Contested Identities: The Mothers of Arts Org

• In Event: 72.025 - Abriendo Brecha: Third Spaces, Heterogeneity, and Social Justice in the New Latino Diaspora

Abstract

This paper explores the processes by which a core group of Latina mothers understand and respond to their emergent and contested identities in Marshall by repositioning themselves as framers, leaders, and advocates within an area community organization. Arts Org. was founded in 2008 to empower the Latino community through the promotion of culture, art, education and technology. Arts Org provides weekly programming including after school tutoring for youth, arts classes, Red Cross safety trainings, adult ESL and technology literacy, and for two years has been running a low cost summer camp for area youth.

Initially the organization, and its programming, was spearheaded by Arts Org. founder, and one of the paper’s authors. With the integration of additional adult programming, parents, whose children are enrolled in Arts Org. classes, have become increasingly involved in the structure, programming and direction of the organization. This paper analyzes the experiences of a core group of Latina mothers, who through their participation in an adult Spanish language reading circle, began to integrate themselves into the Arts Org. community. Initially seeking opportunities to become more involved in the lives of their children, the mothers’ in-depth engagement in the youth summer camp served to reshape and reimagine Arts Org. as a third space enabling the production of new, heterogeneous, and hybrid identity constructions.

The mothers of Arts Org. are demographically similar to one another. All born in Mexico, all recent migrants to Marshall, many with limited formal educational backgrounds, and are working in low wage positions as housekeepers or caretakers. Resulting from these factors, the mothers are an often-overlooked segment of the Marshall community—frequently positioned by others as lacking aspiration outside of raising their families. Arising from group conversations and collaboration in the reading circle, the mothers have collectively worked within the open framework of Arts Org. to simultaneously shape the programming offered to them and their families, while contesting the daily boundaries of being a Latina mother in Marshall.

Within the third space of the New Latino Diaspora and Arts Org., these mothers are reframing discourses of identity and migration. They have taken off time from work to organize and run the Arts Org. summer camp—recruiting the students, organizing the classes, structuring the physical space, and offering their own expertise as dancers, artists, and community members whose lived histories are both relevant and influential. This paper traces the complicated personal negotiations, growth, and positioning of the Arts Org. mothers through both researcher and practitioner perspectives. The analysis is based on interviews and extensive ethnographic observations of Arts Org. as the mothers began to shift their engagement within the organization, thereby opening new spaces for critical reflection and resilient action.

Authors

• Obed Arango, Montgomery County Community College

• Stanton Wortham, University of Pennsylvania