Missing Chromosomes, Found Identity: Difficult Knowledge, Narrative Research and the Intersectional Lived Curriculum of Turner Syndrome

• In Event: Unforgetting Difficult Knowledge and Constructing Possibilities through Narrative Research

Abstract

This paper draws from narrative data regarding my educational experiences as a Latina with Turner Syndrome from my first day in elementary school to my current life as a doctoral student emphasizing and exploring the intersectionality among gender, race, and disability. As a process of analysis and interpretation, I reconstruct this lived curriculum as non-linear narrative timeline highlighting significant events with a focus on the intersectionality of narratives. This paper explores how cultural constructions of disability along with gendered cultural constructions regarding what it means to be a Latina shape my perception of Turner Syndrome as a disability and my own identity as a woman, specifically in regards to the difficult knowledges of infertility, disability and other knowledges education wants to put elsewhere.

Author

• Ivana Maldanado, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley