Two Hundred Things: Aiming for Thrivance as Pinay Leaders in a Predominantly White State

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Dimensions of Intersectionality and Education: Challenges of Gender, Race, and Culture Within Institutional Hegemony (Table 3)

Abstract

Objectives
Drawing upon Collins’ definition of intersectionality, which “bundles together ideas from disparate places, times, and perspectives…” (2019, p. 2) as well as thrivance, a theory of moving beyond survival toward success, vibrancy, and healing in today’s world (Baumann, 2023), we focus on the disparate and similar narratives of two Pinay leaders in higher education who migrated from different parts of the United States to resettle at a predominantly White institution. These narratives or kuwentos focus on what it means to be drawn to a place that evokes matrilineal history, and deep connection to water and mountains.
Framework
In this study, we – U.S. and Philippine-born, faculty members and administrators at a mid-sized university– examine intersectionality and leadership in tandem with the place where we live and work.
Method
Based on our mothers’ stories, we examine the intersectional layers that include immigration status, generational, gender, and social class. As the protagonist in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior who developed a list of over two hundred things to tell her mother “so that she would know the true things about [her] and to stop the pain in her throat” (1976, p. 197), so too do we draw from stories related to the themes of tensions with location and place, language as memory, and the strength of Pinay mothers and community.
Results
What does this mean for the “two hundred things” that we believe to be true about us, our leadership, and our thrivance in a place where there are few Pinay that we must cultivate community across diverse Asian-American identities? Thrivance is a move beyond survival toward a strengths-based perspective on our experiences that focuses on healing and positive self-identity. Thrivance compels us to claim and share the stories of our successes and contributions to our communities, our professions, and the world. Our co-storying opened multiple pathways inward for reflection as well as pathways outward toward the larger world that added more dimension and richness to our story/storying.
Significance
We end with tenets related to cultivating thrivance and leadership across a small community of Asian-American identities in a predominantly White state. We insert our stories as a way of promoting deeper understanding of the intersectionality of colonial history, immigration, gender, and social class. In braiding our narratives together, sharing commonalities in our stories and also recognizing what is different, we seek to engage Kapwa with other Peminists - our nanay (mother), titas, ates, mga kaibigan (friends) – to subvert the controlling images (see Patricia Hill Collins) that portray Asian American women including Pinays as subservient, submissive, invisible, exoticized, hypersexualized, and assumed to be a low-wage worker (De Jesus, 2005; Espiritu, 2003). To support Pinay women is to recognize we can forge community across the global Filipinx diaspora. In the proud spirit of Kapwa we see first first-hand how other Pinay sisters work within systems and educational institutions born out of colonization and assimilation toward the greater possibility for our students and ourselves to not only survive but belong and thrive.

Authors

• Cynthia C. Reyes, University of Vermont

• Marie C. Vea, University of Vermont