Cultivando La Voz Mujer: Latina Adolescent Girls and Their Mothers Rewriting Their Pasts and Imagining Their Futures

Writing as Survival

Through the writing and sharing of their stories and histories, Black and Chicana feminist scholars and writers (Anzaldúa, 1999; Collins, 2009; Lorde, 2007; The Latina Feminist Group, 2001) have (re)written their pasts and (re)imagined their futures. Audre Lorde (2007) calls upon us to break our oppressive history of silence that has kept us in a subordinate position by “bring[ing] silence into language and action,” (p. 40) challenging us to speak our truths “…even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood” (p. 39). Like Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins (2009) speaks to the importance of the reclaiming of positive self-definitions by Black girls and women. She states that “[w]hen Black women’s very survival is at stake creating independent self-definitions becomes essential to that survival” (p. 123). This naming and claiming of our lived realities aids in our survival and resistance within oppressive structures and spaces.

Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) writes about the ritualistic and transformative power of writing one’s stories. She describes the feelings of illness, pain, and eventual joy that come with writing as “…an endless cycle of making it worse, making it better, but always making meaning out of the experience, whatever it may be” (p. 95). It is the act of writing that provides a release in which we reconstruct our lived experiences and realities to construct new meanings. In this process of reconstruction, we begin to heal.

These women warriors bring to the forefront the urgency and necessity of writing and making public the stories often silenced and erased from the dominant discourse of girls and women of color (Collins, 2009). They speak to the importance of art, writing, and performative expression as not only coping strategies but also as forms of resistance and survival (Anzaldúa, 2009). Their voices provide a foundation for the work of Somos Escritoras by illustrating how the sharing of our experiences can mediate the creation of a third space (Gutiérrez, 2008)—a space of creative resilience.

Third Space and Nepantla

In the creation of Somos Escritoras with and for Latina adolescent girls and their mothers, I wove together Kris Gutiérrez’s (2008) conceptualization of third space with Anzaldúa’s (1999, 2002) theorizing of Nepantla. Both third space and Nepantla provide a lens to describe the spaces of liminality that girls and their mothers occupy and the transformative possibilities of Somos Escritoras as a hybrid space. Together, these theorizations of spaces and borders, real and imagined, provide a lens into the stories, knowledges, and ways of knowing of girls and their mothers.

In Gutiérrez’s (2008) work with migrant youth participating in a university-sponsored program, she describes third space, as a “transformative space where the potential for an expanded form of learning and the development of new knowledge are heightened” (p. 152). Her conceptualization realizes third space as a “social environment…in which [youth and families] begin to reconceive who they are and what they might be able to accomplish academically and beyond” (p. 148).

Gloria Anzaldúa (1999, 2002) wrote and theorized from her lived experiences as a queer Chicana feminist border crosser, living in the margins, within contradictory roles and scripts. This place of liminality, this “in-between space” (Keating, 2006, p. 8), she refers to as Nepantla. According to Anzaldúa (2002),

Nepantla is a site of transformation…where different perspectives come into conflict and where you question the basic ideas, tenets, and identities inherited from your family, your education, your different cultures. Nepantla is…where you struggle to find equilibrium…[l]iving between cultures results in seeing double, first from the perspective of one culture, then from the perspective of another. (pp. 548–549)

Together, these concepts provide a framework that blurs the lines between home and school and the “official script” and “unofficial script” in ways that honor many stories and ways of knowing, positioning Somos Escritoras as space of creative resilience and transformation. In the next section, I provide a brief overview of Somos Escritoras workshops, including the practices, texts, and writing that were essential to the space co-constructed by girls, mothers, and facilitators.

Somos Escritoras Daughters and Mothers

To recruit girls and mothers, I created flyers with program and registration information and delivered them to teachers and literacy coaches from four different school districts. Initially, 10 girls and their mothers registered. Of these initial 10, seven girls participated alongside their mothers and stepmothers. There were a total of seven girls including two pairs of sisters and five mothers.

The girls were all born in the United States and self-identified as Latina, Chicana, or Mexican American. Four of the girls considered themselves bilingual and biliterate, being able to understand, speak, read, and write Spanish with different noted self-perceptions of their abilities. Three girls considered themselves monolingual English speakers, readers, and writers. However, each noted that they could understand Spanish but felt more ease and comfort in English with feelings that they “didn’t sound right” when they attempted to speak in Spanish. All girls attended public middle and high schools located throughout the city. Two of the girls had just graduated from high school. Four girls were in high school (Grades 9–12) and one girl was transitioning from elementary to middle school.

