Ramiro Alvarez, reflection #1

“brown boys” by florentino diaz

For much, if not all of my life, I have felt sensitive. I have felt and “acted” sensitive: tearing up through any emotion, even happy ones, howling after any scrape, cut, or bruise, and spending too much time alone with my mother. Of course, “sensitive” was not the word the other boys were flinging at me. Sensitive was a word reserved for my mother. Sensible, tierno, delicado. And while she definitely worried about her sensitive son, especially when she wondered about what kind of man I would grow up to be, it seldom bothered her and she never hesitated to listen to me cry, even now at twenty-three. 

Sensitive is not a fun place to life your life out of at times. Sensitive, in a world that seems to spin on aggression and competition, keeps you lonely, it keeps you anxious, and it keeps you vigilant—of your behaviors, your words, your reactions, and your thoughts. Layering onto that natural inclination to surveil myself harder came homophobia, racism, and machismo. Growing up brown, effeminate, and queer brought the harsh magnifying glass right above my most tender parts and eventually, I trained my own mind to second-guess itself, to belittle itself, and to never be content with where I am, but instead to draw happiness from the possibilities of what I could become. To no surprise I became clinically depressed.

I was lucky enough to enter college around such an exploratory age—my late teens and early twenties, something many people take for granted. It is at this university where I began to reconcile my need to express my sensitivity with my desires to provide myself a career path. Naturally, I was drawn to social movements. Finally, I was living in a reality that was supposed to validate my struggles as struggles beyond things I needed to “fix” about myself. Finally, the issue existed outside of me. Finally, there was space for me to be disappointed by life, shocked by violence, and left in tears by the atrocities I could not seem to stop focusing on. Finally, my set of skills: communicating hurt, holding people accountable to their passive/micro aggressions, and doing the emotional labor of others seemed like it was going to pay off big time; I was going to be a social worker! Or something…

"untitled" by patricia bordallo dibildox and florentino diaz

One of those early and very formative places was within the ideological terrains of Chicanismo. While it seemed a generational thing I could not fully sync with, I noticed emerging subgroups within the movement calling themselves Xican@s, Chicanxs, and even Xicanxs that spoke to a more present-day experience of Mexican American-ness that took time to look at gender, gender expression, diversity of sexualities, and bodies. But the “new” Xicanx identity was not very accessible. There simply was not enough writing or art being shared around that dealt with these “denser” topics as they intersected with race and nation. The works of these young Xicanxs was kept archived not across paper, but across slam poetry performances, blogs, art across our bodies in the forms of tattoos and piercings, within relationships, in dance steps, and in dreams.

Fortunately, while in school I was able to learn from the more classic identity: Chicano, as it stood in the sixties and seventies. Now research savvy, I dove deep into the movement’s history and found an eerie parallel to my own internal conflict. But before that, I felt “wrong” again. For such a long time after initially connecting myself to the political alignment of the Chicano, I was hyper-surveilling myself again. I was host to thoughts that felt less rooted to me and more connected to an external understanding I absolutely had to internalize and had no role in creating, much like masculinity.

All my life older men had made me feel ashamed for trying to balance and reconcile my emotions and my logic. Older men had chastised me for not dwelling on values like tirelessness, toughness, sacrifice, order, and individualism (ego) exclusively. My hopes to be all those things and also be fragile, whole, chaotic, communal, and compassionate were not allowed in masculinity. This did not change among the writings, histories, and narratives of the popularized Chicano movement. Again, I found myself in a space full of men, this time with my peers and some elders that romanticized militancy, legal rights, and logic to pursue their idea of liberation.

It was not until I stumbled across intersectionalism that I began to see that eerie parallel I mentioned early. Intersectionality, and by extension the works of legendary and contemporary radical poets and feminists of color, often queer Black women, gave me a new insight into myself that I am eternally grateful for. I began to believe in an authentic self. I began to understand the bigger picture of what it means to be Ramiro and in that overwhelming experience, I noticed the complexity of the self, but also how the self is a mirror or microcosm of social movements. It became apparent that mining my past for insight and making peace with said past would help me return to a life that takes place in the moment. After all, for me, anxiety has never been anything but an obsessive fixation on the future with shame and guilt shooting up from the past, barring me from sacredness of the moment.

