Category Archives: Education

Dichos: Motivation for Grad Students

January 14, 2013

Photo by Sharyn Morrow (Flickr, 03/26/05)

By Sara A. Ramírez and Profes

Today, the Mujeres Talk Collective brings together a series of dichos for graduate students as we kick off the year 2013, the winter quarter, and the spring semester. Because many of us do not have frequent access to Chicana camaraderie and mentorship and more of us cannot wait until the Summer Institute to solicit advice, I asked some professors who are MALCS members for their gut/heart-response to the following question:

In a few words, what advice can you give to MALCS graduate students as we resume our work this semester/quarter?

Below are their answers. May the words of these mujeres sabias, this chorus of fairy godmothers, enter our hearts and guide us as we continue on our journeys to do the work we have been called to do. And please, use the comments section of the blog to share dichos that have been helpful to you.

Querida/o [Insert your name here],

Keep from sabotaging yourself. We have to learn to recognize the “worm” of self-sabotage every time it attempts to invade our organism with its tactics and skills of sabotage. It may well have a symbolic relation to Gloria’s “serpents.” Or is it “maggots” I mean to call up? Among those “worms/maggots” is the feeling of incompetence which is our heritage, that is to say, as a colonized people we have always already been judged incompetent, and we become overwhelmed by the “proof” of history. Keep from sabotaging yourself.
—Norma Alarcón, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

Make sure to make time for sleep and laughter. Both are good medicine for what ails you. I think of sleep as horizontal meditation, your mind and body enter a new state in which it can heal from the demanding often bruising world of academia. Sleep still helps me process readings and arguments. As for laughter, nothing beats a loud, open-mouthed, body shaking, roaring carcajada!
—Lourdes Alberto, Assistant Professor, The University of Utah

My mom advised when I started first graduate school: Aprende todo lo que puedas. She didn’t mean just what was taught in school, I am convinced, but she was telling me to LEARN … and I have not stopped yet! Otra cosa que se me ocurre is to be patient and not think you are a failure if you don’t do EVERYTHING all at once. Be patient with yourself and acknowledge what an incredible accomplishment it is to be a Chicana/Latina in graduate school.
—Norma E. Cantú, Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas at San Antonio

Find yourself a mentoring circle/support group—preferably one that includes good food!
—Debra A. Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Professor, Cornell University

There are always little rituals that I have before writing—I clean the house, feed the animals, light candles, clear the air. Sometimes it is a good thing to change the ritual, to change the hour of my writing, the directions, places, mix it up a little with poetry, fiction, a short sexy-funny-clever list of words to begin my writing day. These breaks in routine help me de-stress because if I am stressed, I cannot write.
—Cindy Cruz, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

“Quien adelante no mira, atrás se queda.” Create a year-by-year plan for how you will complete the Ph.D. Study the requirements of your program and map out your course loads, your exam schedule, dissertation preparation schedule and fieldwork time if required. If your program allows it, research classes in other units that you will want to take or professors in other Departments with whom you want to study. Plan how and when you will fulfill language requirement. If your Department offers workshops or orientations on preparing for comprehensives or writing the dissertation proposals, be sure to attend those. (In my graduate study these were organized and led by the graduate student organization in the Department and featured advanced students who discussed their own preparation strategies) If your Department doesn’t offer these, then work with peers to create them with Department help. Ask whether your university offers dissertation support writing groups, which are different than writing groups. In the former, students from across disciplines meet with a counselor as a group every few weeks to share challenges and keep on track. In the latter, peers share and critique each other’s work. Talk to your advisors about your plan every year and be sure to get their feedback on it. —Theresa Delgadillo, Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University

Don’t feel guilty saying no, and trust in your abilities.
—Dora Ramírez-Dhoore, Associate Professor, Boise State University

Don’t compare yourself to other people. Remember you are on your own journey.
—Elena Gutierrez, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Contemplative practice is good, even deep breathing, even remembering to breathe! Find your optimum writing time and be faithful to it, be loyal to yourself, to your obra—that is, you.
—Inés Hernández-Avila, Professor, University of California, Davis

Mija, in all you do know what your spiritual anchor is and tend to it. It may come from your traditions, you may find it in community or perhaps you feel it when you are in nature. It is in this anchor that will always reflect back your greatness and your deep interconnectedness to la vida. The academic part is easy. You’re brilliant and you’ve been admitted, punto final. El camino es lo dificil. Cultura cura … however, spirituality is the preventative piece. —Sandra Pacheco, Associate Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies

