Army soldier, a transnational student, a teacher, and an emerging scholar in the United States.

Testimonio as research perspective and methodology, allows me to reflect, investigate, and perform several key identification narratives in this research:

1.The loss of my birth name which changed from Maria to Edith, which at present I’m trying to change back;

2.My joining of the Army as a means to “pay-my-patriotic” dues for a country of immigrants whose attitude toward brown-skinned Mexicans has been, at best, ambivalent if not dramatically opposed to the “mesticizing” of the U.S.; and

3.An understanding of Latin@/Mexican ambivalences of being neither from her not there or ni-de- aquí-ni-de-allá identities that permeate lives of many Latin@ students in the United States.

Advancing testimonio as curriculum and pedagogy, for me Testimonio becomes a critical way of expressing my “lucha” as an immigrant girl and woman struggling to make a meaningful place in these Estados Unidos.

References
Acevedo et al. (2001). Telling to Live. Latina Feminist Testimonios. Duke University Press.

Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera. The new mestiza. San Franscico, CA: Aunte Lute.

Clandinin, J. (2007). Handbook of Narrative Inquiry, Mapping a Methodology. Sage Publications, Inc.

Jewett, L. M. (2008). A delicate dance: Autoethnograhy,curriculum and the semblance of intimacy. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Miller, J. (2005). The necessary incompleteness of teachers’ stories Sounds of silence breaking: Women, autobiography, curriculum. New York: Peter Lang.

Padilla, R.V. & Martinez, R.O. (2005). Personal stories, voice and presence in academe: a dialogical response to Aguirre. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(2) March-April 2005, pp. 199-220.

Pinar, W.F. (2004). Autobiography: a revolutionary act. In Pinar, W.F. What is curriculum theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Valenzuela, A. (2005). Voice, presence and community: challenging the master narrative. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18(2), pp. 139-146.

Author

• Edith Espinosa Trevino, The University of Texas - Brownsville