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Libtaty of Congress Cataloging-in-publication

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149

Miscaras, Trenzas) Y Greflas

Un/masking the Self while Un/braidingLatina Stories and Legal Discourse

Margaret E. MontoYa

narratives [Editor's note: This essay is constructed through the juxtaposition of different the pobetween page the on placed are told in both English andSpanish. Personal stories footnotes' the in Latinos about and by writing etry of other Litinas and the academic The personal voice of the stories gains authoriry from the iuxtaposition as the stories borro* meaning from the po.Oy *d from the foomotes. The stories are purposely told in various ,oices to emphJsize ihe positionaliry that the essay analyzes. This discursive

construction mimics the braids, or "trenzas," in the first story']

_.1
Mdscaras: [Jn/masking the Self I put on my masks, mY

I I I
My Story

costumes and Posed for each occasion. I conducted mYself

well, I think, but

an emptiness grew

that no thing could fill. I think

I hungered for mYself.l

One of the earliest memories from my school years is of my mother braiding mY hair, making my trenZ,as.2 In rg 55, I was Seven years old. I was in second grade at the Im7o

150

Mdscaras, Trenzas, Y

Grefias

7,

home with its maculate conception school in Las vegas, New Mexico. our family track' I rememoutdoor toilet was on an unPaved street, one house from the railroad the trains' of rumble ber falling asleep to the subterranean ,n important one in my developrnent, in my understanding of myThat year to think about self in relation to Anglo society.3 I remember 19 5 5 as the year I began and to different feel to I began myself in relation to my classmates and their families.

*",

adiust my behavior accordinglY.

brother. catholic school girls wore uniforms. ve can still feel the blouses. I remember *y *othe, braiding my hair and my sister's. I at the top of my begin would she comb. the point of part she would draw with the neck. "Don't my of nape the to down comb the Lead, pressing down as she drew make sure that to checking hair, of *or.,; she would say as she held the two hanks squirmour as as tightly braiding the part was straight. Only then would she begin, jumping, hanging and ing iould allow, so the braids could withstand our running, frJm the monkey bars at recess. "I don't want you to look grefiudas" [uncombed], my mother would saY' My mother's use of both English and spanish gave emphasis to what she was say-

'We dressed in front of the sprc. heater in the bedroom we shared

with my older

wore blue jumpers and white

ing. she used Spanish to talk about what was really important: her feelings, her Mexicanos, and do"obtr, her worries.a She also tatked to us in Spanish about gringos, treated outrabeing about sometimes were stories the relations between them. Her She also told stoimplicit. bitterness her and geously by gringos, her anger controlled and well-spoken, smart, egalitarian, Ii., ,booi tglor she admlred-those who were
well-mannered, words though, spanish and English were woven together.s Grefi.uda was one of many to admonish errcol.d with familial and cultural meaning. My mother used the word epithet that us, but she was not warning us about name-calling grefiuda was not an our schoolmates were likeiy to use. Instead, I heard my mother saying something rhat went beyond well-groomed hair and being iudged by our appearance--she could offer strategies for passing tltat scrutiny. She used the Spanish word partly bethe cause there is no frecise Englistr-equivalent, but also because she was interpreting

sometimes spanish was spoken so as not

to be understood by Them. Usually,

world for

-it

The real message of, grefiudas was conveyed through the use of the Spanish word was unspoke; and-subtextual. She was teaching us that our world was divided, that They-'Who-Don't-Speak-Spanish would see us as different, would judge us, would find us lacking. H., l.rror$ about combing, washing, and doing homework judged by frequently relayed a deeper message: be prepared, because you will be They will see you as ugly, lazy, dumb, your skin color, your rair.s,t yooi and dirty. As I put on my uniform and as my mother braided my hair, t changed; I became my public self. My trenzds announced that I was clean and well cared for at home' liy- t rnza, and school uniform blurred the differences befween my family's eco-

us.

"...rr*.

nomic and cultural circumstances and those of the more economically comfortable

I r

72 I

Margaret E. Montoya

ruThat

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did they eat?8 How did they furnish their homes? How did they pass the time ? Did my English sound like theirs? Surely their closets were filled wiitrdresses, sweaters and shoes, ctpenas estrenados.e
I. _ remember being called on one afternoon in second grade to describe what we had eaten for lunch. Rather than admit to eating calditi (sotp) y tortillas,to partly because I had no English words for those foods, Iiegaled the class with ,,ory " "bo* what I assumed an o'American" family would eat atiunch, pork chops, mashed pota-

Anglo students. I welcomed the braids and uniform as a disguise that concealed my minimal wardrobe and the relative poverry in which my famiiy lived. As we walked to school, away from home, away from the unpaved streets, away from the "spanish' to the "Anglo' part of town, I felt both drawn to and repelled by *y strange surroundings. I wondered what Anglos were like in their big houses.T

the private into the public. Their black and white habits hid their breasts,
legs, hair color, and hair texture.

