Intertwining Shared and Singular Narratives as First-Gen, Latinx Media-Makers

• In Event: Telling Our Own Stories, Together: Singularity and Solidarity in Literacy Collectives

Abstract

Objectives:
Despite growing and vital contributions of first-gen, Latinx youth to college campuses, their stories are often underrepresented in academic and media representations of the U.S. college-going experience (Hurtado, Ramirez, & Cho, 2018). This study shares the story of a literacy collective of first-gen, Latinx youth who worked together to produce a YouTube series documenting their transition to college, focusing on how participants navigated shared and unique facets of their identities through collaborative media-making.

Theoretical Framework:
I frame this inquiry in Latina feminist phenomenology (Ortega, 2016), that draws on the work of Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) and María Lugones (1987) to theorize the multiplicity of identity as emergent from everyday border-crossing / ‘world’-traveling experiences. I braid this understanding of identity with a critical, socially-situated approach to multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996) and transliteracies (Stornaiuolo, et al., 2016) that frames literacies as multiple, mobile, and inextricable from socio-cultural systems of power (Street, 1984; Fairclough, 1989).

Methods:
I employed participatory media-making methods (Gubrium & Harper, 2013; Barley & Russell, 2019; Kortegast et al., 2019) in a year-long ethnographic case study (Yin, 2014) documenting the collaborative literacy practices of nine first-gen Latinx youth who met weekly to create a YouTube series.

Data Sources:
Data sources included 300+ pages of field notes, 25+ hours of recordings of group sessions, four interviews with each participant, text and video messages, and fifteen student-produced YouTube videos.

Results:
Data analysis revealed students’ multiple intertwining goals for participating in the collective: to find support and express solidarity with other first-gen, Latinx students during the transition-to-college process and to produce media that would be relatable to other students while showing multiple perspectives. Youth expressed the need to create media about their experiences because “sometimes I feel like I’m alone doing this,” and also emphasized the need to “give more of the [personal] narrative aspect to humanize really big issues.” This focus on individual narratives within a collective experience meant highlighting differences in their everyday experiences, gender identities, and families’ immigration histories and countries of origin (El Salvador, Bolivia, Peru). They used media in innovative ways to blend first-person, singular perspectives within a collective ‘we,’ and made room for both consensus building and individual choice within the collaboration process. Analysis also revealed the impact of my own role within the collective, as I critically interrogated and frequently voiced my own goals and identity as a non-Latinx, adult researcher who convened, facilitated, and studied the students’ media-making processes. Often, we returned to goal-setting conversations, and articulating individual and collective desires became a touchstone guiding the format of the series and our collaboration. Ultimately, analysis showed how students expressed a collective goal of dismantling monolithic presentations of Latinx students by showing individual paths for navigating shared experience.

Significance:
The presentation offers insight into how literacy collectives can disrupt both dominant and monolithic representations through balancing shared and individual goals and identities. It emphasizes that researchers must also critically consider how their own identity and motivations shape the dynamics and products of literacy collectives.

Authors

• Bethany Monea, University of Pennsylvania

• Joselyn Andrade, George Mason University

• Stephanie Delgadillo-C., University of Virginia

• Perla Gonzalez, Northern Virginia Community College

• Christina Peguero, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Mikaela Pozo, George Mason University