Tina's initial thoughts

Every time I enter the world of Chicana feminism, whether in a class setting or as an activist, I always experience the same sense of confusion. In a way, I always feel inauthentic or unqualified, which I find to be at odds with the way I identify myself. My mother is Bolivian and I spoke Spanish before I spoke English. As I was growing up she worked for a non-profit organization in my hometown of Washington, DC that specialized in Latino advocacy, and she has spent her whole life as part of the movement, especially when it comes to immigration reform. I was brought up to really care about those issues and take pride in my Latina identity, but as I grew older, I began to feel like an outsider. Some of my Latino friends used to tell me I didn’t count because I was only half Bolivian and was raised with privilege, so I therefore didn’t understand the hardship that people so often associate with our communities. I always took pride in my identity, but that criticism has stuck with me and now when I talk about issues like women-of-color feminism and feeling marginalized because of my racial identity, I still find that people don’t take me seriously or I censor myself for fear of feeling inauthentic. So I naturally have some reservations about putting myself and my experiences out there in this project, because I don’t know if I belong with the insiders or the outsiders. I can’t identify as a Chicana because I am not Mexican and have internalized the idea that I don’t count (in a way), but I also know that I have a unique perspective to the inside of the movement through my experiences growing up as a Latina feminist and witnessing my mother’s work. So far it has seemed to me that the only real way to be a Latina feminist and have a tangible movement to back you up is to be part of the Chicana movement and I don’t think it applies to me. So I bring that baggage and confusion with me into this project, and I hope to not only find some clarity, but learn more about the women who have made change in their communities and really understand the passion that drives them to do what they do. I am really excited to dismiss the dominant narratives of the Chicano and feminist movements that exclude women of color and focus, on the most basic and specific level, on the women who are working to bring the concerns of women of color to the foreground. I love that we are focusing on the oral history aspect of this kind of work, because I think that individual experiences and opinions are what fuel people to make change. I think that there is nothing like listening to a person’s story to make you realize that everyone has different experiences that can not necessarily be defined by one movement or ideology. I believe that if people actually listened to one another’s oral histories as the basis for making change instead of labeling one another based on how we assume their lives have gone based on things like race, gender, or class, then equality would be much more tangible, so I’m really excited to be a part of a project that I think could help start us in that direction.