Cindy Escobedo, University of California, Los Angeles “Our stories are more powerful together than they are apart”: A Chicana/Latina Motherscholar-Daughterscholar Educational Birth Story

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

“Our stories are more powerful together than they are apart”: A Chicana/Latina Motherscholar-Daughterscholar Educational Birth Story

Chicana history has come a long way since its inception in the 1960s, yet Chicana historians (Chavez-Garcia 2013; Levins Morales, 1998; Molina, 2013; Perez 1999; Ruiz, 1987, 1998) continue to call for the inclusion of Chicana Feminist approaches in historical analysis. Indeed, a growing body of literature within educational history has effectively documented Chicana/o and Latina/o experiences (Barragan Goetz, 2020; García, 2018; San Miguel 1987, 2001). However, a focus on Chicana/Latina mother-daughter stories of academic resilience and resistance is dismal (Chavez-Garcia, 2013). This study responds to the dearth in scholarship which analyzes the educational life experiences of Chicana/Latina mothers and daughters who experienced post-secondary schooling in the U.S. during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Specifically, this study asks: What might a comparative analysis of Chicana/Latina motherscholar-daughterscholar higher educational trajectories reveal about the raced, gendered, and classed experiences of motherscholars and daughterscholars who attended college together between the 1970s-2020s? By triangulating data sources in the form of 24 pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), 42 handwritten letters, and archival materials, this research provides a snapshot into the lives of eight Chicana/Latina mother-daughter teams who attended college jointly between 1973-2020. Designed as a truncated educational timeline, this Chicana/Latina Motherscholar-Daughterscholar Educational Birth Story reveals that the nineteen women have historically endured such challenges as internalizing and addressing Maternal (Vega, 2019) and Daughteral microaggressions, and not receiving credit for their feminized labor. In negotiating the terrains of motherhood, daughterhood, and scholarhood, the women have historically worked to nurture their spiritual and interpersonal wellbeing.

Author

• Cindy R. Escobedo, University of California - Los Angeles