Keeping Them Out,Letting You In

Abstract

As a first-year doctoral student in my first quarter, I expected to be challenged, not rocked to my core. I entered the program with what I would have described as a strong, salient, and clear understanding of who I am and how I move in the world. At the end of my first year, I can say with conviction that I have more to learn. There were four critical moments that shifted/altered/jolted my learning forward. This article is structured around each of these moments and is an exploration of the themes and questions that emerged.

Categories, Feminist Theories and Research

I didn’t come out, I let you in.

—José Antonio Vargas (Online News Association Conference, 2012)

Vargas, a gay, undocumented, Filipino American journalist, is believed to have made this remark talking specifically about his undocumented status in the United States, as opposed to the “coming out” that is usually expected of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-spirit/Mahu (LGBTQ2/Mahu) folks. Although his comment is somewhat different than what I examine in this paper, it resonated quickly and deeply in the context of my own intersectional (queer, Pinay, scholar, mother) identities and started a passionate inquiry into the history of this sentiment. Do all of us queer and trans* folks of color feel like we let people in rather than stepping out of the proverbial (White gay man’s) closet? This paper describes the process of inviting you in and making sure nothing unwanted slides through while the door is open.

Background

As a first-year doctoral student in my first quarter, I expected to be challenged, not rocked to my core. I entered the program with what I would have described as a strong, salient, and clear understanding of who I am and how I move in the world. As I near the close of my first year as a student in over 10 years, I can say with conviction—with absolute certainty—that I have more to learn. In these 30 weeks, there have been four critical moments that shifted/altered/jolted my learning forward. This article is structured around each of these moments and is an exploration of the themes and questions that emerged.

“Off the Mean”: Developing a Reflexive and Reflective Practice

In my first week of class, after each of my colleagues shared their primary interests and substantive area, I described my work and the questions I am hoping to pursue throughout my doctoral program—community-based suicide prevention with queer and Native Hawaiians using culture and arts-based practices. My professor at the time informed me that I am off the mean and that I would require some unique and additional supports during the program. When I shared this with my advisor (who was, in fact, the primary person he recommended provide me those supports), she replied by saying, “good! That is a perfect place to start.” She then assigned me a paper she had written with another woman of color in the academy, “Honoring Our Intellectual Ancestors: A Feminist of Color Treaty for Creating Allied Collaboration” (Beltrán & Mehrotra, 2015). Throughout this paper, Beltrán and Mehrotra ask a number of questions to help guide the development and maintenance of a reflective, reflexive practice in order to facilitate research, collaboration, and social justice from a feminist of color perspective. For me, it provided the structured framework for identifying, acknowledging, and assessing the impacts of my positionalities—a process that is absent from my doctoral program and is made glaringly obvious as I stare, unreflected in the faces of my all-White doctoral cohort. It was the first time I was asked (and allowed) to enter the room.

Who are you? What are your primary identities? What are the areas in your life where you have power/privilege? Where are you in marginalized or target positions? What kind of institutional roles/power do you have? How might this impact collaborations and/or stakes of you work?

I am a radical queer mestiza Pinay, raising a small child in a lesbian, feminist, Buddhist, punk activist household. I am trying to emulate some of the practices that my parents—both social workers—and grandparents used in raising my siblings and me. The culture and values that I was raised with seeped through into the very fabric of the days we spent together—as likely to be at a Take Back the Night Rally as we were to be at a Filipino basketball league tournament, birding along a marsh somewhere in Michigan or eating budbud wrapped in banana leaves from Hilo. Our culture felt very much our own—perhaps because we didn’t fit neatly into the preconceived notions of the places that we went—but our culture also fits into boxes of experiences shared by many. We are mixed—second-generation Filipino American from my father’s side and German and English from my mother’s side. My grandparents were farmers—Drusie and Bill with roots in family farms in Missouri where collective memories of peach-blueberry cobbler, deep winter freezes, dried gourds on the porch, and hand-pumped water still inspire feelings of warmth, of strength. Eva and Simeón from chicken farms in rural mountain villages in the Visayan Islands (the central region of the Philippines), where we learned about lizards, the many uses of banana leaves, and what it feels like to be surrounded by cousins. My family’s collectivity gives me access to tremendous strength. The lessons each individual learns is brought to the group, discussed over a meal, framed, reframed, and digested.

