Chapter 2: Claiming/Reclaiming Space: Chicana/x Latina/x Working Group (CLWG) Experience

I am not the first Chicana nor Latina librarian. Hopefully, I won’t be the last. The first nationally recognized Chicana librarian is Elizabeth Martinez of California. Reading her memoir, A Jaguar in the Library, I felt a kind of kinship to her (Martinez, 2020). You would never think librarian-world would have anything to do with friendship, betrayals, challenges—it sounds somewhat like a tela-novela. But, as a Latina/Chicana, when we rise and ask for what is ours, to represent our culture, our people, we are often met with adversity, as expressed in her book. Martinez’s story is different in that she was a real activist, like dura. If it were me back then, I would not know what to do. Back then, when the movimientos happened, our people were met with much more than just dissent. Similarly, as it was for her, through my own journey in academia as a tenured faculty/librarian, I had to learn about power struggles and fear in the workplace. I am her; she is me— except she was fighting for equity and inclusion in a public library whereas I am in an academic library/institution realm. Her words, “I became the spokesperson for diversity,” resonated with me. I have become such a person within the library for diverse communities (Martinez, 2020). As Martinez claimed, what we learn in graduate school, and in general, about libraries—that they are free and for everybody—has not been and is not always true. An academic library, for example, especially a public institution, gets much of their funding from student-use fees. Consequently, libraries like these are more conscientious in their spending, making allowances for resources that are based on statistics and not necessarily what students and faculty need or want for their research or teaching. Elizabeth Martinez asks, (2020),” How could I possibly represent or be responsible for our entire culture, one so diverse within itself?” She writes that what she learned from the Chicano Movimiento is that “we needed an activist to throw the rock through the window to lead the path of change” and found out she was the rock; and, likewise, I am that rock (Martinez, 2020).