The Necessity of Pláticas entre Familia: Uncovering Mother-Daughter Generational Truths and Healing

• In Event: Co-Constructing Truth(s) With Latinx Research Collaborators Through the Chicana/Latina Feminist Methodology of Pláticas

Abstract

Objectives: This paper uncovers and validates knowledge possessed by historically marginalized women. Through the methodology of plática, the participant shared and co-constructed traditionally ignored truths with the researcher by examining the matriarchs in her life, her family experiences, and her life trajectory. As a latent function, the participant also exposes interlocking systems of oppression that have deeply impacted the lives of the marginalized women introduced in this plática. The plática methodology provides the participant and the researcher the opportunity for healing and validation, additional principles of plática methodology.

Theoretical Framework: This paper draws on Chicana feminist epistemologies (Delgado Bernal, 1998), which aim to give voice to Women of Color. This paper also employs Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Yosso, 2005) and Latina/o/x Critical Theory (LatCrit) (Delgado Bernal, 2002; Yosso, 2005). CRT centers on racism, focuses on lived experiences, challenges dominant ideologies, challenges ahistoricism, and is committed to social justice. In addition to CRT’s foci, LatCrit centers on immigration, language, phenotype, and ethnicity. These theoretical frameworks were crucial to the study because all their principles were recurring throughout the implementation of pláticas.

Methods: This paper employs Chicana/Latina feminist plática methodology (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016; Guajardo & Guajardo, 2013) as a decolonizing methodology (Calderon et al., 2012) that gives agency to traditionally underrepresented women. I conducted three pláticas with my mother where we discussed her grandmothers, her mother, her daughters, and herself. These pláticas examined the women in the family for over a century.

Findings: The findings that emerged from these pláticas were conceptualizations of race in Mexico and the United States, where colorism and the concept of racial passing were found. Patriarchy as an internalized and oppressive system also emerged as the women discussed investing and complying with gendered roles. The women discussed in these pláticas developed senses of identity connected to the time they lived in, their geographic locations, perceived obligations, and their social statuses. Motherhood and migration also emerged as crucial factors in understanding underrepresented womanhood. Motherhood was examined as the process of giving birth to children, childrearing, and choices surrounding their statuses in relationships with men. Both internal and international migration shaped the opportunities these women obtained and the limitations they experienced throughout their lives. However, women also obtained different dimensions of empowerment through their actions and their positions within their families. Lastly, both participant and researcher also obtained healing and uncovered family truths through the plática sessions.

Significance: The outcomes of this paper were achieved through the co-construction of knowledge through continuous inquiry and interpretations by both participant and researcher. Utilizing plática methodology gives voice to marginalized communities and is a great step forward to empowering Communities of Color. In this study, the pláticas humanized and centered on a family dynamic of Latina women that would otherwise be forgotten. Plática uncovers alternative realities and centers on truths and knowledges that have been historically invalidated in educational research.

Author

• Samantha Prado Robledo, University of California - San Diego
  Presenting Author