On Mentoring and Love: Thanking Whom?

Mentoring for my students has saved my career. Bernadette Calafell (2007), in her piece “Mentoring and Love: An Open Letter,” writes about the mentoring relationship that saved her career as a tenure-track faculty member within a white dominated institution. This mentoring relationship reminded me of my own feelings of love for my students, and the ways that they allow me to remain a whole person in their presence. By whole person, I mean that I do not have to leave any of my identities at the door. I can be a gay husband, a critical educator, a shaman, a Xicano, a writer, or whatever. Shane Moreman and Persona Non Grata (2011) are a perfect example of the mentoring relationship that I wish to have with my students. In this powerful example of “theories in the flesh,” Moreman, a tenure-track professor at Fresno State University, and Persona Non Grata, an undocumented graduate student, utilize their mentor-mentee relationship to give voice to Persona’s story, which typically would be excluded from academia because of her lack of documentation combined with the real fear of deportation that this political status holds. This work exemplifies the type of teacher I wish to be--one that empowers, supports, yet heals as well. Through autobiographical performance and performative writing, I explore four mentor relationships that I have recently (re)/(dis)entered into thus continuing and complicating the conversation on mentoring and love by questioning: who should thank whom?

I am sitting at my desk with a former Portuguese female student from my very first public speaking class at San José State University. She is beaming and bubbly just like I remember her, yet she is different. She is almost a senior now, and as a communication studies major, she must interview a faculty member from the department about how to be successful with this particular degree. I can tell she has been looking forward to this, and to be honest, I have too. She has kept in touch with most of the class and weaves in their current statuses alongside her questions. So and so is doing great, and he or she is struggling in his/her major. The interview quickly turns into a dialogue as we each move from question to laughter to answer to clarifying question to fond memories to career development. She is still working with my high school buddy at a local restaurant--"he hasn’t told you anything about my past has he?" Her familiar laugh rings and reverberates more memories from that first semester teaching. Inside my head, I laugh at myself because I was her at one point, and now I am on the other side of this type of relationship of love. Is this how my mentors felt? 

Another day, another month, I am back at my desk with another student. This Asian-American male with glasses and a great smile has been warning me for weeks via email and in person that he was coming to interview me. In fact, two days ago, I found him sitting outside this very office waiting for me just to say that he forgot his microphone and would like to reschedule. He didn’t want to insult me by handwriting my answers in note form. He is nervous. He is intimidated but laser-focused on his task. He frames the interview: “I wanted to interview you because I look at you like a mentor. Before I took your class, I was really shy but hearing you say that you were always nervous really help me open up, so when I got this assignment, I thought of you.” I hear his words but have trouble connecting them to my own body. Me? Why would anyone want me to be their mentor? I remember this student well. He visited me in office hours that first week of class last semester--he was nervous then too. He didn’t think he could pass this class, but he did with an excellent grade (for those that care about those arbitrary things) by demonstrating excellent speaking progress and determination to succeed. I’m not sure how to proceed. Was that really me? “I have to disagree... I may have helped but it wasn’t me that did this... it was always you.”

I’m tired. Like Bilbo Baggins of the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, I feel stretched thin like butter over too much toast, but still, I agreed to two interviews with two former students to help them satisfy assignments for their courses. She is up first and wearing her Latina-identity much differently than I remembered. It is not confidence but purpose that holds her voice stronger and clearer. She wants to know about my activism and how I have pushed back because she remembers protesting with me against the 11th straight student fee hike for California State University students and their families. She has switched majors to communication studies, which is why she now has to interview me. She wants to help her community; she wants to dream about Xicana/o success, yet I hesitate because "when faced with the faces of the next generation of Latina/os, how can we honestly repeat the same mantra that the previous generation said to us? Isn’t it a lie?" (Gutierrez, 2012, p. 6). I see her face change when I tell her that I am heading to the very fringes of Aztlán to get my doctoral degree, so--I can’t be her mentor. I cringe at the irony that building more Latina/o educational pipelines means leaving my community to get a doctoral degree. He’s been listening at the doorway from the linoleum floor. My department is publishing a newsletter, and as the only M.A. graduate student heading to a doctoral program after graduation, my former Filipino student currently a 2nd semester freshman was tasked to interview me. Always brave, he literally scared me that Fall 2011 Halloween with his vampire steel contacts and dark suited costume meant to blend in with the humans to catch us off guard. He is wearing different contacts now and are those diamond earrings? He is my adviser’s assistant, and using that relationship, we reconnect and I am honest with my answers about my graduate experiences as a working-class, queer Xicano male. He can’t believe I’m leaving as he leaves me, and as I write this, I feel vulnerable. Am I really hoping that my disclosures within this mentoring relationship do not end up on the front of the department newsletter? How am I put at risk by mentoring from a place of love?