Trust your gut, your intuition, your own judgment; avoid anyone, situations, or theories and scholars that make you feel less, badly, disempowered.
—Laura E. Pérez, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

As someone who was also a first generation grad student, it was imperative that I created a strong community of friends/colleagues and a structure of mentorship across cohorts of graduate students and faculty within my department. There is so much knowledge and experience that can be passed down to lessen the anxiety of embarking on such an enormous endeavor.
—Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, Associate Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

Don’t over-do. A chronic thing that haunts me is over-doing. I think that it can be equally detrimental to do too much than to do too little. And for us chronic perfectionists, it can really be debilitating. Also, I’ll say yes to too many things and then land up not doing some very well and then punish myself for it. Not over-doing is about self-care.
—Patricia Trujillo, Assistant Professor and Interim Director of Equity and Diversity, Northern New Mexico College

¡Feliz 2013 y échenle ganas, mujeres!

Sara A. Ramírez is a doctoral candidate in the Ethnic Studies Graduate Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Comment(s):

Sandra D. Garza January 14, 2013 at 9:31 AM

This is fabulous! Thank you Sara and all the mujeres that contributed to this post. I’m sharing it on FB <3
Annemarie Perez January 14, 2013 at 2:33 PM

Thank you so much for putting this up. It’s wonderful for all of us to read, graduate student or no.
Brenda Sendejo January 14, 2013 at 2:35 PM

Thank you so much to Sara and the contributors for this blog post! I think this is amazing advice for graduate students. I am also grateful for these wonderful words of wisdom as a junior faculty member. They are inspirational and beautiful reminders of how to be, become, and stay healthy and grounded in mind, body, and spirit on our paths. Mil gracias!
Jean Rockford Aguilar-Valdez January 14, 2013 at 10:35 PM

Muchisimas gracias for these little pearls of strength. I’ve been through a lot of pain in my doctoral program, and these words help me find survival and sustenance to carry me through.
Li Yun Alvarado January 16, 2013 at 5:10 PM

Thank you so much for these! They’re fantastic.
Angie Chabram, Professor, UC Davis January 16, 2013 at 10:01 PM

I just decided to forward my own pearl of wisdom:

Watch out for the snakes. They come in all colors and genders. Don’t assume that the academy is your home or that your colleagues are all friends. Remember that you are at work. Yes academics “work.” Live your life to the fullest. Fight hard when you need to, then rest. While you may have comadres, it is you that must wage your fight con ganas y corazon. Be a pragmatist as well as an idealist!
Sara Ramirez January 16, 2013 at 10:08 PM

I’m so happy these words could be useful to so many of us! Please, contact me at sara@malcs.org if there are any other stories you’d like to see posted for grad students!
Claudia Serrato January 29, 2013 at 9:31 AM

Medicina all the way! Gracias! <3
Noemi Martinez February 3, 2013 at 12:17 AM

Lovely, thank you.

Reflections from Within: Explorations of Spirituality, Identity and Social Justice

December 10, 2012

Photo by Crysti, (Flickr, taken June 19, 2008)

By Brenda Sendejo and students at Southwestern University

This trensa, or braid, weaves together the voices of a group of students in this semester’s Latina/o and Latin American Spiritualities course at Southwestern University. The course is cross-listed in anthropology and feminist studies and students come from a wide array of majors. I invited students to reflect upon the ways in which the class and our explorations of spiritualities, identities, ways of knowing and issues of social justice have impacted them. I am grateful to them for “risking the personal”[i] and for serving as teachers to me in so many ways.

***

I took this class hoping to find something, a tradition, a practice, anything to help me better define myself. I have always struggled to identify as Latina. My mother was adamant about it, “you are not white, you are not biracial, que gacho, you are Latina.” Not that I didn’t want to be Latina, but I questioned it sometimes, it was easy to: I was never treated as a Latina by anyone. I can’t blame people, I don’t speak Spanish and I don’t look the part, my mother’s family gave me nicknames like güera — sometimes it felt like one step above gringa. I never thought my spirituality would give me this identity until I took this class and I realized that this spirituality, this piece of my identity was uniquely Latina, uniquely Mexican. What I now see as the source of my Latina identity I fought growing up. It wasn’t until I was older that I appreciated the relationship with God, the relationship to my ancestors, the relationship to my culture. Bless my mother for her patience because I fought her every day, resisting her spirituality, which I now cling to, for they are the roots of my Latina identity.
–A. O.

