Mujeres Talk to Become Latinx Talk

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About 18 months ago, we on the Editorial Board of Mujeres Talk began thinking out loud about expanding the scope of our site and signaling greater inclusivity. Aware of how necessary, vital, and attractive this site has been to countless mujeres both in and out of academia, we thought hard about giving up a woman-centered and woman-run site, yet we also recognized that when we thought about what we wanted to publish and who we are working with in our everyday lives, our queer and straight male peers, students, and community partners were often on our minds, as were partners and allies across Ethnic Studies. So we’ve decided to become Latinx Talk, beginning in September 2017. We have created a new Editorial Board, and for the first time, an Advisory Board — with a strong mix of varied Latinidades, regions, disciplines. We’re excited to be working with wonderful new colleagues! Our new Editorial Board for Latinx Talk includes: Lauren Araiza, Denison University; Magdalena Barrera, San Jose State University; Carlos Decena, Rutgers University; Theresa Delgadillo, The Ohio State University; Kevin Escudero, Brown University; Adriana Estill, Carleton College; Felipe Hinojosa, Texas A&M; Miguel Juarez, University of Texas at El Paso; Carmen Lugo-Lugo, Washington State University; Yalidy Matos, Rutgers University; Sujey Vega, Arizona State University. Our new Advisory Board for Latinx Talk includes: Patricia Enciso, The Ohio State University; Larry LaFountain-Stokes, University of Michigan; Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Seattle University; Louis Mendoza, Arizona State University; Chon Noriega, UCLA; Mariana Ortega, Pennsylvania State University; Rafael Pérez-Torres, UCLA; Eliana Rivero, University of Arizona; Andrea Romero, University of Arizona; Alvina Quintana, University of Delaware.

Working together on Mujeres Talk has allowed us to grow our experience and expertise in online publishing while we also worked out in real time how to mesh feminist politics with feminist practice. We believe that Mujeres Talk has made a contribution to building a Latina/o online presence and to mentoring new authors. We’ve been successful at maintaining a national editorial board that works collaboratively via video conference and email to coordinate regular online publication.

We know from our peers that Mujeres Talk has impacted similar online academic ventures as we all explore how to do this peer-review thing online in ways that mesh with the rigor and requirements of higher education (see discussion on U.S. Intellectual History site). We’ve been pleased to see that our publications have been republished by other online venues (including Share INC/Domestic Violence, Texas Ed Equity, and Puerto Rico Report), noticed by major media (see comments of Finding Missing Latinas), included in scholarly presentations (see Mujeres Talk Slide Share), and even made it onto Pinterest. We were delighted to be featured at the 2014 Fall Reception of the College of Arts and Sciences at OSU. We are also very pleased that readers and authors have employed the site in Latina/o Studies classrooms (for one example, see Reflections from Within: Explorations of Spirituality, Identity and Social Justice).

Most of all, we are gratified that you, our readers, have found this to be an important publication and venue. We are grateful to all the authors and special contributors who have shared their amazing work on this site. Readership for each essay varies and has always been 180 and 1000 page views per post. We are proud to have built something useful, innovative, and necessary. We are taking our collective knowledge and experience and applying it to a new and expanded project which will follow in the footsteps of this site. Our new project is Latinx Talk, an online academic blog for short form research and commentary, that will be launched in September 2017 and will also be published by The Ohio State University Libraries. We hope that all of the readers of Mujeres Talk will follow us to Latinx Talk, and sign up as online subscribers. In September, we’ll post a link to the new site, and notify subscribers of new URL. Mujeres Talk will remain permanently archived and searchable at this URL, hosted by The Ohio State University Libraries. Please share your comments on our past and future directions here on our blog! We’d love to hear from you.

We will see you in September, and meanwhile, enjoy these summer days!

Hablando de ellas: Experiences of Latina K-12 Public School Administrators with Race and Gender

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sign says "Our country's future economy depends on our children's education now"

Our Future. Photo by Flickr User Andy Blackledge. Feb 15, 2015. CC BY-NC 2.0

By Dr. Lisandra Tayloe

Latinas are relatively scarce in leadership positions in K-12 public schools. Nonetheless, as my recently concluded dissertation study (2016) indicated, fractional representation does not equal nonexistence but, rather, exclusion and neglect. In my study, I examined barriers to career advancement, the effects of barriers, successful strategies to overcome challenges, and the roles of race and gender on leadership ascension and practice from the perspective of K-12 Latina public school administrators.

Utilizing a mixed methods approach that included 30 survey responses and 4 interviews with two public school principals and two assistant principals in the state of Florida, I gathered information from Latina administrators of varied ethnicities, including Puerto Rican, Guatemalan, and Venezuelan. Their ages and leadership experiences varied too, ranging from 29-62 years of age and 1-26 years of educational leadership experience. Continue reading →

Report from New Mexico Women’s March

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signs says "Our rights are to up for grabs"

Rights Not for Grabs. January 2017. Photo by Adelita Michelle Medina. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Adelita Michelle Medina

I had wanted to travel to Washington, D.C., to participate in the main Women’s March on January 21, 2017, but in many ways, I’m glad I attended the sister march in downtown Albuquerque instead. It was a spirited, diverse and energizing gathering of several thousand women, children and men of all ages, races, religions and backgrounds. Estimates of crowd size have ranged from 6,000 to 10,000, with the latter number offered by the local police. But regardless of the exact size, and despite the cold and wet weather, the march was a big success.