Just like that, “Chicano” became “Ramiro”. I saw the movement much how I saw myself: an amazing force thirsty for freedom, but with skills unbalanced and emotional creativity undeveloped. That lack of balance came from self-sabotage. It came from refusing to listen to the ways my logic and emotions naturally reconciled themselves within me, from refusing to be patient, from refusing to be my complete self in everything that I do, and from refusing to be intuitive. But it did not always feel like self-sabotage because it was rewarded so often. I experience a much easier life, filled with far more opportunities for me to be remembered as "important", all because I man. In other words, because the Chicano movement’s foundation was created almost exclusively by men as a result of their fear for all things feminine within themselves (and by projection, women), the movement fell into fragility so quickly after its prime as a result of sabotage, a lot like myself in later college years. 

Author bell hooks refers to this self-sabotage psychic self-mutilation. “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”

Like all people working against the system, movements also fall into states of fragility and depression. But when faced with fragility, the best thing one can do is to feel it through and through. To learn from it. To embrace this cyclical flow between abundance and scarcity of energy, as is the flow of the seasons, as is the flow of self-care. But without any voice to lead that healing, without anyone to validate that importance of breaking before rebuilding again (to winter and then spring), the movements became a massive vehicle of community harm, notably at the expense of women. However, it was not that those experts on healing, wholeness, and transgression were not there, it is that they were not welcome. Queer men, women in general, non-binary people, Black Chicanos, or anyone that wanted to focus on the present issues (sexism included) were preferably unheard and excluded from the movement that was too deep into its long-term goals. So, the Chicano body could not hear itself because it artificially segmented itself instead of doing the hard work it takes to deal with everything the body needs. In the case of Chicanismo, sexism and sexual pleasure were ignored despite being vital to the true collective, among other issues.

Professor Cotera’s project then becomes a metaphor for therapy in my eyes. I see the work of digital archives as something like giving one’s self therapy through honesty. But, instead of individual experiences, the pieces we must reassemble for this act of macro self care are whole stories of people, as people, not events, represent and carry the collective memory of the Chicano movement. In collecting these incredibly necessary oral histories we are beginning to make peace with our past as Chicanos. We are learning that time is in fact not linear, and that the past has as much to be planned for as the future, for there is no chance at living a liberated tomorrow without coming back to the present and being content—being happy, well nourished, and critical Chicanos before objects of activism.

I enrolled in professor Cotera’s class to learn more about my process and myself, as much of it is still extremely confusing. I enrolled because Cotera is providing a safe and effective model for us to practice history reunification, reconciliation between the emotional and logical, a balance that does not live in camps of masculine and feminine, but inside each of us, all the time. I enrolled to thrive as sensitive, to embrace my uniqueness and reorient myself into the true Chicano movement, which I believe is more accurately the Chicana movement. 

In healing the Chicano movement, in healing myself, I hope to discover the true nature of the Chicano movement and its sensitive side. Which, with each passing day of this class, seems that it was clearly carried on the backs of gender and sexual minorities. We are essentially redefining Chicano by bringing the movement closer to its roots through memory recollection. We are not comparing, “bettering”, or perfecting anything. We are simply trying to be authentic in how we heal from the trauma we inflected on ourselves, which is a trauma often learned outside ourselves and through the toxic systems of sexism, racism, and imperialism. And that is a lesson that will extend far beyond the classroom. This is the lesson of recovery.

“these great divisions hurt me but i’ll find home again” by florentino diaz

Lizette Esquivel Reflection #1

What the H is Chicana Feminism?

 I was immediately drawn to this course because I realized that I know close to nothing about Chicana Feminism. I believe that as a Mexican American Woman, I seek to understand and learn about my people's history within this country. Unfortunately its always obvious, that the history that is deeply imbedded with in our society is one that tells the story of the White mans journey through time. We rarely ever hear about what the Mexicans journey was like, what our experiences were and further we almost never hear what the Mexican Women's experiences were like. I have always been bothered by my lack of knowledge on the topic. 
I  know that this class will grant me the opportunity to not only learn about our history as Chicanas and the activism we participated in, but it will also grant me the opportunity to learn about the steps that the woman before me have taken to empower our community and combat the social injustices that still remain today so that I may be able to follow within their footsteps.
It is a goal of mine to learn as much as possible through  this amazing opportunity that hits extremely close to home. I am beyond ecstatic to begin on our journey of discovering our uncovered history, in a sense. I feel that it will be a very impactful and empowering experience for me to be able to hear first hand the amazing things the Chicanas before me were able to achieve. 
I currently, however, have zero exposure to archiving and cataloging so I am a bit skepitical about what the process is going to look like, but I am also very excited to learn new skills that undoubtedly will assist me in future endeavors. Overall I am mostly excited to learn the history of the women whose lives have impacted my own in various ways, but most  importantly, I am excited to learn about the legacies that the great women before me have laid in my path.

