"Mi Vida": Digital Testimonios as Expressions of Political Voice for Central American Immigrant Youth

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Access and Voice: Multimodal and Digital Learning

Abstract

In this paper, I highlight the stories of newly arrived Central American High School youth as told through Bilingual (Spanish/English) digital testimonios. Testimonios as a research epistemology privilege the youth's narratives as sources of knowledge, and allow the youth to reclaim their authority in telling their own stories. The Central American youth's digital testimonios can be seen as a shared history of struggles that make visible the physical toil of their journeys, the truth of their border crossings, and their enactments of political identities. As a collective, the youth's stories become part of national and global political dialogues.

Author

• Theresa A. Mcginnis, Hofstra University