Latina testimonios: a reflexive, critical analysis of a ‘Latina space’ at a predominantly White campus

Abstract

Judith Flores and Silvia Garcia (University of Utah) draw from the work of their mentor, Rina Benmayor and Telling to live: Latina feminist testimonios to establish an organization for Latinas who are staff, faculty, students, alumni, and community members at a predominantly White institution (PWI). Critical race feminism (CRF), Latina/o critical theory (LatCrit), and foundational work from US Third World feminists, informed the need to create a space where Latinas could discuss issues such as body image, language, sexual orientation, how to navigate academia, mentorship, genealogy, epistemologies, immigration status, and educational backgrounds among others. Flores and Garcia write about the need for the formation of a ‘Latina space’. They evaluate the impact of this space where experiential knowledge is fostered and nurtured. The authors accentuate on the benefits and areas for improvement to strengthen the Latinas Telling Testimonios (LTT) group as it evolves in its third year. Flores and Garcia argue that when students and scholars of color are the minority on PWIs, a way of coping with issues of alienation and isolation is by ‘testifying’, bearing witness and telling their testimonios in order to succeed at a predominantly White campus, especially as women of color.

Keywords:

• Testimonios student groups
• Chicanas/Latinas on predominantly White campuses
• Critical Race Feminism
• LatCrit
• Chicana/Latina feminist theory
• digital stories

Notes

1. We use the term Latina to be more inclusive of our diversity in self‐identification. Latina is inclusive and representative of the diversity among and across our Latinidades (women who come from Latin American countries and from Latin‐American ancestry).

2. Latinidad describes ‘any person currently living in the US of Spanish‐speaking heritage from more than 30 Caribbean and Latin American countries’ (Molina Guzmán and Valdivia 2004, 207). Latinidades expands beyond ‘nationality and ethnicity’ to include ‘cultural experiences and political commitments’ and acknowledge differences across race, class, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, ‘regional variations’, and mixed cultural heritage (The Latina Feminist Group 2001, 11).

3. Dr Rina Benmayor teaches oral history, Latina life stories and testimonio, travel narratives, and other courses in Latina/o and Hispanic literature and culture at California State University, Monterey Bay. She actively integrates new media in teaching, including digital storytelling.

4. Award‐winning author and professor Norma E. Cantú is professor of English and US Latina/o Literature at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Her scholarly interests include folklore, Chicana literature, and borderlands studies.

5. We have had ongoing dialogue on different ways of addressing the silence, pain, and struggle to name and remember suffering that we have suppressed. We refer to this as a messy process because even though we are Latinas we are very different, and these differences produce a variety of feelings and emotions that we often do not address. However, we understand that this process is critical to our praxis.

6. The idea to form a space for Latinas to discuss and share about our experiences at a PWI came from a focus group conducted by Dr Lynette Danley and Silvia Garcia in Summer 2005.

7. Pocha and agringada are used interchangeably to mean that a Latina is an Americanized woman or in colloquial terms ‘Whitewashed’ mostly for her lack in Spanish language knowledge. This term has been embraced and reclaimed by Chicanas in our group to shed light on their borderland experiences.