Soy Un Amasamiento: A Critical Self-Narrative on Latina Identity Development in the United States

• In Event: Critical Narrative Methodologies as Sites for Challenging, Negotiating, and Reclaiming Bicultural Identities

Abstract

Given the rapid growth of the Latinx population in the United States and the call for unity amongst the Latinx community in various public spheres, understanding how individuals come to see themselves as part of this larger community is an essential step in strengthening the influence of the Latinx community in the United States. Additionally, the growth in the Latinx population overall is currently fueled by the growth in Latinx births in the United State instead of an influx of immigration from Latin America (Krogstad & Fry, 2014). The Latinx children in our classrooms will increasingly be children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants instead of immigrants themselves- sparking a rise in the number of individuals who will navigate two worlds in a society that has yet to fully embrace a pluralist cultural identity.

Therefore, the purpose of this critical self-narrative study is to understand the author’s own identity development as a Latina in the United States with the intent of furthering the research on Latina identity past the who to the how. Grounded in Latino Critical Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) and Latina Feminist Epistemologies (Alarcón, 1990; Anzaldúa, 1999; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2002), this self-narrative explores the identity development of a child of Salvadoran immigrants. It specifically aims to understand how the author came to identify as Latina following a period of self-exclusion from this label. Using audio-recorded and transcribed testimonios collected over a semester (Anzaldúa, 2002; Delgado-Bernal et al., 2009; Flores Carmona, 2010; Latina Feminist Group 2001; Perez Huber, 2009), the author explores how her identity developed through four major stages of her life: high school, undergraduate school, the move from Florida to New York City, and becoming a mother.

Through holistic-content analysis and holistic-structural analysis (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998), the author details three emerging findings related to her identity development: 1) The relevance of a feeling of otherness across various stages of her life in response to the popular depiction of Latinx communities in the United States as well as the messages she received from within the Latinx community, 2) Her identity development has been nonlinear while continuous in ways that highlight the necessity to continue to provide counterstories/narratives to the popular, homogenized understandings of Latina identity in society and sometimes also in research, and 3) The author’s understanding of active resistance to marginalization was concentrated in day-to-day interactions with individuals despite having a larger system-framing her research and academic interests.

These findings, and the use of critical narrative analysis as a means of understanding identity development, offer insights into the experiences of individuals who have lived in between mainstream America and their parents’ cultural traditions/expectations since they were children and who continue to navigate their identity. These insights have implications for public policy generally and education policy specifically.

Author

• Diana K Cordova-Cobo, Teachers College, Columbia University