Surveying the Labyrinth of Relationships in Academia: Testimonios From Brown Faculty

For Brown women, the path of a college education and enactment of professional roles demands not only academic dedication; but also, a fortitude to nurture ways of being and communicating to express resistance toward experiences of being patrolled, subordinated, and marginalized (Watford et al., 2006). The patrolling of Latinas in education begins in elementary school and extends to undergraduate, graduate, and professional roles within academic spaces—and beyond (Ortega, 2016;

Pitts et al., 2020). The result is a lifetime of dodging, navigating, and negotiating belonging and intellectual self-worth. Chicana feminist scholars have long documented how they traverse the treacherous minefields of gendered and racialized college spaces as a matter of survival (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012). While the intentional patrolling and manipulation of cultural norms and expectations within academic settings are enacted to marginalize Chicana voices, Chicana feminist scholars make their lived experiences known to resist and fortify coalitions of resistance (Anzaldua, 1987; Latina Feminist Group, 2001; Perez Huber & Cueva, 2016; Reyes & Rodriguez, 2012). However, a Chicana feminist coalition and the growth of a resistance to the androcentric centrality in the field of education falls upon the shoulders of all academics. Our relationships must become the mirror of equality and equity we seek to be reflected in our professional lives.

Taking a cue from the work of Chicana activists of the Chicano Movement, we must critique and resist relationships that are not authentically engaged in a movement of solidarity. To resist is to communicate the shifting face of contradiction and oppression in our day-to-day interactions as women. Yet, instead of facing the reality that we must resist and confront academic relationships structured in oppression, we succumb to historical amnesia. We forget what the Chicano Movement taught us about confronting the very ways our politics of male and female roles as ones that lie in contradiction to liberation and defer to the rules of academic congeniality.

During the Chicano Movement, Chicanas “were influenced not only by the awakening of racial consciousness and cultural renewal but also by the struggles over gender and sexuality within the movement” (Blackwell, 2011, p. 1). Blackwell’s (2011) oral histories revealed the growing tension of Chicana activists who were dedicated to the Chicano Movement but oppressed by their Chicano brothers. This sentiment found across many of the oral histories was powerfully articulated by Neito Gomez in a commentary entitled, Macho Attitudes, originally written for the first issue of Hijas de Cuauhtemoc in 1971. As part of her oral history she shared:

Blackwell (2011) noted, “A depiction shared by many women was the dismissive attitudes they encountered within” the United Mexican American Students and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan (p. 66) in which Chicanas’ contributions were ignored or credited to Chicanos and their leadership capabilities overshadowed by prevailing machismo constructs. The oral history of Leticia Hernandez summarized this phenomenon (Blackwell, p. 69).

The negotiation of Chicana gendered oppression within the Chicano Movement “ultimately produced a new Chicana political identity” (Blackwell, 2011, p. 1), still rooted in activism, but, reconstructed as a “polycentric subject position that encapsulates a multiplicity of female figures” (Vivancos Perez, 2013, p. 11). Moraga (2011) indicated, “Our definition of a U.S. feminism of color was shaped by a late 1970s understanding of the history of colonialism and neocolonialism in the United States, as well as our intracultural critique of the sexism and heterosexism in race-based liberation movements” (p. 20). For women of color liberation required “intracultural” conversation and confrontation to build an unyielding platform of equity among us” (Moraga & Anzaldua, 2015, p. xxii).

Blackwell (2011) contended the “political views of women of color activists in social movements of the 1960s and 1970s” (p. 2) ignited the turn of feminist theory, toward the postmodern concepts of intersectionality and multiple subjectivities. Moya (2001) concurred, Chicana feminism emerged in response to the limitations of postmodernist feminism to address the Chicana experience and identity (Moya, 2001). Josefina Fierro de Bright, the organizer of the “first national meeting of El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Espanola (the Congress of Spanish-Speaking People), which drew between 1,000 and 1,500 activists from 128 organizations” included “women’s rights in the national Latino civil rights agenda” to address the “double oppression” (Blackwell, 2011, p. 48) of race and gender. Josefina Fierro de Bright is a historical symbol of the rallying call of Chicana activists that followed, who also confronted the inequity of women, within their own culture and the Chicano Movement of the 1970s. Hijas de Cuauhtemoc was “one of the first organizations to explicitly call for and theorize Chicana feminism” who in 1971 stated,

In our own Chicana/o history, the struggle for the liberation of la Raza, our people, is tethered to the uprooting of gender binaries and it is within this cultural knowledge that the oppression of women in the academy must be subverted.