In my professional role, I am a trainer, supervisor, grant writer, and program director, and my work is to advocate tirelessly on behalf of the underserved, overrepresented youth in our systems. Increasingly, however, I am coming to find that the most effective action I take is not to provide the direct services to the youth we are working with but instead to facilitate the process for others. Trained in improvisational performance, experiential education, and in social work, I have come to value quick decision-making, creative interventions, and socially just practice. The most transformational moments of my life have been composed of simple ingredients—a difficult conversation, a series of questions, a search for answers.

Purpose

Identity Shocks: Indigenough? or Just Off-Brown?

“Aren’t you Filipino?” she asks (asserts?). “Why don’t you study your own people?”

In a visit with several brilliant indigenous health scholars, I found myself cornered, confronted, and confounded. It was like finally getting the curve ball you have been expecting, the shoe dropping, the camera catching you midblink. It was inescapable (in fact, I often think I am still sitting in this moment 6 months later)—my fear, my shame, red cheeks to my defense. My ears were ringing.

“It is still an important story,” she offers.

I am humbled by her attention to my work. I am terrified that her questions and critiques are correct—how can I presume to know how to ask the right questions, much less interpret the responses from a community that is not my own? Why is Native Hawaiian suicidality my kuleana to study? How will my positionalities impact my work? I am also, somewhere deep down in my gut, not sure that she is correct. Relational accountability “means that the methodology needs to be based in a community context (be relational) and has to demonstrate respect, reciprocity, and responsibility” (Wilson, 2008, p. 99). I was asked to conduct this research by the members of the Native Hawaiian community. I was charged to find answers. Mixed identities in Hawaii are more common than a single ethnic/racial identity, and multicultural, cross-racial research is the norm. Perhaps my positionalities give me access to unique perspectives and liminal spaces that other researchers cannot access. Perhaps I have something to offer.

Days later, an assistant professor of Chicana studies who was visiting our class described the idea of “off-White” as a phenomenon wherein the young people she interviewed considered themselves “White,” even though they don’t have light skin, Caucasian features, or anything else that would signify a White racial identity to anyone outside of themselves. It resonated with me. Am I “off-Brown”? What are the implications of identifying as a woman of color without many of the visual markers of my mestiza Filipina identity? Being perceived as White assigns me power and privilege that I do not always identify with and also affords other White people a level of comfort and an uncritical space that I am very disturbed by. At the same time, it occurs to me that I am half-White—why am I having this crisis of Whiteness?

My perceptions of Whiteness in the academy have come to mean “rightness.” It is signified by quantitative measures, by randomized controlled trials, and by uncritical citations and hierarchies of worth. It is the ability to choose what you study based on curiosity or funding, to choose when to not address an issue like race because it makes you feel uncomfortable, and to be assumed straight and cis. I am not White.

Critical qualitative research is “done for explicit, political, utopian purposes, a politics of liberation, a reflexive discourse constantly in search of an open-ended, subversive, mulitvoiced epistemology” (Lather, 2007, pp. x–xi, cited in Denzin & Lincoln, 2008, p. 5). But whose voices are included in this discourse? Indigenist research centers indigenous voices, resistance, and integrity of relationship (Foley, 2003). It is a strategy that indigenous and nonindigenous researchers can employ. Still, there is a tension among indigenous scholars about who can and should and must participate. “It is like an unresolved harmonic chord. We hope to find some grace around the small moments when the cadence resolves” (R. Beltrán, personal communication, April 19, 2016). I believe that the future of decolonizing research is in “hybrid identities and border-crossers performing research in ways that resist ‘insider-outside’ dichotomies while continuing to authentically foreground Indigenous issues and work” (Swadner & Mutua, 2008, p. 41). Still I am terrified of the (re)presentation of indigeneity. Where is the line of commodity? Where is the edge that leads to glorification? How can I save myself from my own fears? Storytelling, as described by Ellis and Bochner (2000), can be painful, humiliating, and invigorating. Am I ready for this? I am motivated enough by the “crisis of confidence in social science” (p. 735) that Bochner describes to revel in other “delinquent” (p. 734) forms of expression—queerness, arts-based expression, theater…? What would be the benefit of sharing these fears, this process of re-presentation, as part of the product? I can ask the spect-actors to “think with our story instead of about it” (my emphasis, p. 735). How can I follow Ellis’ steps—a “systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall to try and understand an experience I’ve lived through” (p. 737). I have to ask: Is bracketing or memoing enough?? [NO!]

