Educational FCoyunntdhaiati oCn. sR, Seyuemsmer-Fall 2008 “Disturbing the Waters”: Using Relational Knowledge To Explore Methodology By Cynthia C. Reyes We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time…but that’s the implacable judgment of feeling: This, we say somewhere within us, is something I’m hanging to…Instinctively, we go to our store of private associations for our authority to speak of these weighty issues. We find, in our details and broken, obscured images, the language of symbol. Here memory impulsively reaches out and embraces imagination. That is the resort to invention. It isn’t a lie, but an act of necessity, as the innate urge to locate truth always is. (Hampl, 1999) The Importance of Memory Reconstructing memory has a tangible relationship to doing ethnography. Telling stories, sifting through details, examining interpretations are relevant to the researcher’s job of reporting, to the best of her ability, the Cynthia C. Reyes is a professor in representation of a life. In reconstructing other people’s the College of Education at the stories, it seems inevitable that the researcher’s own University of Vermont, Burlington, life—belief system, ideals, practices—once thought of as Vermont. unapproachable, is now called into question when autho- 13 “Disturbing the Waters” rizing self to piece together others’ stories. It is this realization that the researcher, in order to do ethical justice to using ethnography, must know the grounding of one’s own assumptions and beliefs. And what happens when those assumptions are grounded in otherness to begin with? Racial discourse traditionally has focused on the dynamics of black and white people. What of the dynamics between research- ers of color doing research on participants of color? How does race/ethnicity or religion influence interpretation of research for scholars of color? In the following article, I examine my racial identity and its impact on my inter- pretation of the schooling experiences of a 10th grade Latina in an ethnographic case study. Prior to this study, I had been working in a university-based family literacy program where I met Zulmy’s mother, Manuela. Due to my experience as a middle grades English/Spanish bilingual teacher, and due to the observations I made about the difficult transition for many of my former bilingual students who entered high school, I was primarily interested in following the school and literacy experiences of Mexican immigrant students in the high school. I had originally met three young Latinas who were in their freshman year; all of them, including Zulmy, were daughters of the Mexican mothers with whom I worked in the literacy program. As a Filipino American whose second language is Spanish, the young women were curious and intrigued about my interest in them, and about my knowledge of Spanish, which I learned in high school and later in college. They were also impressed that I taught and worked in the university, and they often told me of their dreams to go to college. As I came to know the young women, I learned about the individual ways in which they negotiated their schooling and language experiences in a high school bilingual program. Apart from the other young women I observed, I noted the importance of the Catholic religion in Zulmy’s family, which Manuela fostered at home. Though her mother was not a participant in the study, I was able to interview her to better understand the support that religion gave to their day to day life. To orient myself with the school setting, I also interviewed Zulmy’s teachers and friends about the academic and social life in Zulmy’s high school. For the purpose of understanding how class, religion, and immigration influenced my interpretation of Zulmy’s life, this article mostly addresses the relationship I had with her. I followed Zulmy for 10 months in her classes at an urban high school in the Midwest. The school, Salazar High, had roughly 2,500 students of whom 85% were Latino. For the purpose of this article, I evoke my own experiences as a child of immigrant parents to better understand the intersection of race, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity that described Zulmy’s identity. In referring to Rosaldo’s (1989) notion of relational knowledge, I seek to make my racial persona more culturally visible in an attempt to make the study of differences more the “play of similarities and differences relative to socially explicit identities” (p. 206) be- tween Zulmy and me. This, according to Rosaldo, brings into view the invisible researcher self or detached observer. In examining racial and religious identity, I explore the complexity in using relational knowledge to construct a continuum in which to analyze the positioning between me and my participant in a research 14 Cynthia C. Reyes relationship. Furthermore, such a reflexive process points to how one’s frame of reference inevitably influences interpretation, thereby muddying even further the author’s, as well as the participant’s, voice on identity, language, and schooling. In the following paper, I describe my relationship with Zulmy, first