In these days of uncertainty and apprehension, the marches that took place on that day, in hundreds of cities across the country, provided some much-needed support and solidarity. Those who participated were reassured that they are not alone, and those who watched the events in their homes, know that people will not be silenced. They will be heard and they will be seen fighting for their families, cities and country. Continue reading →

Healing in the Flights of Uncertainty

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“To be healed we must be dismembered, pulled apart. The healing occurs in disintegration, in the demotion of the ego as the self’s only authority.” — Gloria Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark (2015)

By Erika G. Abad

On giving my class assignments at my new job, I decided to teach Light in the Dark, because in returning to the West Coast, Xicana feminist thought felt necessary. It was also, as I told students, a selfish way to share my love for Anzaldúa. Within months of teaching it, my supervisor invites me to El Mundo Zurdo Conference. I agree on a whim, excited about the possibility to learn more from other scholars who appreciate what Anzaldúa contributes to critical consciousness. Deciding to go, somehow, feels like coming full circle from the years of dismembering to heal that had taken place not only in the years I spent on the periphery of the ivory tower and the culture of academic teaching and research. The process of buying the ticket, of relying on university colleagues to share resources with me to be able to afford the trip, contrasts to the uncertainty and wounded pride/integrity with which I grappled in 2008. Continue reading →

Advocating for Ethnic Studies in 2017

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Lessons from Ethnic Studies on Strategic Courage

By Andrea Romero and Michelle Téllez

On May 5 2011, a small group of faculty from the Arizona Ethnic Studies Network gathered in Tucson following a devastating Tucson Unified School board meeting where the Mexican American Studies program in the district was ended. It was a blow that was felt deeply by us all. We came together as scholars from universities and colleges across the state to publicly voice our support for Ethnic Studies. This was in the aftermath of HB 2281 that banned courses that “(1) promote the overthrow of the U.S. government (2) promote resentment toward a race or class of people or are (3) designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group (4) advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals” (AZ House Bill 2281, 49th Legislature, 2010). This bill was used to target, monitor, and dismantle a successful Mexican American Studies curriculum, despite the fact that external auditors determined that the courses were academically successful and promoted positive group interactions (Cabrera, Millem, Jaquette & Marx, 2014; Cambrium Audit, May 2, 2011). In response, we worked as a network to ensure our critiques were made public and to support those teachers and students who were being directly attacked. It was from this source of collective action that we drew strength, and from these activities was born new research, new relationships, stronger students, and a highly aware and involved community.

Filipina woman in graduation gown with caption on how Ethnic Studies taught her self-love

December 2014 Photo by Evelyn Obamos. CC BY-NC 2.0

We find ourselves again at a point in U.S. history where higher education is under conservative scrutiny and new “watchlists” for “dangerous” professors are being created and used to threaten and intimidate scholars in the academy. We live in a country that has been shaped by a particular history of exploitation, genocide, and exclusion. In this, Arizona is not an anomaly, but the norm. However, given the legislative battles we have had in in this state over the last six years, it seems important to comment both on our experiences and on what we imagine our role as Ethnic Studies scholars to be in the coming years given the emergence of what mainstream media Continue reading →

Two Essays on Our Work at Standing Rock

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pregnant woman with earth in belly and water flowing around her

“Water is Life” drawing by Ruby Chacón. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Water Is Life: Why Chicana/o/xs Should Support NoDAPL

By Marisa Elena Duarte

On Thursday October 27 militarized police forces from multiple states joined the Morton County Sheriff’s Department in North Dakota to initiate a violent series of crowd control tactics against the peaceful water protectors and land defenders blocking the illegal construction of an Energy Transfer Company (ETC) oil pipeline across land adjacent to the current boundaries of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The pipeline, designed to transport oil from the Bakken Oil Fields in North Dakota down to the Gulf Coast, and from there to various domestic and international markets, also threatens clean water and soil through the entire Midwest region, all the way down to the Gulf Coast of Mexico. In July, Continue reading →

Attorney Susana Prieto-Terrazas, a Champion for Maquiladora Worker’s Rights

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Image provided by authors of poster calling for workers to join march.

Image provided by authors. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Marlene Flores and Miguel Juárez

The maquiladora industry has long impacted the border region, especially the Ciudad Juárez-El Paso region. With the passage of NAFTA, neoliberal economic policies that have encouraged the freer movement of goods and services across the border have especially encouraged the explosion of the maquiladora industry. In a maquiladora factory workers assemble part of a product (such as a car door handle) and the product is shipped to the final country destination where multiple parts will be put together for the finished product. Maquiladora factories do not have to reside on the border but many of them do because of their proximity to another country and trade laws. Though promising stable jobs and a healthy economy, this industry has had detrimental effects on the workers themselves. Still recovering from a sluggish economy and heavily hit by the cartel violence from its peak in 2010, the region where maquiladoras flourish provides plenty of employment opportunities. There are over 300 maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez that employ over 250,000 workers at substandard wages. Continue reading →

Reports from July 2016 Latina/o Studies Association Conference

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Panelists Beatriz Tapia, Alexandro Gradilla, Anita Tijerina Revilla, and Magdalena L. Barrera. Photo by M. Barrera. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Latina/o Studies Association 2016: Nourishing the Mind and the Spirit

By Magdalena L. Barrera

The 2016 LSA conference was a wonderful experience, for many reasons. To situate myself: I am a faculty member of the Mexican American Studies department at San José State University. My primary area of research is analysis of textual representations of Mexican Americans in early twentieth century American cultural production; however, in recent years I have developed a secondary research area that explores the retention and mentoring of first-generation and underrepresented students in higher education. This second area was inspired in part by the learning curve I underwent as my environment changed from the R1 settings of my undergraduate through postdoctoral training to working in the California State University system. Although I have maintained my primary research area, it requires some effort to stay in touch with emerging trends in the field, as I am the only person at SJSU who does Humanities-based work in Chicanx Studies. Moreover, I had not attended a conference in a couple of years, and so I welcomed this year’s LSA as an opportunity to fully engage as both a presenter and participant, and to expand my professional network. Continue reading →