Finally, I begin to wonder: Is reflexive practice White? Do people with marginalized identities (and especially multiple marginalized identities) ever reflect on their experiences of something without an overlay of power and structural inequality? Yes, I suppose we do. We get mad at individuals without implicating the system [cis-tem]. We feel hopeless and isolated without implicating the system. We try to kill ourselves without implicating the system. These are not reflexive choices, per se, but it occurs to me that reflexivity might still—sometimes—be a marker of privilege. If I am drowning, I will not have the time to scream.

Practices

Academons: Using Performance Poetics to Keep Them Out

Academons—what are they? Fears? Doubts? Ivory Tower expectations? Uncritical demands on time, productivity, even methodology that require the validation and triangulation of my mere existence? The word stumbled out of my mouth in a Freudian slip in class while I was encouraging my colleague not to let the demands of the academy get into their head, change their work, interrupt their focus. After thinking about the pressures to “publish or perish,” the unknowable audience who demands me to code switch and the propagators of the imposter syndrome whom inspire crippling perfectionism and impossible grit, academons seemed to sum it up.

After writing my first paper (an excruciating five-page literature review that took me 3 days to write), I began to see the ways that academons infiltrate everything—even my own voice. Re-presenting statistics about the suicide risks associated with LGBTQ2/Mahu identities, for example, which is what I was taught to do, without a critical understanding of the contexts of homophobia and transphobia in their communities, exacerbates the problem. The only way to contribute queer, decolonizing research that has the potential to transform the field is to use liberatory language. Fighting the academons who insist that a fact is a fact, I can see that a literature review is an opportunity to do more than report but instead to introduce new topics into the discussion and to transform the ways the conversations had.

And then I met E. Patrick Johnson and D. Soyini Madison. Well, not in person, but in their work. Johnson’s Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (2008) breathed life into me. It was reflexive. It was funny. It was heartbreaking. And, perhaps most importantly to me at the time—it was research! Through the witnessing of stories, critical reflection, and embodiment, Johnson lets his own body and his own voice transmit the narratives with strength and vulnerability. “1) Bodies tell stories about our existence. 2) these stories sometimes match our words. 3) Tell stories we cannot, will not, choose not to tell” (Krieger, 2005, p. 350). With my training in Theater of the Oppressed (Boál, 1979), performance ethnography and practicing embodiment in research felt like returning home. I would perform my qualitative research—interviews with six queer and Native Hawaiian adults about the impact of colonization on identity and mental health. This was the direction I had been looking for.

As I began transcribing my interviews, the voices of the participants began to seep into the ways that I typed them up: a new line for a long pause, italics for strong emotion, (laughter). (Silence) (Madison, 1993).

Madison says it is an act of violence to remove the context of the story (2008). She produces a poetic transcript—one that listens to the soundscapes around the words, that captures the passion, the pain that can be heard in a throat tightening, in lips pursing, but that is harder to see in paper. Through performance pedagogy, I found several long excerpts from the interviews that demonstrated the main themes of the project, and each excerpt became a monologue. Like Madison, and other expressive, qualitative researchers, I sought metaphorical generalizability, “investigating a particular case, yet seeks to penetrate the depths of that case to present more universal truths” (Szto, Furman, & Langer, 2005, p. 137). This was the way to win the battles against academons, the way to contribute to my field while also feeding my heart, supporting my community. These practices (rather than methods, which are presumed to be implemented with neutrality—Leavy, 2009) were tools for my qualitative research.

Vu(learn)ablility and the Power of Ceremony

In a beautiful model of critical scholarship, the editors of Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature (2011) published a companion book of creative writing by Two-Spirit scholars. “Artists are the visionaries leading us to a bright future, to mourning the past in productive ways, and to sensuously stunning us in the present. Through this artistic activism, Indigenous queer and Two-Spirit people can reclaim our spirits,” they said (Driskill, Finley, Gilley, & Morgensen, 2011, p. 220). For my InDIGIqualitative Research Methods course, ¹ I created an autoarcheology (Fox, 2010) of my family line, and alongside this, critical academic reflection is a poetry book. The art is healing.

