(Re)membering and (Re)imagining: A Collective Autoethnography of Transnational MotherScholars Raising Bi/Multilingual Children

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating Identity, Culture and Heritage Languages in Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Transnational MotherScholars face discrepancies between their scholarship and their children's experiences in society. This year-long collective autoethnographic study by four MotherScholars from Brazil, China, and South Korea, guided by scholarship on (re)membering and transnationalism, centers on how we (re)member our racialized and gendered transnational experiences to (un)forget and (re)imagine. Findings highlight three themes: (re)membering our childhoods and im/migration experiences to disrupt our socialization and finding alternative ways to mother radically; challenging oppressive narratives and ideologies in the U.S.; and cultivating transnational, translingual, and multiracial “norms” and experiences for our children. Our collective insights aim to nuance the educational injustices impacting transnational and multiracial children and reimagine a more equitable future for all children.

Authors

• Mariana Lima Becker, University of Georgia

• Xiaochen Du, Independent Scholar

• Koeun Park, University of Hawai'i - West O'ahu

• Tairan Qiu, Stanford University