Existing in the Borderlands: A Duoethnography on Bilingualism and Identity

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Authoring the Self and Others (Table 21)

Abstract

This paper draws on Gloria Anzaldua’s borderlands theory to explore the relationship between language and identity. Through a duoethnography between a Bosnian-American woman who was a child refugee and a mixed-race woman, a child of a Mexican mother and a Black father, we engage with racial, cultural, socio-political, and gender-related experiences of navigating dominant U.S. culture. Our goal is to shed light on how multilingual women make sense of their identity and contribute to the imagining of educational spaces free of injustice.

Authors

• Brittnie Ferguson, Chapman University

• Nidzara Pecenkovic, Chapman University