De donde tu eres? Pedagogies of a Puerto Rican Academic

• In Event: 41.034 - College Curriculum at the Crossroads: Women of Color Reflect and Resist

Abstract

When a Puerto Rican, no matter what position in life they occupy, meets another Puerto Rican in the Diaspora, the inevitable question is, de donde tu eres? Where are you from? It is more than just a question on geography, but one of belonging. To where and who do you belong. De donde tu eres? Four simple words that carry a lot of weight. Words that when you are living, writing, thinking, and surviving within the ivory tower, weigh heavily on you. To belong implies a sense of power and ownership, but for a working-class Puerto Rican woman in academia, neither power nor ownership is ever implied and very seldom known. To teach in Predominately White Institutions (PWI’s) is to contemplate and internalize feelings of isolation, not only in the halls of academia and faculty meetings, but in the lack of curriculum interventions that would place us, our ideas, and histories, within larger curriculum settings. Who we are and what we teach is always in question. This chapter seeks to contextualize the role of Puerto Rican women and other women of color’s position both within academia and the institutionalized curriculum present. Borrowing from “This Bridge Called My Back” and Chicana feminism, I speak to what it means to be in the very spaces that have denied us our humanity both as women and as women of color and to continue to serve as a curricular bridge, a terrain that seeks to look to the past to create a better future for not only ourselves, but similarly aid and honor our communities.

Author

• Mirelsie Velazquez, University of Oklahoma