through my initial description of her as a church girl. Then I follow this piece with a personal reflection on language, identity, and ethnicity. Throughout the article, I examine our research relationship vis-à-vis my personal reflections on language and identity, and analyze the implications that such a relationship has on understanding data and writing about one’s participant. Zulmy the church girl In an early classroom observation, one of Zulmy’s classmates publicly referred to her as church girl, teasing her after the teacher complimented Zulmy’s formal dress. In that particular school, students who dressed well, in black skirts or pants with white shirts, were often referred to by their peers as church boy or church girl. This connoted the idea of a church-going, bible-reading, and spiritual-evoking individual. The reference of church girl to Zulmy became an initial stepping stone for exploring the multiple identities that Zulmy assumed in the school. After this first impression, I sought to understand what she felt her role was in the school, family, and church. Her dual frame of reference evolved around Mexican values, la educación (Valdés, 1996) that she learned from her parents and community, and values from her school peers. From an early age on, Manuela socialized Zulmy into the Catholic doctrine, which is why Zulmy placed value in prayer and believed in the influence of spirituality and faith. In an interview one afternoon, Zulmy reflected on divine providence, a similar reference that her mother made during one of our interviews to reason why things occurred in life. Zulmy said, “I believe that God tries to always help us, and above all you have to do your part.” [Yo creo que Diós simepre trata de ayudarnos, y sobretodo tiene que poner su parte.] I asked Zulmy, “What is the part that you have to do?” She answered: I have to help my family, I have to pray, and later I have to study. I always remember that God is also with me, because if I say that God has to help me but I don’t study, or I don’t try, I will not do well, I will not get the ‘A’. [Tengo que ayudar la familia, tengo que rezar, y después me pongo a estudiar. Y siempre me acuerdo que Diós tiene que ayudarme pero no studio, o no hago el esfuerzo, no voy a tener exito, no voy a sacarme una “A.”] Zulmy also found value in songs written by young Christian groups. Favoring salsa over the ranchera that Manuela listened to, Zulmy said she liked salsa, cumbia, or Christian rap. She described a favorite song about someone who professes to believe but is capricious and whose faith is inconstant. My favorite song is one that my friend who is Pentecostal lent me that said, “that you accepted God but you never talk to him, that you don’t talk to him unless you 15 “Disturbing the Waters” need him, you never talk to him but when you have problems you talk to him.” You always forgot about him, you just call him when you need him. But it’s not like that. [Mi canción favorite es una que me presto una amiga, un pentecostés, y [la canción] decía, “que tú aceptaste Diós pero nunca la hablas.” Siempre lo olvidas, solo lo llamas cuando lo necesitas. Pero no es así.] Zulmy described religion as being more strongly grounded in her parent’s time and generation. She referred to los tiempos de antes or a time before when things were better, something she had learned from her mother’s childhood stories about life in Mexico. Now reflecting on her own generation, Zulmy perceived young people throughout the world, not just the Mexican immigrant youth who accultur- ated quickly to the English-speaking mainstream, as suffering a lack of values that had not been learned from an earlier generation. I think that today the youth no longer want to study or do anything. There are a lot of drugs, the computer is used for (doing) bad. Many are using the (computer) to look at bad things or make bombs or to harm young children. And I believe things long ago were not as bad. There is more drug use, more gangs. [Yo pienso que hoy en día la juventud ya no quiere estudiar ni nada. Hay mucha droga, la computadora la usan para mal. Muchos la están usando par ver cosas malas, para hacer bombas o hacer daño a los niños chiquitos. Y creo que antes, antes no había la maldad. Ahora hay mucha droga, muchas gangas.] I asked her if she might have thought the technology was also responsible for mak- ing things available to young people, and Zulmy agreed, but she also said that it was also due to lack of will or faith in oneself. I feel sad because many young people instead of success they are using drugs and are gangbangers and I think that we are all important, they are intelligent. There is nobody “dumb” not even the handicapped. And the handicapped people, I admire them a lot because I think that they although they don’t have (the use of) hands or feet many times they do more than we do. [Me siento triste porque muchos jovenes en lugar de triunfar ellos están usando drogas y son “gangeros” [pandilleros] y pienso que nosotros valemos mucho. Todos son bien intelligentes. No hay ningún burro ni siquiera los incapacitados. Y la gente incapacitada yo la