My entire life I have grown up with the Catholic faith: going to church every Sunday, being baptized, celebrating my first communion and becoming a godparent in the eyes of the Catholic Church, twice. Now, I find myself going to full moon drumming circles, using sage to cleanse my room and experiencing nature and peace at Alma de Mujer. Part of me wants to embrace the spiritual side, the one that gives me the agency to find my true self and empowers activist work. The other part of me wants to rid itself of the Catholic faith, but this is the side that also represents my family and my family’s faith and comfort, so I hang on to it. “It is this learning to live with la Coatlicue that transforms living in the Borderlands from a nightmare into a numinous experience. It is always a path/state to something else.”[iii] I signed up for this course out of the pure interest in knowing what it was; it was never about knowing who I was. My identity continues to be questioned, even today, but the path that I am on has taught me to not simply continue going through it but the experience of “growing through it.”[iv]
-L.C.

My concern with religion has always been of an epistemological nature. I’ve understood religion as different peoples ways of articulating the world for themselves. I must admit that rooted as I was in a ‘Modern’ way of thinking—that privileges the empirical and scientific over the spiritual—I viewed religion with skepticism and sometimes disdain. However, Latino/a/Latin American Spiritualities provided me with different insights. The colonization of the Americas tends to present itself as the domination of the colonizer over the colonized. In particular, colonial violence lies in the subject’s (colonizer) attempts to strip the ‘other’ (colonized) of their subjectivity. However, Latino/a/Latin American Spiritualitites, demonstrates that these attempts have failed to be successful. The course provided me with numerous examples of different peoples exercising their subjectivity through their spirituality. In particular, it demonstrated to me how knowledge can be both geopolitical and geohistorical. New identities were crafted in response to attempts of domination, new subjectivities and new epistemologies. Spirituality has gained new significance for me. It seems to be the manner by which the ‘other’ not only resisted objectification, but carved out a space for itself, providing Latin America with new meaning.
-A.J.

I now truly understand the importance of remembering the past in order to shape a brighter future because of this class. Recently, by overcoming a bout of susto, I have developed a new routine of meditation every morning to align myself in the divine light. My true nature is God, but as I stray from that point of awareness, interesting things happen. Gloria Anzaldúa is an excellent scholar who eloquently explains the experience of conocimiento: the path towards the “Ah HA!” moments in life. In reading her work, I felt a sense of security and ease, in realizing that all of my personal hardships and setbacks were not in vain. Every experience has a purpose, and our lives are valuable, not only to our friends and family, but to society and the entire global population. Stemming further from that note, I now am able to see immediate connections through indigenous practices and beliefs across the world. Eastern religions use similar practices like ridding the body of negative energy, or using prayer or meditation to quiet the mind. Coming from a purely spiritualistic approach, this class has shown me the ways in which scholarship can be applied to spiritual aspects of life.
-I.M.

I grew up praying once a week and spent every day watching out of the corners of my eyes for duendes and earth-bound spirits that my family told me about. Later, my mother began immersing us more in the Catholic faith. I began to study the Catholic Church. Soon I studied any religion: Buddhism, Wicca, etc. In many religions, something would strike a chord with me. The chakras in eastern religions, the worship of a feminine deity in Wicca, the pillars of Islam, all fell in with the way I perceived the world and my existence in it. I believe “God” to be genderless yet able to take on a gender. Catholics perceived God as male, but Wiccans saw the Moon Goddess and the Horned God. Likewise, monotheism, duotheism, polytheism- all rang true. I became confused about how to practice what I believed in. I confirmed Catholic, but my other beliefs remained. This course has given me concepts that eliminate that past confusion. The writers whose theories and practices we have explored, the fusion of indigenous beliefs with more organized religions we have studied, all of it, has enabled me to grow comfortable in my practices and beliefs.
-J.E.

This class has been a unique experience. I have been able to vocalize ideas and emotions that haven’t been validated within my academia before. Meeting other people, students, professors and Austinites, who are “all in the same boat” has renewed a sense of peace within myself and sense of solidarity with my communities. It has given me a framework to think about my experience in activism and spirituality. This and the communities we build give me strength to deal with hardships concerning activism and spirituality. I’d like to share a poem concerning a difficult conversation with a friend over what we discuss in class.

It’s because I like the mountains and you like
the ocean. Both lack oxygen, and we like to have
our breath taken away. Despite our similarities, there are
clear boundaries where water ends and sky begins. I admire
that you haven’t changed as much as I have. You are still
conservative, steady as the tide. But there are problems
bigger than your own anxiety. I was fourteen
the first time I was called an exotic beauty
by your parents. My skin is olive but my eyes
are light; to most who see me, my race doesn’t
compute like they think it should. But I am not made
of palm trees and sand; and while activism
may not be important to you, it is important to me.
And you’re only Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.
-A.G.