Taylor Davidson Reflection 1

About two weeks before classes started, I made some changes to my schedule and needed to find another Women’s Studies class. Originally, I enrolled in this class because it satisfies the practicum and gender, culture, and representation requirements for the Women’s Studies major. It also counts as a 400 level cognate toward the Spanish major. I immediately heard praise for Professor Cotera from both advisors and friends, and I looked forward to taking the class even though I wasn’t sure exactly what it would be about.  At the time, I wasn’t even sure what an oral history was or what this project entailed. Consequently, the first day of class left me a little overwhelmed. I realized I had very little knowledge of the Chicana feminist movement, and the responsibility of accurately and professionally portraying each interviewee’s life was quite daunting. However, our small class set-up will allow us to work together, learning from and teaching each other, during each step of the interview and archiving processes.

I am most apprehensive about the filming aspect of this project. I have very little experience in the digital media realm. I have not spent much time blogging or contributing to a website, and I’m sure that I have never worked with our recording equipment before despite taking a broadcasting class in high school. Because of this, I am very excited to learn these skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise sought out.

Prior to this course, I had never even thought about how archiving people’s personal belongings can contribute to the historical narrative of our country at large. In elementary, middle, and high school, any history I learned came from a textbook, and I always took that perspective of history to be the truth. It wasn’t until college that I learned to really question the one-sided summaries of our country’s past that I had previously learned. I realized how important it is to look at the many sides of history, being sure to include the groups that are often left out. This class has already shown me how valuable oral histories can be in creating this bigger picture of history.

I am also excited to learn about feminism from a Latina perspective. It is embarrassing to admit that as a white woman and feminist, I have not spent a lot of time thinking about how women of color or Latina women, specifically, have had very different experiences than me and faced additional oppression. I have been working on acknowledging my privilege and thinking more about societal factors that may not affect me but drastically shape the experiences of others. I have taken some classes that discuss intersectionality and focus on the prominent writings of feminist women of color, but I believe this experience will give me so much more insight into the world of feminism as a whole. I am excited to fill the gaps in my knowledge about both the civil rights and women’s rights movements during this time. Furthermore, I look forward to connecting these women’s personal experiences with a broader history that is often overshadowed by white feminism in the classroom and in the media.

Shirley Rivas, Reflection 1

Chicanas Through my Lens

            When I first considered adding this course, I was quite intimidated by the basic course description- Chicana? Oral history? I have taken quite a few Women’s Studies courses here at the University of Michigan, but I am quite embarrassed to say that I have no “formal” educational background on any type of Latin@ studies, and everything I know about history has been bestowed upon me by the average, American K-12 public school system. I believe what brought me to overcome any apprehension I had was the sheer intersectional framework of the course. Up until this point, I have taken many Women’s Studies course where thinking intersectionally is urged, but yet, it’s not the primary focus of the course. This idea that I may get to learn more about feminism through a lens I have yet to explore convinced me to bite the bullet and be part of this historical journey.

            Entering the field of the Chicana movement is both daunting and exciting. Daunting because although I identify as Latin@, this is a movement that has Mexican-Americans at its center and I believe I have limited personal experience with what it means to be part of this culturally rich group. Although in my own past, I have experienced people clumping up all Latin@’s into one big group, I am aware that my mixture of a American, Peruvian, and El Salvadorian experience is different in many ways to the Mexican-American’s experience here in the United States. I am excited, however, because in the past, I have let this division in understanding distance myself from learning more about these types of movements. I am eager to allow myself to understand a different version of what it means to be Latin@ in the United States in the context of the Chicana movement.

            As far as archiving and history goes, I never really gave much though to what it means to archive or what it means to access an archive. Most archives have been so readily available to me, that I have truly been blinded by my privilege as a student here at this university. Although it may seem obvious that I have access to information that some may not even know exists, I am truly stunned by the thought that some people may never learn about certain histories. The reason may be that these histories are yet to exist in an easily accessible way or that some people just do not have the privilege to access these histories even if they wanted to. That’s what makes the project so amazing; it is almost unbelievable to think that we are making unknown histories known, archived, and then available to the worldwide web. Although I am not personally the object of focus in these projects, I will still be playing an integral role because these women are relying on the students of this course to make their experiences known and to do their experiences justice. My biggest hope is that the women we interview and that we help digitally upload their archives will get a great deal out of this experience. At the end of the day, I want to keep these women at the center of this project and I can only hope that they are truly happy with the end results of our labor.