Of the five mothers that participated, three were born in the United States, one was born in Mexico, and one was born in Honduras. All five mothers self-identified as bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English, with their first language being Spanish. All mothers held high school degrees and had varying years of experience and degrees at postsecondary colleges and universities. One mother held a doctorate in educational leadership and administration, one a master’s of education in language and literacy, one a bachelor’s degree in education, one had the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in education from México, and one had attended 2 years of community college. All mothers worked full- or part-time. One mother was a high school principal, two were dual-language elementary school teachers, one was a kindergarten aide in a bilingual classroom setting, and one was a loan officer for a car dealership.

Somos Escritoras Facilitators

Somos Escritoras was facilitated by a team of three self-identified Latina/Chicana women, including myself. We came to Somos Escritoras with varied experiences teaching in K–8 settings, organizing, and facilitating writing workshops and identified as writers. As facilitators, we collaborated in the design and facilitation of all workshop activities including modeling of personal writing, facilitating discussions and translation at workshops and of all materials. The facilitators worked with me, as the researcher, to revise and rethink workshop activities and to document various aspects of the program through video and photography. In addition, one of the facilitators participated in Somos Escritoras with her two daughters.

Data Collection and Analysis

As the lead facilitator, I participated in Somos Escritoras alongside girls and their mothers, drawing, writing, and sharing my own stories and experiences as a participant observer (Spradley, 2016). Participating alongside girls and their mothers was intentional and an important “pathway” for me to be welcomed into their worlds through the reciprocal sharing of our stories. My own sharing allowed me to become part of the space that we co-constructed as I sought to not only build confianza (mutual trust; Alvarez, 2017; Valdés, 1996) with families but to be a “Worthy Witness” (Winn & Ubiles, 2011) of the struggle, hope, resilience, and love openly and honestly shared between mothers and daughters.

Data collection and analysis was an ongoing process and took place throughout all phases of research. For my inquiry, I drew upon multiple qualitative data sources. These sources include (1) field notes from each workshop, (2) individual writing and artwork created by girls and mothers at workshops (drafts and final polished pieces), and (3) interview transcripts from individual semistructured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) with each girl and mother. By collecting varied data sources, my goal was to piece together a rich narrative portrait of each girl and mother and the ways they defined themselves through writing and artwork.

During workshops, while facilitating and writing alongside girls and their mothers, I wrote detailed ethnographic field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011), first as jottings, that I filled in and typed up immediately following the session. In my jottings, I recorded initial impressions, snippets of conversations, including direct quotes of girls and their mothers, and the sharing of stories. Field notes served as a record of the stories shared and events that occurred over time and space and our evolving definitions of self.

I collected all artwork and writing that girls and their mothers created at workshops. These artifacts included self-portraits, masks, freewriting, closing reflections, and drafts and final polished pieces. The writing and artwork that girls and their mothers created provided a lens for me to further understand how they were examining their own experiences in relation to readings, discussions, writing, and artwork. Following the weeklong program, I conducted individual semistructured interviews. Interviews lasted 30–45 min and consisted of eight questions. I asked girls about their experiences in school, how they define themselves and about issues that concern them in the world. Similarly, I asked mothers to discuss how they viewed their role as a woman and mother, how they defined themselves, and their hopes for their daughters’ futures.

I analyzed data using grounded theory coding methods and constant comparative methods (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). I coded all data sources by hand, copying field notes and writing samples, and printing interview transcripts. First, I coded field notes, writing, and artwork, and interview transcripts to focus on how girls and their mothers were naming and defining themselves and their lived experiences through discussions, art, and writing. Some initial codes included self-definitions, knowledge and wisdom and intergenerational stories. Based on patterns between and across mothers and daughters, I combined codes and organized them into categories. Some of these initial categories included: finding balance, dreaming for the future, and connecting with her. I continued to collapse and expand codes and categories until finally three salient themes emerged: expressing myself, being unapologetically Latina/Mexicana/Chicana, and learning from her.

