My First Professors of Educación

• In Event: Family in/as Fieldwork: Challenges and Possibilities of Researching (With) One's Own Family

Abstract

I am the daughter of two first-generation Chicanos and college graduates – political activists throughout the Chicano Movement working in higher education and the arts respectively. I have spent much of my cerebral time since their passing reevaluating what it means to carry their legacy – as an assistant professor –when, as a child, I swore I would never work in higher education. What does it mean to carry their legacy as I work towards tenure knowing that their cancers were partially the result of the institutional sexism and racism still so prevalent alongside many phobias and isms in higher education? What does it mean to know that Latinas/os are dispensable - despite committing over twenty years of your life to higher education – and as some of us know, despite full professor, despite tenure. What does it mean to have grown up witnessing - such brave battles – such beautiful art . . . I am reminded of the floricantos of my childhood. Our home FILLED with Chicano poets, Activists, Academics . . . and Assholes. What do I do with witnessing YEARS of violent betrayals among and between our gente? What do I do with the lines that we continuously redraw to redefine who is Chicana and who is not? I hold stories that are taboo and still, my feminist upbringing reminds me that this story must be told if we are to approach higher education differently. This manuscript is an excavation of the epistemologies that have made me who I am.

Author

• Rebeca Burciaga, San Jose State U