It is time for the dialogue between Chicana/ os to take root in the academy again. If Chicanas are incarcerated in a binary construct of gender where a heteronormative standard for femininity and masculinity prevails; then so is our Chicano brother. What is perverse is that Chicana/os who ascribe to a heteronormative gender binary oppress all Brown folx and diminish the collective struggle of our gente. If I am pained as a Chicana academic, shouldn’t my brother be as well? And if my brother is lost in the stranglehold of toxic masculinity; shouldn’t I be just as concerned with his struggle? When we make known who we are in the reality of gender fluidity wouldn’t we all be free? Let us talk to one another, confront one another, challenge one another, and deconstruct one another to resist relationships of oppression. Let us tell our stories to remember our location in history, to bind our liberation to one another, and to manifest this solidarity in the halls of academia. Let us not be used as pawns in the cultural and colonial plight of gender oppression any longer.

In this manuscript, we; Amanda, Juan, and Claudia present our testimonios of navigating gender binaries, sexism, and patriarchy of academia. We recount how our stories of pain and struggle birthed friendships seeded in resistance, reckoning, and reconciliation. While our experiences vary, what we know to be true is that this parallel experience of our scholarly world manufactured obstacles configured in a labyrinth of oppositional relationships that our cisgendered male counterparts; both White and Chicano, thought of as only requiring resiliency to overcome. To the contrary, what we found was that to engage the reality of more fluid gender constructions, and in particular, to counter the binary constructions of femininity and masculinity played out in academia, we had to confront our Chicana/o relationship discrepancies bound in discourses and actions that sustained the privilege of patriarchy.

Over the course of years and as our professional careers took hold Amanda and Claudia shared a bond with Juan curated in a sacred, Brown space. Within our Brown space, we safely deconstructed the damage from aspects of relationships with Brown colleagues, including our relationships to one another, that zig-zagged in and out of moments of cultural solidarity and heteronormative oppression. Our testimonios bear witness to the labyrinth of academic relationships among our Brown colleagues situated in the inescapable triple face of historical, cultural, and gender binaries entrenched into the structure of higher education. While testimonios of this nature are rarely written in collaboration between Chicana/os, given the primacy of the experience to be exacted by men (Caballero et al. 2019), we push back on the parameters of this collective discussion to say the uprooting of the malefemale binary is the responsibility of everyone and that the arm of patriarchy is destructive to all peoples.

We do not wish to “navigate” relationships or perform resiliency while overlooking the rifts between us that operate to sustain outdated notions of relationship hierarchies that value the presentation of bodies instead of the body of knowledge holders. We do seek to shape academic relationships that galvanize a solidarity of resistance to dismantle patriarchy. Our resistance and solidarity grew out of the conversations and interactions that do not conform to the standards of congeniality and collegiality that elevate the fiction of “getting along” over challenging and confronting the daily injustices women face in the academy. We call these conversations chismeo academico; el chisme is survival-gossip, stories, and conversations that birth academic relationships. It is the lifeline that helps us voice what is often silenced in the office, within committees, endless meetings, and the prior tenureseeking performativity dance. Chismeo academico centers our experience of, disdain for, and criticism of academics who consciously or unconsciously put on and take off the cloak of the oppressor; including ourselves. There are no boundaries to self-expression when chismeo academico is invoked. Instead, unconstrained conversations are more like the chats that happen around the dinner table, family gatherings, and socials where the dramas, struggles, and celebrations of our lives unfold among those who care for us the most. Like a family, we do not always get along. We are not always happy with one another. We do not filter our emotions—yet we are united by our desire to push back and resist our oppression.