Expressing My True Self

I am human. I wonder what everyone thinks of me. I hear threats called out towards Latinas. I see fair skinned Latinas who fit in better than most Latinas. I feel close to my mother. I want other Latinas to be treated the same. I wish I could know more Spanish. I hope Latinas could be comfortable in their skin. (Brandi, ninth grade)

Brandi’s “I Am” poem describes the tensions and contradictions that she navigates daily. In her writing, she is trying to make sense of her experience as a self-identified Mexican American adolescent girl about to enter high school and the uncertainties that exist within this space of liminality. Placing her own lived experiences alongside the experiences of the women in her life, including her sister, Michell and mother, Mari, Brandi is finding the words to express her true self.

A goal of Somos Escritoras was to open space with and for girls and their mothers to make sense of, examine and critique their worlds through the creation of artwork and crafting of writing from their lived experiences. With this goal in mind, the intentionally selected texts and artwork written and created by self-identified Chicana, Latina and Mexican American writers and artists served as inspiration and invitation for girls and their mothers to craft and create their own texts and artwork based upon their lived experiences.

For example, the title of the workshop on the second day was “Las Máscaras Que Tenemos Puestas/The Masks We Wear.” At this workshop, we asked girls and their mothers to reflect in writing on the following questions: ¿Cómo me veo yo misma? [How do I see myself?], ¿Cómo me ven los demás? [How do others see me?] [Girls and their mothers began by sharing their verbal responses and then used art supplies to design a two-sided mask. They designed the front of their mask to show how others view them. The back of the mask was designed to show how they view themselves. Finally, they wrote about their masks, comparing how they viewed themselves and how others viewed them.

Sara, a seventh-grade self-identified Mexican American, shared her mask and writing. In her writing, she described what her mask represented to her, how she views herself, and how others view her. She wrote:

Muchas veces yo me pienso fuerte, alguien que no le importa si otros me llaman rara. Pero otros piensan que soy delicada nomas porque soy tímida, porque he visto que cuando alguien me llama rara, se ponen frente mí y hablan por mí. No dejan mi voz ser escuchada. [Many times I see myself as strong, someone who doesn’t care if others call me weird. But others think that I am delicate just because I am shy, because I have seen that when someone calls me weird, they stand in front of me and speak for me. They do not let my voice be heard.]

Following her daughter Sara’s lead, Magda shared how she views herself and how others view her. In her writing, she theorizes why others may see her as “una líder” [a leader]:

Yo me considero una persona tímida y callada; siempre tengo nervios de iniciar algo nuevo pero me empujo a mi misma a intentar. Tal vez por esa razón, las otras personas me vean como un líder y no ven lo tímida y temerosa que puedo ser. [I consider myself a shy and quiet person; I always have gotten nervous to start something new but I push myself to try. Maybe for that reason, other people see me as a leader and do not see how shy and scared I can be].

Being Unapologetically Chicana, Latina, and Mexican American

I identify myself as a young woman who likes music very much and she didn’t always do well with writing in the beginning of her life, like her childhood. She always did love to read though. I find myself as a dreamer, always wanting big things in my life for the people in my life, and also a searcher, just trying to find my place. (Lali, ninth grade)

During an interview with Lali, I asked how she identified herself. She shared that she identified as a “dreamer,” hoping for those that she cares for to have “big things,” and as a “searcher” for herself to find her place in the world. Her response surprised me, as most girls and mothers in the group, responded by naming their ethnicity. As a Chicana, researcher, educator, and mother, Lali’s words remind me of the complexities of our identities and the importance of defining ourselves on our terms.

Throughout the week, girls and their mothers read and discussed several texts written by self-identified Chicanas/Latinas/Mexican American writers (see Table 1). In these texts, writers, theorizing from their lived experiences, challenged and critiqued ascribed scripts, identities, languages, and cultures while speaking to the importance of disrupting society’s stereotypes of girls and women of color by creating positive self-definitions (Collins, 2009) of themselves that speak back to these assumptions. These texts served as a platform to open important discussions about our own experiences as Chicanas/Latinas/Mexican American girls and women and the crafting of our own pieces in which girls and mothers used their own writing for some to begin and for others to continue to define themselves.