admiro mucho porque pienso que ellos muchas veces aunque no tengan las manos ni los pies ellos hacen más que nosotros.] These quotations clearly reflect Zulmy’s belief about the transformative influence that religion could have on adolescents. Her concern about today’s youth also reflects the thinking of her parent’s generation; the youths’ perceived lack of faith and confidence in themselves, and their dependence on drugs. Zulmy believes that everyone has a choice and that these choices may result from divine intervention. She believes prayer and faith would lead one to a solution. As a researcher, I am compelled to listen to Zulmy’s beliefs, and as someone who had also been raised with a religious background I could bring that knowledge to bear on my interpretations of Zulmy’s religious perspective. At the same time, I ponder Zulmy’s quick assumptions about her peers who she perceived as losing 16 Cynthia C. Reyes their identity in the American mainstream. I was a youth of immigrant parents who had also acculturated to American life, as my parents raised us to embrace a life they felt afforded many freedoms we would not have been entitled to in the Philippines. Suddenly, I become aware of my own assumptions, and the way in which Zulmy’s response situates me, aware of the dialectic between researcher and participant perspectives and how those influence the interpretative process. In recounting my life’s experiences on paper, of my own acculturation as a U.S.-born citizen, I am reminded of how my own views on language, identity, and religion differ from Zulmy’s. In taking into account the lens through which I view our relationship, it seems negligent not to examine more closely the relationship dynamic of the researcher and participant, and the power inequities inherent in such a relationship. What, for example, is the responsibility of the researcher to present the participant’s story as she presents it in the context of her life, yet with the researcher’s gaze that one is taught to do in one’s respective graduate program? Throughout my relationship with Zulmy, I learned about the importance of religion in her life, home, and community. In the following example, I observe how she strongly communicated her beliefs during a conversation with friends in art class one day. Zulmy began to reminisce about one of her best friends, Maria Luisa, whose family decided to suddenly move back to Mexico midyear. Zulmy’s other friends were teasing her about her friend moving away. “Hope you don’t cry, Zulmy.” Lorena teased Zulmy. They all knew that Maria Luisa was returning to Mexico permanently because Zulmy had come to art class several times sighing about how her best friend was going back, and how she would miss her. Zulmy threw her a mischievous look. “I’m not going to cry. And for what? It makes me happy that she is going!” She laughed. “Oh, Zulmy.” Cecilia sighed. Cecilia was one year younger than Zulmy and Lorena. Sometimes Zulmy referred to her as the bébe, the baby, in the group. Cecilia had met Zulmy and Lorena for the first time in art class. She didn’t know Zulmy well enough yet to know when her friend was being serious or not. “She’s one of my best friends,” Zulmy replied enthusiastically, adding, “but there is one thing that I don’t like, and that is her religion.” Zulmy considered Maria Luisa a great friend, and according to Maria Luisa’s message they shared a mutual respect. But Zulmy perceived their friendship as sometimes challenged by their differences in belief. Zulmy’s skepticism was based on her disagreement with Maria Luisa’s beliefs over how the earth would end. Zulmy related to us what Maria Luisa described to her about life after death in heaven. Her friend explained how Jehovah’s Witnesses believed in an apocalypse that predicted in the end that earth would turn into paradise, and only the believers would be saved. “To us they would say….What do you wait for? To die? Because, she (Maria Luisa) says, paradise is right here (on earth). There is a quote that they use about how John had a vision that only those people (Jehovah’s Witnesses) would be saved.” Though Zulmy prides herself in having friends of different religions, it is dif- 17 “Disturbing the Waters” ficult for her to understand that another religious group could view itself as more favored in God’s eye than her own. She acts slighted at the idea that any other group would see themselves as the chosen ones. “Each one has their own beliefs but why does Maria Luisa talk to me so much if she knows that I believe in something different…if I ever took another religion, that (Jehovah’s Witness) would be the last one,” said Zulmy. She launched into a story with her friends of one experience that she had with one of the members of Jehovah’s Witness who canvassed her neighborhood one weekend. According to Zulmy, Jehovah’s Witnesses always told the person at the door how they wanted to save their souls. She listened respectfully, received the woman’s pamphlet, and later disposed of it in the garbage can. As if to make up for what she perceived might be a harsh comment on her friend’s religion, Zulmy offered