UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Schooling La Raza : a Chicana/o cultural history of education, 1968-2008 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8t69s3wd Author Hidalgo, Melissa Martha Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Schooling La Raza: A Chicana/o Cultural History of Education, 1968-2008 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Melissa Martha Hidalgo Committee in charge: Professor Shelley Streeby, Chair Professor Rosemary George Professor Lisa Lowe Professor Olga Vásquez Professor Meg Wesling 2011 This Dissertation of Melissa Martha Hidalgo is approved, and is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically. Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii EPIGRAPH To tell a story is to construct a history, to assert a vision of reality. A history links the living with ancestors and divinities across spatial and temporal dimensions, moving back to retrieve lineage lessons and forward to cast a vision of what might be. Joni L. Jones iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………. iii Epigraph………………………………………………………………….. iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………… v List of Illustrations……………………………………………………….. vi Acknowledgements………………………………………………………. vii Vita……………………………………………………………………….. xi Abstract…………………………………………………………………… xii Introduction……………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1. “Demand, Protest, Organize:” Remembering the 1968 East Los Angeles High School Blowouts………………………………. 28 Chapter 2. Soft Hands: A Genealogy of the Educational Formation of Queer Chicano Identities from Villarreal’s Pocho (1959) to Bracho’s Sissy (2008) ……………………………………………... 81 Chapter 3. Profesora Power: Feminist Pedagogy in Terri de la Peña’s Margins (1992) and Adelina Anthony’s Mastering Sex and Tortillas (2002)……………………………………………..... 126 Chapter 4. The Ganas to Compete: Jaime Escalante’s “Manly Pedagogy and the Politics of Teaching “Calcúlus” in Stand and Deliver….... 170 Epilogue…………………………………………………………………… 207 Works Cited……………………………………………………………….. 210 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Pocho cover illustrations from 1959 and 1994…………………… 89 Figure 2: From Pocho to Sissy……………………………………………… 119 Figure 3: Mastering Sex and Tortillas!........................................................... 152 Figure 4: “T.L.C.: Titty Loving Cochinas”…………………………………. 161 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not have written this dissertation without the support, patience, and love of the many special people, including family, friends, fellow teachers and students, and others who have touched my life along this journey. I also thank the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship award for providing much needed financial support for the writing of this dissertation from 2009-2010. I thank Shelley Streeby, my dissertation advisor and committee chair. Thank you for being a good teacher and for pushing me to do the hard work I needed to do in order to write a dissertation I am proud of. Your sharp guidance, good humor, encouragement, and patience through many drafts and versions of this project proved to be invaluable throughout this process. I also thank my dissertation committee members: Lisa Lowe, Rosemary George, Meg Wesling, and Olga Vásquez. Thank you all for believing in this project and supporting my vision from the start. Each of you contributed something special that made this project fly, and this dissertation benefited greatly from your collective insights. I have learned so much from your guidance and wisdom, and I’m proud to have worked with you all. I thank my many professors and mentors, from my undergraduate years at UC Berkeley through my graduate years at UC San Diego. My formal education journey took me from Northern California to Chicago and Indiana before I made it back home to Southern California. I met and learned from many wonderful professors who guided and inspired me along the way. I want to thank Curtis Márez, Kris Gutiérrez, David Lloyd, Manuel Luís Martínez, Mary Pat Brady, Christine Farris, and Steve Watt. Many vii professors and colleagues at UC San Diego helped make my experience there in Literature and Cultural Studies a happy and productive one. I thank Sara Johnson and Rosaura Sánchez for their much appreciated mentorship when I first arrived in the department. I also thank Ana Minvielle, Thom Hill, and Nicole King for all of their help and encouragement. I thank my many students and my teacher friends who are fighting the good fight in our public schools. I thank the Chicana/o Studies Department at Cal State Fullerton, especially Sonia Vélez and Alexandro Gradilla. And I thank my friends throughout