From the black they are revealed to me. First, and most clearly my granddad, shining a bright radiant gold. More vibrant than he ever was in those last few years. He does not say anything; indeed, none of them do, but his smile is the best of family-acceptance, understanding, home. To his right is grandma sitting on that same couch from her trailer behind my grandparents’ house—piles of family albums stacked up beside her, holding the vaguely remembered mythology of my childhood. The next and least clear of the recognizable ones shifts shape—boy then girl, old then new, toddler, youth, each flickering seamlessly into the next. The one who never was. Surrounding these filling in the gaps, linking to the time the living ancients do not remember are the old ones. They are more a feeling than a reality now, I hope of a time to come, a time when I will know them and gain some connection, some rooting to this me that is more than my time here. This is the way I see—my classroom daydream. But I question—imagination, vision or possibility, I wish it the legitimacy of a drumming circle, a prophetic vision, the safety of sacred space-of the earth or church. Still, I do not desire to care. This is what has been given to me or maybe what I have taken for myself. And I dare you to try to assign it a religion. I am embraced by “the practice of imagination. . . its ability to speak to [me] about [my] worlds”, by the notion that “to imagine spiritual mestizaje is in some ways to enact it.”[ii]
– A.H.

Brenda Sendejo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southwestern University. She researches religion, spirituality, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, racialization and feminism. She shares authorship of this week’s Mujeres Talk blog essay with her students.

[i] “Risking the Personal: An Introduction.” Interviews/Entrevistas by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, edited by AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge, 1-15.
[ii] Delgadillo, Theresa. Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative. Durham: Duke University Press, 2.
[iii] Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 95.
[iv] This was a statement made by A.G. in class.

Comment(s):

Sara Ramirez December 13, 2012 at 9:48 PM

Brenda, it sounds like you’ve impacted these students for life! Thank you and congratulations!

My Shadow Beast’s Time

November 12, 2012

Photo Credit: “Our Time is Running Out 157/365” by gravity_grave on Flickr

By Anonymous

I have been thinking a lot about time and its processes lately. When I took and passed the Candidacy Exam in my graduate program, time was paramount. As in most universities, departmental guidelines dictate that students in the program make timely progress to the degree. There are, however, minimal guidelines for writing the requisite three exam papers. Some said that the reading lists were to help me write the dissertation. Others told me that this exam was completely separate from my dissertation. I then couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to write about my reading lists. “Was I to integrate all 40 books and articles from one reading list into a paper? How?” I kept asking. I was unable to get a straight or clear answer about what to write. Previous students successful in advancing to candidacy did not allow the program to archive their papers as resources for future students working on their exams. Social scientist candidates in the department were willing to share their work with me, but I felt I couldn’t follow their examples because I was working with texts in the humanities.

Still, I read every day. I was determined to finish on time. I joined a writing group, and in two months, I wrote countless drafts of the first paper. The group was organized and led by a senior professor who I eventually learned did not take well to assertive feminists. One day, before a group of other graduate students, the professor asked if I had “a chip on [my] shoulder” because my writing style seemed “bitter.” I conceded that the passion behind my writing stemmed from anger prompted by relentless systemic violence. The professor had not expected my response, and he answered by saying I wouldn’t go far with my “attitude.” I smiled nervously as he initiated the class’s roar of laughter. After our session, I felt even the snowy wind was mocking me. I couldn’t run fast enough into my sister’s arms.

My subsequent anxiety about writing catapulted me into a depression. No matter how much I beckoned it, my writing voice would not come out of hiding. I had to finish these papers within four months in order to be eligible for a fellowship for those who are making “timely progress.” My inner critic wouldn’t go away: STUPID. SLOW THINKER. BAD WRITER. BAD PERSON. IDIOT. LOSER. JUST SIT DOWN! UNFOCUSED. LIMITED VOCABULARY. STOP CRYING. IMPOSTER. It was not until after I suffered a major break down that I learned I could ask for an extension without penalty. Why hadn’t anyone told me this before? Was the break down part of the process? I had been conditioned to believe that the only way I could be a “good person” was by being a “good student.” Facing my Shadow Beast, I realized my self-worth had been dependent upon my ability to produce, my colleagues’ perceptions of me, my professors’ praise, my parents’ “Good girl, m’ija,” and on someone else’s notion of “timeliness.” Western culture has us believe we are essentially flawed, we must constantly work on ourselves, and we must prove ourselves to belong. Resenting the exam process as yet another way for me to prove my worth, I refused to write until I could convince myself that there is no sinful self to redeem. Humans never fell from grace. All beings are essentially good.