At the final workshop, prior to the celebration of writing, we read and discussed, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue/Cómo Domesticar Una Lengua Salvaje” written by Anzaldúa (1999). In this text, Anzaldúa (1999) writes about the deep connection between language and identity. Anzaldúa describes the ways that other Chicanas, educators, and even her own mother ridiculed her and made her feel ashamed of her language, her tongue. She calls this attack on an individual’s language and identity, which are intertwined, “linguistic terrorism” (Anzaldúa, 1999, p. 80). This text resonated with girls and mothers in the group, as they shared their own language histories with one another and, like Anzaldúa, had been made to feel as if they were less than and never Latina/Chicana/Mexican American enough. After orally sharing our language experiences, girls and their mothers took their histories and feelings to writing. Olivia, a self-identified Latina about to enter her senior year, wrote and shared her own language story:

In Olivia’s language story, she expresses her feelings of not fitting in with other Latinas because of the shame she feels for not speaking Spanish, while also sharing her dream of “fully embracing” her heritage and connecting with her roots and all the “Torres’ before her.” Although she writes of the shame she feels and experiences, she ends her poem with words fueled with action and empowerment:

In Olivia’s final words, she reclaims what it means to her to be Latina. She challenges herself to “rise up” and “achieve her goals,” in this case learning Spanish, the language of her family. And, she knows that she can achieve these things, living, and navigating tensions and contradictions, as she proudly defines herself as a Latina and being hardworking is “the Latina way.”

At the fourth workshop, we read the poems, “Legal Alien” by Pat Mora (1984) and “Pocha” by Iris de Anda (2014). These poems speak to the tensions that exist in straddling dos culturas y dos idiomas as Mexican American women. Elizabeth, a self-identified Latina about to enter 11th grade, wrote a declaration defining herself as a Latina. She wrote:

Elizabeth describes that being bilingual makes her feel like she can work with others to “improve society.” She views her bilingualism as a tool to potentially make a difference in the lives of others while still “trying to figure out life.” In addition, she describes how she represents herself as “strong” and “independent,” ending her declaration by honoring the collective strength of Latinas by stating that “our power as Latinas is unique.”

In both Olivia and Elizabeth’s writing, they examine their experiences, as starting points to theorize their lives as young Latina girls. They both have grown up surrounded by family that has shared with them their culture and traditions, including language, in different ways. Some traditions, they have held onto, but others have evolved, as they move through time and space. In their writing, they examine, critique, and celebrate the many ways to be Latina and use their experiences, their struggles, their uncertainties, and their hope to unapologetically define themselves as Latinas.

Learning From Her

I feel my heart overflowing with all of them. I feel Olivia sharing her deepest feelings. I’m so proud of the woman she is developing into…. I am her sharing and developing…. I feel my heart overflowing with all of them—with unconditional love. I am no longer for me, I am for them. (Adriana, Olivia’s stepmom)

At the celebration of writing, Adriana, a new stepmom to Olivia, read this piece that she crafted for her new stepchildren. Adriana describes the joy she feels watching Olivia develop into a young woman with a bright future ahead of her. And, in her writing, she expresses that in her new role as stepmom to her four stepchildren, she is learning from all of them, especially Olivia, how to love unconditionally.

At Somos Escritoras, through the intergenerational exchange of stories and knowledges, girls and mothers were learning new things about one another and for some seeing each other for the first time. For instance, in a closing reflection, Dolores wrote what she learned from listening to her daughters, Cinthia and Lali, share their experiences. She wrote, “My daughters are still ‘wonderers’ of the world with many questions (I really like that). They are more in sync with each other than they think.” Similarly, Mari, reflected on learning from her daughters. She wrote,

I learned they have the same perceptions (how we are viewed and how we view ourselves) as I do. I always assumed they didn’t because they are not Chicanas like me, but they are still Latinas. They still have the same issues. We are all self-conscious about and have similar views.

At interviews, girls discussed what they were beginning to understand about their mothers. Michell shared that she learned new things about her mom, specifically the racism she experienced for dating and marrying a White man. She said,

…[I] didn’t even know the whole Mexican ladies with white dudes. She was trying to get her green card? When I first heard that, I was like what the heck? Really? I had no idea that people said that to her.

Like Michell, Cinthia shared what she learned about her mother and sister from their sharing at Somos Escritoras. She said,

I think seeing my young sister step out of her shell…. She talked more than I did. And her honesty, too. Some of the things, I didn’t know that she thought…as well, as the way my mom was very apprehensive about the ways she’s raising us. I knew that she kind of worried, but I didn’t know it was that much.

The writing, creating, and sharing that occurred at Somos Escritoras opened space for mothers and daughters to learn together in powerful ways. They discovered as Latina/Chicana/Mexican American girls and women, they shared similar concerns and challenges, and also many of the same hopes, dreams, and wealth of familial and cultural resources (Yosso, 2005). As Mari reflected in her interview, “There are other women that are going through the same struggles and everything is going to be O.K.”