the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District for your support hard work in our schools. I thank my many teachers, past and present, especially Miss Bruno, Mrs. Fenaroli, and Coach Blume. One teacher in particular has had the most impact in my life, and I fell in love with literature in her tenth grade honors British literature class. Thank you, Pat Walker, for your love, support, for a place to live, and the room of my own. And even though you gave me a B+ in Honors English, you are still my favorite teacher. I thank those who walk in the world as Artists and for doing the necessary work of making powerful, healing art for our gente. Thank you to Virginia Grise and Ricardo Bracho for your beautiful plays. Mil heartfelt thank yous to Adelina Anthony, Cherríe Moraga, and my Pa, Sharon Bridgforth. Your work is meaningful. It’s medicina. It has fed and sustained me. And each of you has touched my life in the most inspirational of ways. Thank you for Teatro Q, delta dandi, and Digging Up the Dirt, and for bringing out the artist in me. I thank my incredible support system made up of good friends, colleagues, mentors, and writing partners. Special thanks to Alexandro Gradilla and Betty Tapia, viii Laura Fugikawa, Mirasol Riojas, Karla Legaspy, Porschia Baker, Laura Placencia, Robin Silbergleid, and Gabriela Nuñez. And I give much love and thanks to two fierce femme academics in my life, Micaela Díaz-Sánchez and Stacy Macías. Thank you for the writing company and conferences and all the meals and time together. Thank you for the inspiration and for reminding me why we do this work and that what we do is important. La Stacy, mil gracias for being there with me and seeing me through the end of this thing. I deeply appreciate and I’m so thankful for your committed friendship, love, and loyalty. Thank you for reminding me that we don’t ever have to, nor should we, do this work alone. To all my friends and familia, thank you for your patience and for keeping the faith at the times I (almost) lost mine. There are many of you. Much love to Margaret Fajardo, Angela Lesaca, Alexis de la Rocha, Isela Reza, Robin Silbergleid, Denise Curry, Gloria Galván, Luisa García, Maria Malagón, Lisa and Ernie from Vinatero, Beatmo and Tamales Fatales, the Marrone Family, my parents’ friends from church, anyone who has kept me company, helped me to relax and have fun, gone with me to a Dodger game or concert—thank you. And my family. Thank you to my beautiful familia. My biggest supporters and cheerleaders and there since Day One. Mil gracias and much love to my grandparents, Petra y Cristobal Mora and Guadalupe y Miguel Hidalgo. My mother, Martha Mora Hidalgo; my father, Deacon Hector Miguel Hidalgo; my sisters Monica Christina Hidalgo and Melinda “Danda” Hidalgo Carrillo; my goddaughter Chloe; my little nieces Camillie and the Bean; my compadre, Nathan; and my bro, Brandon. I thank my aunties and uncles and cousins on both sides of the familia, from Cali to Tejas. Words here are not ix enough, nor will they probably ever be enough, for all you have done for me, for all the candles lit and prayers offered. Your love, your patience, your enduring strength and encouragement are my foundation and what keeps me going. For my loved ones who passed during the writing of this dissertation. I know you all were up there helping me through this: my Grandma-Mom, Petra Mora; my dear friend, Wayne Walker; my cuz, Beth Montes; and my first love, Deb Oldenburger. I carry loving memories of all of you, and thank you for the love and strength you send from above. This dissertation is for my family—for Mike, Martha, Melinda, and Monica— with love and gratitude. x VITA 1996 Bachelor of Arts, University of California at Berkeley 1997 Master of Arts, University of Chicago 1997-2000 Indiana University Ph.D. program 2001 Lecturer, Mount San Antonio College, Walnut, California 2002-2004 Teacher, La Puente High School 2003 Instructor, Migrant Student Leadership Institute, UCLA 2004-2007 Teaching Assistant, Muir College Writing Program, UCSD 2008-09 Substitute Teacher 2009-2010 Ford Foundation Dissertation Year Fellowship 2010-2011 Lecturer, California State University, Fullerton 2011 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California at San Diego xi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Schooling La Raza: A Chicana/o Cultural History of Education, 1968-2008 by Melissa Martha Hidalgo Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2011 Professor Shelley Streeby, Chair My dissertation, “Schooling La Raza: A Chicana/o Cultural History of Education, 1968-2008,” interrogates the function of memory, the politics of representation, and the educational formation of subjectivity in the creation of what