Although I certainly learned in the depths of Coatlicue, I knew couldn’t stay there forever. I moved and began the healing process. I stopped thinking so much about what I had to do and what I hadn’t done and tried to focus on each present moment. I began to practice compassion toward myself including my vicious inner critic, my Shadow Beast. I learned that I couldn’t go on ignoring her. We had to dialogue. When I listened, I learned she only wanted to help me achieve that happiness I feel when I read, think, and write. I explained to her that I can’t work with unrealistic daily goals and harsh criticism used as “motivation.” She pointed out that no one taught her how to practice non-violent communication. Together we learned that time is but a construction, a historically specific concept, and we came to a truce. I was finally able to write. I finished my papers, took my exams, and passed at the right time.

I write about my struggle to underscore our continuous negotiations as Chicanas in the academy. Confessing that I embark on more writing with trepidation, I am reminded by my MALCS mentors that I must revel in this moment’s sense of accomplishment and the fact that I found ways to manage an arduous process. Yet I know I must remember my time in the depths of Coatlicue so I too can be compassionate toward my students in their times of crisis. The U.S. university system is not set up to be conducive to our “timely” progress. As a capitalist enterprise, the university embraces competition—a race against time—to produce extraordinary scholarship, thereby discouraging genuine collegiality. This system does not encourage us to satisfy our urge to “make face and heart,” or to find ourselves, by learning from one another through compassionate social interactions. For this reason, I look forward to summers during which MALCS, conversely, focuses on giving shape and meaning to our selves and community. MALCSistas remind me that there have always been philosophers, artists, scientists, and lovers of “making sense” of the world. I dream that it is possible to transform the U.S. university to meet our needs as humans. I look forward to this reemergence from what may be our collective trance in the Coatlicue State. I look forward to our inherently interlinked individual and collective experiences of triumph.

Comment(s):

Monica November 12, 2012 at 10:55 AM

Thank you for your words. This is definitely a process many of us go through, and yet very few talk about it. Gracias.
Anonymous November 12, 2012 at 11:34 AM

What a “timely” piece! I was driving to my office with my inner critic saying many of the horrible words you mention. It has been a long time since I have written out of joy rather than fear. Deadlines and timelines help me to be “productive” but are sucking the life out of my voice. Thank you for such a thought-provoking piece.
Unknown November 12, 2012 at 11:45 AM

Thank you. So very much. Thank you.
Anonymous November 12, 2012 at 6:26 PM

This is exactly how I felt a couple of days ago when I was going through my exams. Thank you so much for writing this!
Anonymous November 12, 2012 at 9:10 PM

THANK YOU! This is exactly what I experienced.
Theresa Delgadillo November 19, 2012 at 3:55 PM

Dear Anonymous Blog Author,
In the classroom scene you describe, where a focus on the work and the writing would be most beneficial to all, the discussion unfortunately shifts to “correcting a person,” making an individual Latina the problem. Your honesty appears to have been alarming to those present then but shared here, in this space, it is a welcome meditation on the kind of relationships we build together in academia as well as the self-knowledge and skill you have gained in working with others and negotiating your expectations of others and self. I join in thanking you for this beautiful essay, especially the brilliant observation: “I look forward to this reemergence from what may be our collective trance in the Coatlicue State.” It’s a statement that resonates beyond academia as well as sign of the keen insight with which you have emerged from the fire. Congratulations to you! I am so very glad you will be making a difference in higher education!
Anonymous November 22, 2012 at 7:51 PM

Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for your essay, and speaking truth to power.
My writing style has also been called ‘bitter,’ but by an anonymous manuscript reviewer who also asked why I was complaining about the lack of mentorship if I successfully received my Ph.D.! In other words, the lack of compassion in academia is pervasive. It is scholars like you and other MALCSistas who will make a difference

Community-Based Research: Reporting Back

October 1, 2012

By Seline Szkupinski Quiroga, Ph.D.