a compliment that both validated her friend and reflected Zulmy’s inability at the time to develop a more critical understanding of difference between her beliefs and that of her friend’s as she noted that, at least, Jehovah’s Witnesses dressed well and spoke respectfully. In this instance, Zulmy’s quick concession also reflected her mother’s practice of finding common ground with others with whom they perceived differences. Although others might perceive her comments or description of her friend’s religion as misguided, she would never think of herself in this way. She often sup- ported what she said with her wish to be charitable to others, regardless of their religion, as her Catholic religion taught her. In situating this analysis within the researcher participant relationship, I am compelled to tell her truth as she sees it, but from a researcher’s objective gaze, I must also analyze the data critically. As someone who has tried to act as Zulmy’s advocate, how responsible should I be for helping Zulmy become more aware of her own biases? As a teacher in an instructional setting, had one of my students spoken thus, I would not have let this teaching moment pass. But since my relationship with Zulmy began as a research study informed by restrictions and ethical rules, as well as a relationship whose tone is dictated and set by an orientation to methods and methodology, I did not feel comfortable assuming the teaching role, especially since I had my own particular views about religion. Like many other educational ethnographers who might work with students, how can we be both compassionate advocate and critical researcher for our participants? As a researcher of color, I am even more perplexed about how to reconcile the issue of power inequity between me and my participant who is also of color. As anthropologist Ruth Behar noted, “Here is the paradox of doing ethnographic work—it is a process by which each of us confronts our respective inability to comprehend the experience of others even as we recognize the absolute necessity of continuing the effort to do so,” (1993, p. 271). In the following two sections, I explore more deeply the power inequities in our relationship, and what is meant by relational knowledge in this context. 18 Cynthia C. Reyes Drawing upon Personal Knowledge as an Ideological Tool To Understand Power Inequity Doing ethnography1 did not merely suggest the practice of methods or techniques of that research tradition, but also required a reflexive exercise of the cultural and social borders that I perceived between me and Zulmy. Using the ethnographic method to construct Zulmy’s experiences, I also became more aware of the researcher’s self. As Denzin (1989) observes, bias inevitably influences the scholar’s interpretations. Subjectivity is another term that is used to describe how in a research study, one is never free from the influence of one’s class, status, value, which collectively engages with the analysis of the phenomenon at hand (Peshkin, 1982). Rosaldo (1989), whose anthropological work with the Illongot tribal group in the Philippines, sees one responsibility of ethnography as the remaking of social analysis that focuses on redefining the researcher from a blank slate or position of detached observer to one of a positioned subject. In reflecting on the anthropological stance that he used in his research with the Ilongot, he likened the relationship to that between a child and an adult, where his role, which was similar to an infant’s, was to learn and to grow from his participants, the Illongot adults. Rosaldo felt his own “enlightenment” of their culture would naturally follow if he engaged the role of a child who was learning or gaining more experience. He described social borders as potential sites for creative cultural production that required investigation. Social borders “were salient around such lines as sexual orientation, gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, politics, dress, food, or taste” (1989, p. 208). Rosaldo (1989) also proposed a central role for participants in the research study, whose perceptions the anthropologist should also consider. Giving the participant an opportunity to comment on the anthropologist’s conduct would also make visible the researcher’s upper middle-class professional persona. The study of differences, formerly defined in opposition to an invisible “self,” now becomes the play of similarities and differences relative to socially explicit identities. The questions become, How do “they” see “us”? Who are “we” looking at “them?” (1989, p. 206) In Translated Woman (1993), Behar goes to great lengths to unpeel the layer of social class between her and her participant, Esperanza, a Mexquitic woman. She first discovers this difference in the way that others may perceive from observing them together in public, which signifies something altogether different from their usual setting where she is researcher and Esperanza is participant. This is noted in the following quote. Being seen—for the first time—as others see us is a moment of revelation for me, as though we’ve suddenly entered a