Unveiling the "Unheard" and the "Unspoken": Leveraging Pláticas and a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Methodology

• In Event: Cultivando Metodologías Feministas: A Chicana/Latina Feminista Praxis in Educational Research

Abstract

Objective: Growing bodies of literature in the fields of Chicana Feminisms and Education have foregrounded the plática methodology highlighting its centrality in (re)centering Chicana/Latina educational experiences and in challenging Eurocentric epistemologies. However, scarce is the scholarship that delineates the limitations that come with employing pláticas when conducting education research; and few are the studies that build into the design of research tangential opportunities for Chicana/Latina women to creatively write about how racism and sexism (among other forms of oppression) have impacted their educational life experiences (Cisneros, 2018). Thus, heeding Gloria Anzaldúa’s (2012) call to cultivate “new theories with new theorizing methods” and responding to Perez’s (1999) call to create safe textual spaces for Chicana/Latina women to communicate the “unheard” and “unspoken,” this manuscript uplifts the plática methodology (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016) and articulates the affordances and limitations that accompany its pairing with a Critical Race Feminist Epistolary Methodology (CRFEM).

Theoretical Framework and Methods: This research couples Chicana/Latina Feminist Theories (CLFT) with Critical Race Theories (CRT) to form a Critical Race Feminista Praxis (CRFP; Delgado Bernal & Alemán, 2017). Theoretical and methodological tools emergent from a CRFP invite discussions and analysis about the intersections of racism and sexism (among other forms of oppressions) and their impact on the educational life experiences of Chicanas/Latinas. The study’s qualitative design employs individual and group pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2017) and a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Methodology. A CRFEM invites Women of Color to challenge the historical legacies and contemporary manifestations of racist and gendered oppressions through the construction of handwritten and digitally constructed letters addressed for (though not necessarily delivered to) relatives, institutional agents, future generations, and the self (Cisneros, 2018).

Data Sources: This paper includes examples of how pláticas and the CRFEM are used in conjunction with one another. Specifically, I draw on data from a study that examines the teaching and learning processes that unfold between 19 Chicana/Latina mothers and daughters who attended college at the same time in the U.S. Southwest. Data for this study presents in the form of 17 individual pláticas, 7 group pláticas, and 42 epistolary writings.

Findings: Findings reveal that pláticas and CRFEM are praxis tools critical for centering the voices and lived experiences of Women of Color. By crafting hand-written letters to one another and reading their writings aloud in a joint plática setting, Chicana/Latina mothers and daughters develop pedagogies of wholeness and resistance. Thus, a multi-method approach to Chicana/Latina oriented research affords opportunities for mothers and daughters to document their painful experiences of educational marginalization, while uplifting “cathartic” narratives of agency, resistance, and healing.

Significance: In moving the Chicana Feminist and Education cannons forward, this scholarship urges researchers to (re)center the Chicana/Latina voice by creatively employing methodologies that honor Women of Color ways of knowing and being. Moreover, this paper positions pláticas and the CRFEM as methodological and pedagogical tools that nurture safe spaces for Chicana/Latina women to archive historically “unheard” and “unspoken” educational life histories.

Author

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