(Re)Storying Lives: Immigrant Mothers Mending Severed Histories for Their Children

• In Event: Families and Communities: The Role of Liberatory Literacy Practices in (Re)Storying Lives

Abstract

This paper reports on a research project that explored the following question: How do immigrant mothers tell their stories about their native lands and cultures to their children who were born in the United States so that there is a greater possibility for continuity of their histories? Utilizing case-study methodology (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) and sociocultural theoretical lenses (Vygotsky, 1978), I conducted and analyzed a series of 4 home engagements with each of the 10 participating immigrant mothers who had emigrated to the U.S. as an adult and their respective children who were U.S.born and around the age of 5. During the first home engagement, I conducted a comprehensive open-ended interview with the mothers in order to capture their histories before immigration. The second home engagement entailed interviewing the children regarding what they knew about their mothers’ histories in native land. During the third home engagement the mothers and children co-authored a text and together selected photographs from the mother’s family picture albums (pre-immigration) and searched the internet for images depicting the mother’s native land. On the final home engagement mothers and children utilized the co-authored text and selected photographs and images to compose a digital story about the mother’s native land and culture.
Findings indicated that the process of creating digital stories was helpful to illuminate ways that the mother’s native land experiences became re-told and re-contextualized for her children in order to transcend distances, overcome disconnects, as well as to bridge distinct geographical locations and sociocultural spaces (i.e., mother’s homeland and U.S.). The children’s narratives exposed the salient aspects of the mother’s histories (i.e., what was often repeated, what sociocultural values were a source of pride). In addition, it also became clear that the process of creating the digital stories also shed light on the ways by which immigrant mothers exercised authority by re-creating their homeland context for their children--she was the one who knew best. This reclaiming of authority emerged as a clear source of empowerment for the mothers. Lastly, findings made evident that the re-creation of the mothers’ homeland contexts so that their children could in some way experience them, entailed a deliberate, purposeful, and extraordinary effort on the part of all of the mothers I interviewed.

Author

• Ana Christina da Silva Iddings, Vanderbilt University