- 04 Apr, 2021
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Ethnic and Indigenous Lives
I would like you to write the following testimonio. I will be asking you to: a) write your own testimonio about your educational trajectory with a focus on race and class; b) employ the “sociological imagination” and place your story in a larger political and economic context, and c) integrate a comparative analysis of two of the testimonios you read in Claiming Home with your own story.
Please keep the length to no longer than 6 pages. Please organize your essay along these three sections. I ask that you use these questions below as prompts to constructing your testimonio:
Your educational trajectory with a focus on race and class (3 pages): Here I would like you to think about your racial/ethnic identity and how that intersects with the class conditions in which you were raised. What kinds of opportunities did you have with respect to your schooling and how were they related to your racial/ethnic identity? Inversely, were there barriers you experienced tied to your racial/ethnic identity and/or class? Did you grow up in segregated schools? Were you able to participate in extracurricular opportunities; why or why not? How did your family’s circumstances shape your educational trajectory? How would you describe the class conditions in which you were raised? How did it change over time? What kind of aspirations did you grow up with? What were the beliefs instilled in you with respect to education? How was this tied to your own parent(s)’ educational histories and opportunities? What is the family lore about education and about opportunities? How have they panned out?
Employ the sociological imagination (1 page):
As you may have surmised, I am big on you making the connection between your biography and the larger social context in which the story of your own education has unfolded. In other words, what social, political, and or economic forces have most shaped your story with respect to education? For example, the rise of tuition in the past decade and-a-half has affected who can go to college today and how indebted you will be by the end of it. The fact that state legislators are defunding higher education has had a direct impact on the vast majority of college students. This speaks to the times and that’s what I would like you to do in this section of your testimonio.
Comparison to testimonios in Claiming Home (2 pages):
In this final section of your testimonio I would like you to take two of the essays you read in Claiming Home and compare their stories to yours. How are your stories similar and different? What appear to be the intervening factors? What were the social forces shaping their lives and how does that compare to your story? How does this comparison shape how you view the stories of individuals who come from migrant families or who come from rural, agricultural communities? What does this teach you about the Mexican American experience, particularly for those involved in the agricultural work so necessary to the food that ends up on our tables?