Abstract
A student whom we will call Pilar1 was born in the small village of Ixtepec outside of Guadalajara, Jalisco, over 20 years ago. She grew up in a small community of subsistence farmers. Her home was one room of rugged brick with a zinc roof, her bed a “petate.” When Pilar was six, her mother left her and a brother with her maternal grandparents to make the long and risky trek to “el Norte” to join her husband and find work. Pilars childhood memories were of soaking maize to grind and make tortillas, of the long walks across dry riverbeds to visit relatives in nearby villages, of other children, open spaces, and of the fading image of her parents. At age seven, Pilar was told that she and her brother would soon be going to the United States. A week later, a “legalized” and distant cousin would smuggle the two children across the California border and drive them to Oregon where her parents were farmworkers. The family of six lived in a small trailer owned by a farmer. The children’s movements became restricted. Soon the two were sent to a predominantly white school in rural Oregon. They were singled-out, ridiculed, told to go back where they came from. As Pilars English improved, she was teased less but her family’s continued poverty made her feel ashamed. She was ashamed, mostly, of where she had come from. However painful, she gradually forgot her grandparents, her friends, and the open spaces of Ixtepec. She hated being asked where she was from and began telling people she was from Guadalajara or Mexico City because these places were known and had a sophisticated ring to them.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Works Cited
Belenky, Mary Field, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule. Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
Flax, Jane. “Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Epistemology and Metaphysics.” In Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka. Dorcrecht: D. Reidel, 1983, 245–281.
Heffernan, Kerrissa and Barbara Balliet. The Practice of Change: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Women’s Studies. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Higher Education, 2000.
Kolb, David A. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984.
Ludlum Foos, Carolyn. “The Different Voice of Service.” Michigan Journal of CLS 5 (Fall 1998): 14–21.
McKenna, Erin. “Some Reflections Concerning Feminist Pedagogy.” Metaphilosophy 27 (1&2): (January/April 1996): 178–183.
—— “The Need for a Pragmatic Feminist Self.” In Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey. Ed. Charlene Haddock Seigfried. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, 133–159.
Michelson, Elana. “‘Auctoritée’ and ‘Experience’: Feminist Epistemology and the Assessment of Experiential Learning.” Feminist Studies 22. 3 (Fall 1996): 627–656.
Rhoads, Robert. Community Service and Higher Learning: Explorations of the Caring Self. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2002 Amie Macdonald and Susan Sánchez-Casal
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Williams, T., McKenna, E. (2002). Negotiating Subject Positions in a Service-Learning Context. In: Macdonald, A.A., Sánchez-Casal, S. (eds) Twenty-First-Century Feminist Classrooms. Comparative Feminist Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107250_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107250_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-312-29534-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10725-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)