Unmaking Gringo-Centers

Abstract

Recuerdos1Tengo un recuerdo.Over the weekend, I'd observe my tío work on cars.He'd pop the hood, turn the vehicle on, and listen.He'd step back and look at me and say, "Listen mi'jo to the car."He'd lean back in and work to locate the problem.My tío taught me about the capacious work involved in listening, the type of listening that centers the corporeal body as sensuous within and between the physical, temporal, and symbolic.Learning to listen as such situated me in space, place, and time.My ethos and politics of being, seeing, and doing emerged from these points of references.I was born in the U.S., raised along the frontera of the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV).Situated in-between the geopolitical border that separates two nations and the internal checkpoints that run parallel, I came to embody and experience the legacies behind the phrase The Mexican.It is a palimpsest of identity that is resounded in the mythology of normalcy and deviancy.The border/internal checkpoints and the archetypical inscription of The Mexican , together, function to accentuate who and what is "in place" and "out of place."From early on, I understood what it meant to carry the burden of meaning associated with this region's histories.You see, sin padre, raised by a single mother who was a high school dropout, I was just another statistic experiencing what it meant to be poor with limited access to resources and opportunities.But, I also learned how to practice survivance, resiliency, and agency through listening.Listening emerged in the crux of incoherencies and disjunctions.It became a form of expression that I found to be transformed and transformative.From listening, I understood that I was situated within a historical space and connected to historical bodies.In the liminal spaces created from my physical and metaphorical crossings and my awareness of how borders and internal checkpoints function and operate in my everyday, my body was thrusting the spaces between societal limitations and new self-definitions.Tengo otro recuerdo.At grandma's kitchen table I'd sit after school every weekday."¿Como te fue en la escuela?" she'd ask as soon as I walked in.I believe she'd ask both out of concern and a longing for the educational experience denied to her once she crossed la frontera."Siéntate," she'd say to me.On the table would be her worksheets where she'd write in English and Spanish and a recorder where she'd practice & K. Rowan (Eds.),Writing centers and the new racism: A call for sustainable dialogue and change (pp.150-176).

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