Sonic Borderland Literacies: Critical and Affective Meaning-Making Possibilities of Intimate and Public Soundscapes

• In Event: Decomposing Whiteness, Indigenous Soil, Intimacies, and Stolen Childhoods

Abstract

This paper presents sonic borderland literacies expressed by young adult bilingual, Latinx students who used sound and listening as modes of intervention to renegotiate borders that marginalize diverse narratives. Drawing from a qualitative study using Chicana feminisms, sound studies, and critical embodied/digital literacies, I share how these students explored fluid, linguistic practices and personal/community soundscapes to rework senses, memories, and space into complex, multimodal narratives. Using transfrontera compass (Vargas, 2012) as a conceptual analytic, I show how their sonic literacies crossed intimate and public borders, addressing topics such as gentrification, migration, love, and quietness. Exploring how inaudible histories, aesthetics, and lived experiences can emerge from border-crossing ways of knowing, engages desire-based and community-engaged inquiries with deeply affective possibilities.

Author

• Cecilia Angélica Valenzuela, University of San Diego