Blake Ebright Reflection #1

After putting together my class schedule and talking to Donna, we decided I could analyze my honors thesis (in Psychology) under a feminist perspective to fulfill my practicum requirement. Some months into the summer, however, Donna sent an email to the Women’s Studies undergraduates suggesting we look into this course. I researched it and noticed that Professor Cotera would be teaching (my professor from Intro to Women’s Studies). I really enjoyed the structure of that class and enjoyed how interesting the insights were that Verónica (my GSI) and Professor Cotera offered. I do not mean to sound like a complete sycophant, but I immediately dropped my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon class to enroll in this one!

In Feminist Thought, we are currently reading Foucault and a book titled Intersectionality. In these two readings, the idea of knowledge and power are addressed, and both specifically address the practice of oral history as a marginalized form of knowledge. This marginalization is perpetuated by the fact that the institutions (grant providers and the universities themselves) use their power to endorse the knowledge-producing intellectuals that are contributing to traditional fields of theory (math, physics, etc.) and the knowledge production begotten of their endorsement further legitimizes their power to endorse. I want to do my part in using what little power I have to endorse marginalized forms of knowledge production, especially considering that I will eventually be forced to be a benefactor of the marginalization (I am applying to graduate schools this semester and plan on going into academia). So, in a manner of speaking, I feel guilty and plan to make my peace by contributing.

A few semesters ago, I took a Psychology and Women’s Studies cross-listed course with Abby Stewart about Global Feminisms. The Global Feminisms Project is a huge archive of oral histories about women in activism and scholarship. There are over 50 interviews on the site of women from India, Nicaragua, Poland, China, the United States, and Mexico (they are going to add interviews from Brazil soon). With the exception of the single Mexican-American feminist interviewed for the Global Feminisms Project, I know little about Chicana feminism, considering Marta Ojeda was focused on labor law and likely doesn’t consider herself a Chicana (she was schooled only briefly in Florida). Similarly, I would say I have little to no experience with archives because I simply studied the GFP, I did not contribute to it. Also important to note, is that GFP calls their site an archive, but it has no archival component (e.g. a letter from the Minister of Communications of the Brown Berets quitting along with the rest of the women) past the streaming video of the interview itself.

As of now, I would say that I come in knowing what an oral history project looks like and how much work goes into an interview – how difficult it is to prepare, schedule, adapt, etc. I have a scary and simultaneously exciting lack of knowledge of the Chicanas we are interviewing. I want so much to know their personal stories, trials, tribulations, and triumphs in the feminist community, Chicana community, and local community. I hope to be further inspired and prepared to make my own oral history project, perhaps related to the local LGBTQ community. My biggest fear, then, would be to be so immensely inspired and not have the time or resources to follow through – my apologies for making you suffer through that clichéd answer!

Marie Dillivan Reflection #1

         I made the decision to sign up for this class last year when I met with my advisor for my majors, Spanish and Latina/o Studies, because it would count for a requirement for my Latina/o Studies major and because my advisor highly recommended Professor Cotera. I think at first, on paper, this class can look kind of intimidating because it is not what we are normally used to seeing in a class description. I’m excited to take this class for many reasons and I think there is a lot that I can learn through this experience. Initially, I have a decent amount of experience learning and reading about the Chicano movement. I’m not an expert on the movement, but I have discussed it in a few classes here and have more exposure to it than the average student. However, I have zero experience learning about the feminist movement, so what I’m really excited to get from this class is a new perspective on the Chicano movement through the lens of its overlap with the feminist movement. I also hope to gain more understanding of these movements as they were present in the Midwest since this is where I have lived my whole life, and it’s an area that is not often referenced in discussions of Latina/o Studies since the Southwest is usually the focus.

            My first thoughts on all of these topics are that it’s very interesting that we are going to be creating a history for someone who otherwise wouldn’t be present in archives or history itself. It’s incredible that with modern technology we can do this fairly easily and make the stories of these women accessible to people all over the world in a way that couldn’t have been done at the time that these women were politically active in the 1960s and 1970s. I also think that it’s really great that we aren’t just getting oral histories but that we are also preserving their documents in an archive because as we know people are not as likely to believe in oral histories alone. Even though this isn’t a safe assumption to make about oral histories, I think that the documents and photos add an important dimension to the oral histories.