Mentoring is a huge responsibility for both participants. Like Calafell and Moreman, a mentoring relationship is about love, but for a person of color, it is often about survival. Persona Non Grata needed Moreman to survive in the academy just as much as Moreman needed her. Calafell (2011) reminds us that when it comes to mentoring "the ways people come into our lives, impact us, and in some ways serve as mentors whether we know it or not" are not always controllable. These scholarly works mirror my own lived experience in that my students are often the only people-of-color I interact with in a single day. They listen to my stories of higher education gaps and understand my feelings of being trapped in a system that doesn’t want to hear our voices. Sometimes, it feels like crawling naked over miles of broken glass. When I talk about my husband or my feelings surrounding gender, their eyes do not glaze over and their mouths react inquisitively. Such as, when issues like whiteness or (dis)ability enter the classroom dialogue, they do not push me or each other out of the space but honestly try to grapple with the concepts. In many ways, I am more impressed with them than I am with many of my colleagues in graduate school. No, I cannot stop crawling even if my stomach is leaking entrails and my arms and legs are boney stumps. When I look back, I see my trail of blood cutting a winding path through a scintillating landscape of jagged failed dreams. Is that one of my students I see crawling back there too? Are they using my bloody path to navigate their lives? Like a fish, my muscles spasm sending me flopping forward another stabbing inch. I cannot stop--my students need me.

References

Calafell, B. M. (2007). Mentoring and love: An open letter. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 7(4), 425-441.


Calafell, B. M. (2011 August 6). On the importance of mentors and friends [blog post]. AcademicZ. Retrieved from http://academicz.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-importance-of-mentors-and-friends.html


Gutierrez, R. M. (2012 April 6). Xicana/o communication pedagogy: Theorizing an agenda. Xicana/o Graduate Council Spring 2012 Newsletter. Retrieved from http://www.sjsu.edu/mas/docs/xgc_newsletter_spring2012.pdf

Moreman, S. T. & Persona Non Grata. (2011) Learning from and mentoring the undocumented AB540 student: Hearing an unheard voice. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31(3), 303-320.

To Be or Not to Be Latina

The following essay was written in a moment of crisis, in a moment of painful identity struggle, from when I first moved to the United States. That is how I felt back then. Thanks to a lot of great readings and the support of amazing people, I am slowly finding my own place in this country.

To Be or Not to Be Latina

           

When I moved to the US three months ago, I was not sure how people here would read me in terms of race/ethnicity. Having lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for my whole life, race/ethnicity was not one of my biggest concerns while living there. In fact, I have always seen myself as a privileged person in a lot of ways. In Brazil, social class is still seen as the hardest struggle to overcome: “If you are poor”, people say, “It does not matter if you are White, Brown, or Black. It will be just as hard”.  Even though I have serious doubts regarding this type of statement (I do think it can become harder if you are poor, African descendent, and a woman). I believe I embraced this idea, considering my traditional leftist political and ideological perspectives. Therefore, race, color, or cultural background were elements which I rarely thought about while living in Brazil.

            Now, living in the US, I am facing issues such as being read as a woman of color. I first realized that was my reality here when I received, weeks ago, an invitation to a student of color meeting at the university. I still do not know exactly what that means. The consequences of being framed in this category remain obscure to me so far. Do I have to fight for something? Do I have to work harder than Whites? Am I going to suffer any type of prejudice for looking darker than Whites? Am I going to be more likely to be subjugated for being a woman of color? Am I ready to fight back?

I come from Latin America,I also a woman of color. Notice I did not say “I am a Latina.” I am still negotiating whether I want to be identified as such, or “Brazilian” will be how I will categorize myself. Do I control these things? Can I choose to be a Latina, or a Brazilian? I did not choose to be a woman of color; this is just the way people read me. What makes me think I will be the one deciding this matter?

Reading “La conciencia de la Mestiza,” from Glória Anzaldúa, I identified with her writings. But at the same time, I had the impression Anzaldúa was not including Portuguese-speaking people in the category “Mestiza,” or to state “somos de una gente.” Some people do not include Brazilians in the Latina/o category, including Brazilians. Where do I fit, then?

The fact that people know nothing about where I come from or what language I speak is sometimes frustrating, but also gives me the chance to reinvent myself, at least to a limited extent. Sometimes I refuse to be categorized as a Latina. Sometimes I identify myself as a Latina. Does that mean I am reinventing myself or is it just a demonstration of my identity struggle? Or perhaps both? What are the implications of being a Latina that speaks Portuguese? Does that make any difference? Am I going to be considered a fraud? Am I Latina enough?

The truth is that no matter what I state, to be or not to be Latina is definitely my biggest struggle right now. Being a Latina encompasses a lot of oppressive elements. Am I oppressed enough to claim this identity? Am I having a diasporic crisis? Is living in “la frontera” the best choice to heal my internal conflicts? Right now, I see myself as my own worst enemy. I cannot decide what I want or where I belong. On the other hand, I do not know how much choice I have in this struggle of identity. I am still fighting to transform my small “I” into my total Self.

Raquel Portilho

The margin as central

Welcome to AcademicZ!