In September 2012, I and my research partners from Arizona State University hosted a Community Forum in South Phoenix to report back to this community the preliminary results of our research. The room at the community center was almost full. A few people were still serving themselves dinner from the taco bar set up by a local restaurant. No one complained that in deference to providing a healthier dining option we had not put out flour tortillas, cheese or sour cream. I looked out over the audience, trying to see if any of the faces were familiar, if I had seen them across a kitchen table while conducting an interview. I saw a few colleagues from the University, students who had worked on the project, employees of local health agencies, and community members in workout clothes who had perhaps been lured into the room after their aerobics class with our promise of discussing community health and well-being. I took a deep breath and gave an announcement in English and Spanish that the Forum would be starting in just a few minutes.

After completing data collection for a multi-year study, I had organized the Forum to fulfill the promise made to study participants during multiple visits to their households to inform them of our findings. We were limited in the topics we could cover in the allotted 2 hours as I had required that all proceedings be presented in a bilingual format, and I wanted to make sure we had sufficient time for discussion. We briefly covered how recent changes in immigration policy, specifically SB1070, had affected families; how households were dealing with the economic downturn; and the current health issues of community members. The results were not encouraging and so I tried to also communicate the assets of the community: the resilient social networks, tested as they were by the years of hardship and deprivation, and the strong sense of community that persisted despite incidents of discrimination. The presentation ended, and we invited questions. There was a silence and then the first question: could not the findings of high rates of psychological distress be linked to the high rates of unemployment? And we were off!

The time of discussion was not so much a question and answer period as I had feared, but rather a time of commentary and people responding to each other. A woman commented eloquently in Spanish about the need for recognizing the dignity of all in this time of anti-immigrant sentiment. An African American woman spoke up about how she was willing to volunteer her time to teach a Junior Chefs class, but that no one seemed interested in her offer. Another man noted that the most important things needed to make change were present in the room already. We had successfully initiated a dialogue about community concerns! The local community college stepped up and offered to host the next forum so the dialogue could continue.

In the glow of accomplishment, the challenges I had confronted in the weeks leading up to the Forum were pushed to the back of my mind. Many of the most salient challenges had to do with the academic-community divide, a few of which I will note here.
For example, in gathering research findings to present at the Forum from my colleagues, there were differing ideas of significance and what was appropriate to share. From the perspective of many an academic researcher, if proposed hypotheses are unproven or if findings are similar to what is already reported in the literature, then they are deemed non-significant. However, purely descriptive findings can be important and useful to community members and stakeholders.

Another major challenge was translating the descriptive findings into a language accessible to a lay audience by avoiding academic jargon. The subsequent Spanish translation also had to be assessed for accessibility and appropriateness for the study participants. I usually use narrative accounts as a bridge between statistics and significance but there wasn’t time at the Forum and room for only a few carefully selected quotes in the bilingual newsletter that was handed out.

I also spent time trying to define “community.” Before the Forum started, I wasn’t sure exactly who was going to show up. We had mailed out invitations to all study participants and local government officials, placed an advertisement in a local paper, been interviewed on a local Spanish language radio show, and flyered the study neighborhoods extensively. I tried to be strategic in extending invitations, balancing the diversity of the attendees with real life practicalities: Should I invite a representative of the police? They would benefit from hearing about the concerns over increased discrimination, and the confusion people had between policies of the police and the sheriff but their presence might frighten away people from participating in the Forum. (I didn’t invite them to the Forum but met with a prosecutor to discuss giving a special presentation to a police officer committed to community policing).

I was encouraged to see African Americans in the audience. While study participants were overwhelmingly Latino, the study area has the highest percentage of African American residents in the state. Although much of the discrimination experienced was triggered by the passage of SB1070, African American study participants decried the changing tenor of their community, and the health issue of unequal chronic diseases burden also affected them. The findings of this study were not just relevant to Latinos.

I was able to successfully engage this South Phoenix community, but I am unsure as to who is going to support the efforts to continue the dialogue now that the grant funding has been exhausted. However, I do know that I will continue to work with this community as I am committed to support them through my research in working to improve quality of life and honor the dignity, wisdom, and experience of these Arizona residents.

A copy of the newsletter with descriptive findings handed out to Forum attendees can be found at http://www.asu.edu/clas/ssfd/cepod/SMVnews092012.pdf

Seline Szkupinski Quiroga is a child of immigrants and a medical anthropologist living in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a member of the Mujeres Talk Colectiva.

Comment(s):

Theresa Blight November 19, 2012 at 5:49 PM

These community outlook and endeavor restores my faith in humanity each time. I commend the people who take a proactive role in advocating change for the good of their communities. I feel more attached with my community since joining live in care, a nutritional program for the elderly.