hall of mirrors…It is one thing, I realize, to have Esperanza come secretly to my kitchen in Mexquitic and fill my waiting ears and voracious tape recorder with her stories. It is quite another to be in the street together as real people with real bodies, with real racial and class meanings attached to us…There we are, two comadres walking side by side, transgressing a silent border simply by being together. (1993, p. 240) 19 “Disturbing the Waters” Behar reflects on her privilege when she observes the various class advantages to which she is untitled when considering the social settings in which she is already situated: she has access to a place to stay in the village in which she does her eth- nographic work, she can afford to bring her family as she completes her work, she can buy and locate services freely because of her status as a university researcher. Although Behar contemplates on the different meanings that were ascribed to her social class in contrast to Esperanza’s, she also describes an ironic contrast with her position in higher education, where as a Latina and a woman, she felt the burden of being a minority faculty who sold out. In the following quote she described the dilemma of being a faculty of color: I was planning to turn the tales of a Mexican street peddler into a book that would be read within the very same academy that had toyed with my most intimate sense of identity and then, with even less compunction, bought me out. Fresh from the horror of being a translated woman, I would now turn around and translate another woman for consumption on this side of the border. (1993, p. 335) The power differential between me and Zulmy is obvious. I am a Filipino American who had access to good education her whole life. I was a child of im- migrants who grew up in a middle class home because of my parent’s education and social class. As a university researcher, I am entitled to the intellectual property that I gain from my research studies. In collecting Zulmy’s stories I am compelled to interpret her life, but I am also challenged to interpret her story in light of my own cultural experiences. Though I cannot speak for her or give her voice in my narrative, I strive to write her story as she has communicated it to me. While I have accountability to Zulmy, still implicit in that accountability is the very power that entitles me to tell her story. Using Story To Understand a Participant’s Experience In the following reflection piece, I recall my struggle with identity and lan- guage not to suggest commonality between my life and Zulmy’s, but to put forth my reason for writing about Zulmy’s teen experiences. There is a vital need to voice the experiences of teen life, especially of young women of color. The works of various educators (Davidson, 1996; Fine, M., Weis, L., & Powell, L., 1997; Weiler, 2000) informs my understanding of the making of youth identity in the school relative to, among other factors, peer and adult relationships, and academic schooling. My awareness of what I experienced as a child of immigrant parents, my inability to maintain two languages and of having acculturated so quickly into the American culture prompts me to record Zulmy’s experiences as being distinct from my own. Attempting to understand her experiences helped me to become more aware of living in a bicultural and bilingual world. That prompted a kind of relational knowledge that Rosaldo (1989) referred to when describing how social analysis thus became a relational form of understanding in which both parties actively engaged in the interpretation of cultures. Rather than being perspectival, impressed 20 Cynthia C. Reyes from within a single point of view, such forms of human understanding involved the irreducible perceptions of both analysts and their subjects. Yet, I argue these forms of understanding, as Rosaldo described them, are not juxtaposed equally. In exploring further what is meant by relational knowledge, there is an inequity that is already inherent in the relationship. While Rosaldo likened his relationship to that of child to adult, I could not analyze from a similar anthropological stance. The differences between me and Zulmy are at once ethnic, religious, and generational. Though I strive to write about her experiences as she sees it, my own lenses of a woman old enough to be her mother, of a teacher, of a university researcher collectively create layers of authoritative privilege that risk misinterpreting the story of a young adult woman of color. In the writing of Esperanza, Behar (1993) comes close to suggesting a familial affinity with Esperanza through their relationship of comadres. The attention that Behar brings to her own story as a young scholar of color who struggles for recogni- tion in a university becomes potentially self-indulgent and highlights the limitations of exploring researcher subjectivity in light of one’s participant. Behar goes on to explore more fully such limitations, as well as revisits the role of the anthropologist’s vulnerability in her later work (1996). Though we are both women of color, similar to Behar and Esperanza’s