Using photos, recipes, and old stories, I created a food and adventure show exploring the impacts of colonization and diaspora on my family. A dynamic Prezi of maps of the Philippines, historic photos of our old family house in Cebu, and images of queer and mestizo Filipinos was the backdrop to a live monologue exploring “key diasporic concerns—memory, cultural loss, disorientation, violence, and exploitation” (Balme & Christensen, 2001, p. 45, cited in Denzin & Lincoln, 2008, p. 7). I wanted to research and share my stories the ways that I have researched and gathered narratives of my participants; an “intertwining of authenticity and artfulness” (Leavy, 2009, p. 279). Archibald (2008) says that indigenous storywork involves the heart, mind, body, and spirit. It is (re)learning, being children. So I returned to stories, food, and photos that I have always known and I began to relearn them. How did these artifacts come to me? What have they come to mean to me? Where do I exist within the artifacts? This public, poetic, and performative pedagogy (Leavy, 2009) gave me just enough emotional distance to investigate painful memories and stories of the Alvarez family line—brown bodies, white bodies, and queer bodies—and the ways we merge and bump and eat and love together. We are doing research not only in colonized spaces, but in colonized bodies (Swadner & Mutua, 2008). Locating colonization and White supremacy not only in the physical lands of my ancestors but in our food, in our stories, and in our families (as relatives) felt like a radical reclaiming of my new mestiza (Anzaldúa, 1987).

Sharing this story and hearing the stories of my classmates was ceremony in the classroom. InDIGIqualitative methods filled a need we all felt.

…a need for a militant utopianism to help us imagine a world free of conflict, oppression, terror, and death. We need oppositional performance disciplines that will show us how to create radical utopian spaces within our public institutions. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008, p. 13)

Connections with other indigenous/mestizo/queer/people of color and allies provided the fifth and final step of Madison’s recommendations for critical reflection: “comrades” (Madison, 2008, p. 400). We were (finally) not alone.

Implications

Researcher Emerges From the Pile of Onion Skins

The graduation speech delivered at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for the class of 2016 was a spoken word poem delivered by a graduate, Donovan Livingston. The poem describes using the power of education to do more than transform and instead using it to ignite—to create change, hope, and liberation—especially in the minds of young people of color. Livingston wants more than the rhetoric of high expectations for our youth, “injustice is telling them they are stars without acknowledging the night that surrounds them” (Livingston, 2016).

For me, and many others I am sure, the Whiteness that surrounds me in the academy has created a darkness. The academons operate externally asking me to validate and generalize, forcing my positionalities into uncomfortable positions, and internally spewing stats instead of songs, defending indigenough blood quantum instead of performing embodiment.

After one year in a doctoral program, I understand that the night will not dissipate (at least not anytime soon). There are others soaring through this darkness—many who came before me and many more who are close behind. Rather than charting, cursing, crying in this darkness, I have to decide to search for the stars. “If research doesn’t change you as a person then you aren’t doing it right” (Wilson, 2008, p. 83). Through radical reflexivity, performance pedagogies, and ceremony, I am making space for myself, I am emerging.

I am filled with gratitude for my intellectual and familial ancestors—especially the queer, women of color who are leading my way—Deb Ortega, Bernadette Calafell, Shadee Abdi, Elaine Penagos, Brianna Mestas, Jonah DeChants, Shanna K. Kattari, D. Soyini Madison, E. Patrick Johnson, Michael Kral, Michael Spencer, Maxine K. Anderson, Kris Bifulco, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and Ann and Tony Alvarez. But I am also filled with more than gratitude, more than protocol. I owe them an ethics of love (hooks, 1991). “Love is a political principle through which we struggle to create mutually life-enhancing opportunities for all people” (Darder & Mirón, 2006, p. 18, cited in Denzin & Lincoln, 2008). Love is struggle against domination. Love is bringing light to the darkness. Love is liberation. Deep gratitude to Ramona Beltrán and Gita Mehrotra for finding a blind spot and filling it with light.

This journey

This journey has been filled with discourse recourse charting a new course. Hokulea—finding our map along the way. Lit up in our hearts, in our herstories, in our hands. Gardens of tortillas, pots filled with remnants remains not silent— they are suffering. We replant them. Offer water, sweet grass, poetry. These are healing days. These are healing days. I am going in search of citational politics critical dance feminist foods. I will sing my dissertation—it will pour out of me, through me— a conduit, a channel, a cup— voices and hopes patterns in the sky. The people will teach, I will learn. I will listen.