“It's Different Lives”: A Guatemalan American Adolescent's Construction of Ethnic and Gender Identities across Educational Contexts

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] Research on socialization for students of color and working-class students has documented cultural differences that exist between home and school contexts focusing in particular on the negative consequences for schooling and academic achievement (Bourdieu 1977; Heath 1983). However, these studies have not adequately addressed how students respond to and negotiate their multiple socializations. Addressing this issue for Latinos/as, a burgeoning body of research has grappled with the complexities of socialization and its connection to identity and learning (Gonzalez 2001; Valdes 1996; Zentella 1997). However, the majority of these studies focus on Chicanos or Mexicans and Puerto Ricans; hence, the situation of Central Americans remains underresearched and undertheorized. Drawing from a multiyear ethnography and a longitudinal case study, this article examines how one Guatemalan American teenager, Amalia Gramajo (pseudonym), negotiates the multiple socializations to ethnic and gender identities in three primary educational contexts: her home, her Pentecostal church, and her high school. Each institution has its own cultural values, norms, beliefs, and languages that are sometimes in conflict with one another in significant ways. Amalia must face both Americanization (Gonzalez 1997) and Mexicanization (Guerra Vasquez 2003). 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. To do so, she leverages various tools and resources, including language, performance, and dress. Research on multiple socializations, scholarship on identity and agency, and studies of Latino/a language and identities provide a conceptual framework to examine these issues. Theoretical Framework