relationship, our lives are situated differently as the public would perceive us differently. In my attempts to locate the power deferential in my relationship with Zulmy, I argue that even with its limitations the concept of relational knowledge is important to identifying power deferential in a research relationship. Having chosen to explore the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender and social class in her relationship with Esperanza, I argue Behar comes close to exploring a reflexive process that elaborates on Rosaldo’s concept of relational knowledge. As a result, the following section is my attempt to interpret Zulmy’s life based on a narrative of my own experiences with identity and language. Memory of Identity and Language My little nephew Jordan Michael, whose name—his parents intended—when reversed would be the same as the famous, former professional Chicago basketball player, Michael Jordan, grabbed the back of a chair doing his own athletic feat. Legs bouncing, his chubby fingers curled tightly around one rung as he swung one leg closer to where his mother Owens sat, tempting him with a morsel from her fork, “C’mon Jordan,” she coaxed, “halika ditto” (come here). I watched as he advanced, his lips brimming with drool, his bright eyes search- ing his mother’s face. “He loves manok (chicken), and even sinigang (sour soup).” Owens proclaimed, “He’s a true Pilipino.” This was the first time I had met my nephew, and the second time I had seen Owens, my cousin Mario’s wife. It was during this family reunion on my mother’s side when I met my cousin, his wife, and child. Similar to other immigrants who followed their families to the U.S., Mario had arrived from the Philippines three years ago to join his father, my mother’s only sibling, Uncle Danilo who had settled near Portland, Maine. Everyone conversed in Tagalog, occasionally switching to 21 “Disturbing the Waters” English to address me, the only one in the room, besides little Jordan, who could not share in their stories or jokes. As a young girl, I was able to create distractions so as not to call attention to my poor rendition of Tagalog. When relatives came to our home, I never spoke to them. They sat in the living room exchanging what I perceived as a song-like rhythm of their language. My mother would nudge me to perform some recent accomplishment: a piano piece, a dance, or what I desired doing most, the hula hoop. While I could not impress them with my speaking abil- ity in Tagalog, I could always charm them with my talent for swinging a green, neon hoop one hundred or more rotations around my waist. I had lost the ability to speak Tagalog since we returned to the U.S. when I was six years old. My mother remembered how I came home from school one day and how I resisted her efforts to speak to me in her language, telling her that the sisters would not like it if I spoke in a different language. From then on, my mother stopped speaking to me in Tagalog, suddenly aware that her efforts to maintain our native language would only get in the way of me speaking good English. The sound of the beads raced round and round inside the hula hoop shaking loudly each time I gyrated my hips in response to the applause. Instead, I cued my laughter, drawing it out after everyone had stopped so they would see that their linguistically challenged U.S. relative could understand their jokes even if she could not share any of her own. In every Filipino conversation I’ve ever heard between generations, the elder usually asked the younger members the inevitable question. “Are you teaching him Tagalog?” my mother asked Owens. “Ah huh, ate Lori, como no?” she answered. My mother nodded in approval. Handing a bowl of rice to uncle Danilo, my mother said in Tagalog, “Here, have the rest, I’ll get more.” “I’ll get it, mom,” I said, half wishing my Uncle Danilo would speak to me, but knowing that I couldn’t answer him. “Cynthia doesn’t speak Tagalog anymore, ate?” uncle Danilo asked in Tagalog. I yelled “no” over my shoulder as I walked into the kitchen. He didn’t notice. In the kitchen I heard my mother say, “She used to speak more when we lived in the Philippines, remember? She really knew the language then.” Yes, I thought. I remembered. Mother told me exactly when I learned how to speak Tagalog; it was after my first visit to my lola’s (grandmother’s) house. I was three-and-a-half. We had returned to the Philippines from Chicago so my father could finish studying medicine in the U.S. My father worked hard and spent his days and most evenings in the hospital, while my mother cared for two young children at home. I often wondered if the harsh Chicago winters produced loneliness so intense that to be without family or friends might have been more than what any individual could bear. So, my mother returned to the Philippines with my brother and me in tow, and for the next three years we lived across the street from my grandparents in a district of central Manila. During my first visit to their home, I was suddenly struck with the uncom- fortable feeling of wanting to go to the bathroom. My lola had no inkling of the 22