Papelitos Guardados Journaling: A Critical Race Tool for Uncovering Racism and Desahogando in Higher Education

• In Event: Illuminating Truth From the Margins: Using Critical Race Methodologies to Conduct Humanizing Research

Abstract

Objectives: Rooted in critical race testimonio methodology and the tradition of recovering papelitos guardados, this paper explores how 15 Chicana/Latina undergraduates engaged in papelitos guardados journaling to document their embodied, every day experiences navigating race and racism in higher education. This paper provides insight into how the Chicana/Latina undergraduates and researcher engaged in papelitos guardados journaling to document and bring to light their experiences. Additionally, this paper explores how papelitos guardados journaling can contribute to situating and gathering insight into the everyday, intimate, embodied experience of race and racism within higher education.
Theoretical Framework: Papelitos guardados journaling is situated within critical race feminista methodologies and methods that braids together critical race (CRT), Latina/o critical race (LatCrit), and Chicana/Latina feminist thought and traditions (Delgado Bernal et al., 2018). The current analysis is intended to identify how papelitos guardados journaling can serve as a tool for critical race data collection to uncover race and racism in the experiences of Chicana/Latina undergraduates. CRT in education considers how race and racism, endemic to U.S. society and institutions, underlie the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Students of Color (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2000).
Methods & Methodology: Critical race testimonio methodology engage the act and process of recovering and centering papelitos guardados (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012; Pérez Huber, 2009; Urrieta & Villenas, 2013) the “protected documents, guarded roles, stored papers, conserved roles, safe papers, secret roles, hidden papers, safe roles, preserved documents, protected roles” (The Latina Feminist Group, 2001, p. 1). This paper draws from an analysis of papelitos guardados journaling with 15 Chicana/Latina undergraduate testimoniadoras. Each student completed 12-15 papelitos guardados entries during the year of data collection in a medium of their choice. As the researcher, I also engaged in papelitos guardados journaling, documenting my experiences in my doctoral program.
Findings: There are four central components of this method that facilitate attending to experiences of race and racism underlying their higher education experience. First, papelitos guardados journaling considers the everyday experience (present and past) as a legitimate and powerful point of entry for uncovering how Chicana/Latina undergraduates face and confront marginalities within higher education. Second, this tool shifts power to the testimoniadoras to document what they believe, and feel is pertinent to their higher education experiences within a time, manner, and medium (written, typed, audio recorded) of their choosing. Third, reciprocity in papelitos guardados journal writing between the student testimoniadoras and researcher create confianza that facilitates sharing the intimate, vulnerable, and truths. Lastly, this method engages possibilities to desahogar, to vent and undrown oneself, through the sharing, reflecting, and documenting of one’s lived experiences.
Significance: This paper situates papelitos guardados journaling as a tool for the recovery and centering of the hidden and unspoken experiences of race and racism in the United States. Additionally, this paper offers papelitos guardados journaling as a tool for data collection that is intended to challenge hegemonic research paradigms and methods with Chicana/Latina undergraduates as co-constructors and experts of their own lived realities.

Author

• Brianna R. Ramirez, University of California - San Diego
  Presenting Author