It's Different Lives

A Guatemalan American Adolescent's Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identities across Educational Contexts

Bibliographic Data

ID2280428
AuthorsLucila D Ek (The University of Texas at San Antonio, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume40
Issue4
Pages405-420
Publication date2009-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology & Education Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0161-7761 • E-ISSN: 1548-1492
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1548-1492.2009.01061.x
OpenAlexW1944963812
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited29

Drawing from a multiyear ethnography and a longitudinal case study, this article examines how one Guatemalan American teenager negotiates the multiple socializations to ethnic and gender identities in her home, her Pentecostal church, and her high school. She must face processes of Americanization and Mexicanization. Americanization's thrust is to replace the languages and cultures of Latino/a students with English and mainstream middle-class European American ways while Mexicanization pushes Central Americans to Mexican and Chicano dialects of Spanish and ways of being. With respect to gender, Amalia confronts a process of sexualization, particularly in school. Tensions between the socializations create spaces where Amalia enacts her agency and constructs her identities. The article is informed by research on multiple socializations, scholarship on identity and agency, and studies of Latino/a language and identities. [Latina, socialization, language, identity, agency

Educational attainment · Ethnic group · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy

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