            I don’t have any background knowledge in Chicana feminism, so I’m excited to read and hear about these stories, but I think I might be a little nervous about making sure that everything is done right throughout this process and that we represent the woman who we interview in a way that she will be proud of as well. Although it is a great responsibility archiving the history of one of these women, I think it’s important to remember that without this project, their history would not be documented as well at all, or it wouldn’t be as accessible to everyone. Because of how unique this archive is, our final result will be important and a success even if we experience a few bumps in the road.

One thing that I have learned so far in this class, is that we really do grow up to acquire a trust in the idea of archives and that surely they’re unbiased and hold all of the information that we could ever need to know about history. This is clearly not the case, but it’s not something that we normally don’t have to think about. Archives are not normally in our consciousness at all. I think that in the future, more projects like this will be created to store the parts of history that mainstream archives are not interested in. These kinds of archives help to preserve a more diverse part of history, not just the stories of politicians and the rich and famous. I hope that at the end of this course, I will have a really awesome part of the Chicana Por Mi Raza website that I can show my friends and family and be really proud that I made a contribution to this project!

Katelynn Dreeze - Reflection 1

I came to American Culture 498: Latina Practices of Oral History because I am currently studying to receive my Masters of Science of Information and in order to receive this degree I am required to take a graduate level course in any subject outside of the School of Information. I chose to take AC 498 because while I identify as a Latina, I have never in my 18 years of education ever taken a course in Latino Studies. I also chose to take this course because of how this course incorporates several different topics relevant to the School of Information such as archives and the digital humanities. What I hope to get out of this class is not only a greater knowledge and appreciation of Chicano history, but also the experience of being able to document history by creating an archive and oral history that can tell the story of one woman’s experience in the 1970s.

Upon entering into the terrain of Chicana feminism, I am excited and interested to learn about an area of study that I previously have no knowledge or experience in. I was a member of the feminist group at my undergraduate university and we discussed several feminist issues, but we never discussed Chicana feminism and I am eager to learn about this particular movement.  I am also equally excited to be entering into the terrain of archives because I have experience dealing in archives both in my studies in the School of Information and in my work as a Data Entry Specialist at the Ruthven Natural History Museum where I work with an archive of 20^th century entomology field notebooks.  I am quite curious about entering into the terrain of oral history because I am interested to see how these histories are created and how they can, according to Cotera, offer “perspectives on the past that are both highly individual and filtered through the concerns of the present” (“Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster", 794).

In all honesty, I know very little about Chicano history and Chicana feminism. What I do know however, is a little history about the Chicano movement in the United States because of what my mother told me about her experience of moving from Mexico as a girl and working as a migrant work in Ohio. My mom was born in Mexico and when she was 6 years old her family moved to Texas. After a few years in Texas, my mother’s family followed the tomato crop up to North West Ohio where her family eventually settled. My mom has shared with me just a little bit about her childhood and what it was like to work in fields and the trepidation she felt while moving away from home to Ohio. What I do not know, is how other migrant workers and their families were able to adjust and acclimate themselves into an unknown culture and environment. I do not know a lot about this topic, but I want to. I want to be able to speak more accurately about my family’s history and be able to see how this history is affecting my present day life.

I think my biggest fear about this experience is failing to accurately represent the woman that my partner and I are going to interview. I fear that my partner and I will mess up somehow in either the interview portion or the artifact portion and create an oral history that does not accurately tell the story of our interviewee. I want to create an oral history and archive that accurately represents the woman’s experience and is something that this individual can look at and be certain in its authenticity.

Welcome to our class! I am so excited to start the semester and to get to know all of you as we work together to recover the local histories of Chicanas/Latinas in Michigan. I suspect that this class will feel pretty different from others you've taken. First, the work we do over the course of the semester—as well as the product of our labors—will not be limited to the four walls of the classroom. In fact, we will travel some distance from the university to collect the stories and documents that we will use to craft micro-histories of women's activism in Michigan. Second, the work you produce for this class will have a public life beyond the classroom. You are contributing to the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory project, and the materials you gather will be used by students in the School of Art and Design, who will create a community exhibit (in partnership with El Museo del Norte) based on your research in the Fall term of 2016. Here's some pictures from the show the students created in 2014 to get your creative juices flowing:

I have been working on the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory project since 2010. In the process, I've worked with many undergraduates, who have cataloged archives, scanned documents, traveled with me to interview women, worked to build our public website, and given public presentations about their work at conferences and in classes. 

You will be joining this collective, and building it, by helping us to expand knowledge about the hidden history of women's activism in the Chicano movement era, and by demonstrating that students, no matter how young (or old), can help to create history! To get a better sense of students' experiences in this class, you can read the blog from 2013. I'm so excited to get started on our work!