Like many people who come to realize their membership in minority groups, I have found myself at various points in life with an intense desire to learn more. Of course I’m sure all academics share a love of knowledge, literature, enlightening conversations, and good debates. However, being in a marginalized position, my identity plays a role in guiding interactions, particularly in the classroom as I assume a position of power to teach content. First, I would like to situate my perspective by sharing some personal instances in which I felt particularly driven to pursue an academic profession. I think this will be a good starting point to consider how and why people enter and/or metaphorically *fight* to be in academia and contribute to what are all too often considered “alternative” voices. Then, I pose some pedagogical questions.

My interest in minority identity issues stems from two influences: my love for history, and my consciousness as a Latina feminist.

I enjoy history because it stirs up thoughts, challenges assumptions, and angers me at times. As I tell my intercultural communication students, people who write history for the textbooks we read are highly privileged because they tell the stories about past events that are overwhelmingly accepted as hard facts. There rests inherent privilege in storytelling. For example, as a young person, I started to question why Native American extermination and land occupation by colonizers were so often sanitized in presentation. Why not call it what it was? Dehumanization, genocide, and stealing. I was even more baffled as to why everyone of Latin descent could be reasonably lumped into one large (but largely heterogeneous!) group as Hispanics - this really short changes the complexity of identities included.

Considering my own regional identity with family from northern New Mexico, it is perfectly normal for me that we proudly hold our own traditions, customs, food, and ways of thinking that constitute a blend of cultures ---> Chican@ = being Latin@/Hispanic (more specifically, of Mexican descent) AND U.S.-born. American but not white, American and culturally diverse. These identities co-exist. Reality is often sanitized.

Much of the history I learned excluded my group identities and it wasn't until much later that I acquired a more well-rounded view. This made me mad. I felt robbed. Like someone was keeping my own history from me. So I asked questions. I asked my history teacher in high school why some things were hardly mentioned, while others were elaborated upon for many pages. I asked my parents about their upbringing. I asked my grandparents about their life experiences. I searched for literature to provide me access to this information from those voices on the margins that I was so sure existed. Surely I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last to note this exclusion and identity tensions and become curious. Sure enough I was right and I have since expanded my personal library to include these histories considered “on the margin” but that are so central in understanding my societal position(s). I have also had many conversations with friends and colleagues who share these sentiments and similar pivotal life moments. I am satisfied to know this knowledge exists; but I am saddened more often than not that when I’m teaching I find I have to integrate mini-history lessons to catch students up on different ways of thinking that are perhaps unconventional. I love teaching mini-history lessons within my communication courses; I hate that my history (and that of many “others”) is marginal in the first place.

Another pivotal life moment occurred shortly after my confrontation with history. I was automatically drawn to a Chicana feminist class to count towards my Women’s Studies Certificate. I enrolled and it blew my mind. I already knew I was a feminist, especially once I realized the man-hating bra-burners were only a sensational media stereotype and NOT representative of the majority of feminists. Again, I recognized diversity within a broad umbrella term on its face, much like the diversity the Hispanic/Latino category encompasses. I first heard of the “double jeopardy” concept when I was in junior high – a woman AND a minority group member.

Well, it was at this point in my graduate education that I was finishing up my thesis and getting ready to graduate. I was also being strongly persuaded by my advisor to consider pursuing a Ph.D. It was this Chicana feminist class that gave me that final push I needed. It disturbed me to learn of the meager percentages of higher education degrees awarded annually to Hispanic females. I couldn’t believe how groups are differentially affected by poverty and systematically disadvantaged, or have experiences hitting glass walls and ceilings within organizations, though perhaps some would never admit to experience with institutional discrimination. I felt like I owed it to myself and my entire cultural and gender group to obtain a Ph.D. Of course, my collectivist-oriented family members are extremely proud of my accomplishments and my working towards a Ph.D. is a group credit.

“Dr. Martinez (one day soon), wow!”

But for me, my teaching and research can be pretty personal, exciting, fun, yet sometimes conflicting and difficult. The more I teach, the more I learn. The more I research, the more questions I come up with.

So, these two pivotal life experiences inform questions I have that are not easily answered:

1) How can we navigate multiple cultures at once as uniquely layered individuals and teach effectively to groups of students who are not similar? Where is the fine balance between living marginalization and teaching to the majority?

2) Is it possible to divorce ourselves from our personal identities and perspectives to teach and conduct research neutrally? Should this be something that is desirable? Is it fair to be asked to keep personal perspective out of our academic lives?

My colleague Kevin and I have pondered and discussed such questions and have come together on some shared experiences. On the one hand, it is a relief to know our experiences are not easily chalked up to personality. Kevin and I are effective teachers. We enjoy teaching greatly, take our responsibilities to students seriously, and strive to become better constantly. On the other hand, it is perplexing to teach as the “other” to the in-group.

We are both eager to engage discussions surrounding these identity tensions as Latin@ communication scholars.