toes, green salad, sliced bread, and apple pie. The nun reported to my mother ihat I I unsuccessfully masked the truth, and consequently revealed more about myself than I concealed. In those days, before the ecumenical reforms, Catholicism still professed great concern about sinning. Although elementary school children *.r. ,oo young to commit most sins, lying was a real spiritual danger. paradoxicany, we were surrounded by Truth disguised in myriad ways. Religious language was oblique and filled with muitiple meanings: virgin Mother, Risen son, bread that *", th" Body and wine that was the Blood. our teachers, the Nuns, were completely hidden-women without surnames, families, friends, or homes of their own. They embodied the collapsing of

had lied. Afraid of being mocked,

*"irt

our school was well integrated with "spanish,,

denim overalls, had his hair shaved for some medical piocedure, and spoke mostly Spanish. I think of him now, and perhaps thought of him then, as being exposedexposed by not being able to read, exposed by not having a uniform, .*por.d by not having hair, exposed by not knowing English. From my perspective as a child, it all seemed connected somehow-spanishness, sickness, poverty, and ignorance. By the age of seven, I was keenly aware that I lived in a society that had little room for those who were poor, brown, or female. I was all three. I moved between dualized worlds: private/public, Catholic/secular, poverty/privilege, Latina/Anglo.ls I moved between these wodds. My trenzas and school uniform were a cultural disguise. They were also a precursor for the more elaborate mask I would later
develop. Presenting an acceptable face, speaking without a Spanish accent, hiding what we really felt-masking our inner selves-were defenses against racism prrr.d on to us

persisted even though, and maybe because, some of the nuns were also ,.span;h."ri . I remember being assigned to tutor another second-grader in reading. He wore

in a town with a predominantly Latino population.ll The culture of the school, however, was overwhelmingly Anglo and middle-class. The use of Spanish was frowned on and occasionally punished.l2 If a child had any rrace of when speaking "...rrt English, the accent would be pointed out and sarcastically ", mocked.13 This mockin!
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Margaret E. Montoya

that would be available if we were not trapped by the dynamics of subordination, of

privilege. For stigmatized groupstT such as persons of color, the poor, women, and gays and lesbians, assuming a mask is comparable to bei4g *on stage." Being "on stage" is frequently experienced as being acutely aware of. one's words, affect, tone of voice, movements, and gestures because they seem out of sync with what one is feeling and thinking.ls At unexpected moments, we fear that we will be discovered to be someone or something other than who or what we pretend to be. Lurking just behind our carefully constructed disguises and lodged within us is the child whom no one would have mistaken for being anything other than what she was. Her masking was yet imperfect, still in rehearsal, and at times unnecessary.
lEditor's note:The essay then "unmasks" silence within the law school classroom, positing that silence can be a form of resistance against the ideological, linguistic, and discursive homogeneiry of traditional legal analysis. The essay conrinues by braiding and unbraiding Latina narratives to explore their transcultural characteristics and their antihegemonic potential.]

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Conclusion New discursive formats, including the use of Latina autobiography in legal scholarship, enable us to reinvent ourselves. \7e can reject the dualistic patriarchal masks that we shrank behind and seize instead our multiple, contradicto iy, and ambiguous identities. As we reinvent ourselves we import words and concepts into English and into academic discourse from formerly prohibited languages and taboo knowledge. The disruption of hegernonic tranquility, the ambiguity of discursive variabiliry the cacophony of polyglot voices, the chaos of radical pluralism are the desired by-products of transculturation, of mestizaie.le The pursuit of. mestizaje, with its emphasis on our histories, our ancestries, 4nd our past experiences, can give us renewed appreciation for who we are as well as a clearer sense of who we can become.

ot

Our conceptual trenzas, our rebraided ideas, even though they may appear unneat grefi.udas to others, suggest new opportunities for unmasking the subordinating effects of legal discourse. Our rebraided ideas, the trenzas of our multicultural lives, offer personally validating interpretations for the mdscaras we choose to wear. My masks are what they are, in Santayana's words, merely "arrested expressions and echoes of feelings," the cuticles that protect my heart.20

NOTES

@ 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Permission by Harvard 'Women's Law Journal.

t54

Md.scaras, Trenzas, y

Grefias

zZ

not to essentialize disparate experiences. I seek to identify the subordinating effects of the masking process and the manner in which masking can reinforce the meanings of the categories. See generally Angela Harris, Categorical Discourse and. Dominance Theory,5 Berkeley \[omen's LJ. r8r (r99o) (discussing categorical discourse and essentialism). r8. AndrewJ. Weigert et al., Society and Identity 58-6o (1986):
Problematic situations are characterized by a sense of being personally "on stage." When an individual feels "on,' the taken-for-granted and undoubted self-consciousness of one's presented identiry is lost, and a dramaturgical consciousness emerges. . . ' Stigmatized persons necessarily learn to develop skill in handling problematic situations. . . . [M]ental patients, closet homosexuals, ethnics who pass, transsexuals who emerge . ; . constitute a constituency highly skilled in t{re universal tasks of dramatargical effectiveness. Those type of persons are explicitly skilled at what we all learn to do more or less well and without forethought; present, negotiate, and control multiple identities in a reasonable, organized hierarchy,

19, Angela Harris has used Gloria Anzaldfa's mestiza representation to write about the "personal i, not the universal unmarked I.' ln concluding a narrative that, as a Latina, I found particularly moving and evocative, she writes,
Quietly my students and colleagues claim their invisibility. They resent a world that gives them gende6 race, class, sexuality. They wish to be talking heads. They wish we could all just be individuals. La mestiza dances at the funeral of the individual in a ted dress. ![hat is la mestiza's distincrive contribution to her students, colleagues, and institutions? Resdessness, ambiguiry disruption. Creative chaos. And also, maybe most important: Her refusal to be either innocent or invisible.
'Women's

Angela Harris, Wornen

L.l, ro7,

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of Color in Legal Education: Representing La Mestiza, 6 (r99rl.

Berkeley

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Santayana writes,

[M]asks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feeling, at once faithful, discreet, and superlative. Living things in contact with the air must acquire a cuticle, and it is not urged against curicles that they are not hearts; yet some philosophers seem to be angry with images for not being things, and with words for not being feelings. \[ords and images are like shells, not less integral parts of nature than are the substances they cover, but better addressed to the eye and more open to observation.
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies

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