Bringing chismeo academico into the academy means we call upon relationships of the academy to engender that sense of care that comes from the nature of families to uphold a bond curated in the struggle of day-to-day life, and from a radical love born out of reconciling a history of family wrongs. Chismeo academico welcomes the conversations of a feminist resistance where no matter how painful the truth; the unvarnished telling ultimately reminds us of who we are as Brown familia. We call out one another as a source of knowledge, resistance, and strength needed to clear the relationship labyrinths of academia. It is knowledge that is not only thought but felt; not only unearthed but positioned to unite us more authentically. Ultimately it was chismeo academico that bonded a will and strength to share our testimonios.

Testimonio reverses the imposition of institutionalized norms and instead imposes the individual will to be heard in the same academic arena of the privileged, traditional paradigms of research. The central role of the testimonio is to call attention to the duality of oppression (in this case socially constructed gendered oppressions) in a new way and to ignite paradigm shifts within such relationships (Beverley, 1991). The testimonio “always signifies the need for a general social change in which the stability of the reader’s world must be brought into question (Beverley, 1989, p. 23).

Testimonios are a “legacy of reflexive narratives of liberation used by people throughout the world” for the “recovery of knowledge production” (Reyes & Rodriguez, 2012, pp. 525-526) and are different than life histories or ethnographic accounts in that they are shared in the first person and call upon the reader to acknowledge the urgency of addressing oppression, inequity, and injustice. Therefore, the composition of a testimonio is “a verbal journey of a witness who speaks to reveal the racial, classed, gendered, and nativist injustices they have suffered as a means of healing, empowerment, and advocacy for a more humane present and future” (Perez Huber, 2009, p. 644). Beverley (2008) describes the uniqueness of the testimonio in this way,

In reading the full length of a testimonio our consciousness is called to question our sense of political or ethical correctness and “the institutional constellations of power/knowledge that create and sustain subalternity” (Beverley, 2008, p. 593). This new consciousness builds a foundation of new understandings to address the injustice collectively. Toward this end, the use of testimonio in this study “involves the participant in a critical reflection of their personal experience within particular sociopolitical realities” (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012, p. 364) to exert “the authority of their personal experience” to “stake a claim” (Beverley, 2008, p. 548) in the gendered and racialized settings of higher education. As a result, “new understandings about how marginalized communities build solidarity and respond to and resist dominant culture, laws, and policies that perpetuate inequity” (Bernal et al., 2012, p. 363) are invoked.

We share our testimonios to bear witness to painful relationship experiences among Brown academics to inspire our colleagues to engage in relationships of resistance. We urge our colleagues to tell their stories to one another, to rectify the damage we do to one another, and to take stock of the ways in which we sustain labyrinths of gendered oppression. We do this to pay allegiance to one another instead of “playing the game” of individualism and to work in solidarity to resist any notion or action culled in the fiction of heteronormative gender constructs and professional roles. Our bridged consciousness of testimonios is the path we take out of the labyrinth to alter the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave to secure educational paths of liberation for generations to come.

We write together to say, “no more” and vulnerably share our stories that solidified a more authentic feminist solidarity to resist the appropriation of our body, mind, and spirit in the academy. We blur the lines of relationships conceived in heteronormative standards of masculinity and femininity that operate to sustain the academy in a state of patriarchy. Our testimonios act as a form of radical love capable of eradicating the stranglehold of patriarchal and heteronormative notions of the professorship, that declare the binary social construction of gender as antithetical to the advancement of our Brown community, and that replace congeniality with the real talk of chismeo academico. We present our testimonios to state the rule of patriarchy and heteronormativity that seeps into the academic relationships between Brown colleagues must end for us to be free of oppression; that is the real labyrinth women of academia face. We claim a space for our testimonios to be told, to depict the power of our feminist solidarity, and to normalize the messy, emotion-fueled confrontations needed to change gendered discourses of oppression within our family community of academic life.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling: A Path Paved by Mi Hermana, Maestra. My sister was mi maestra; my teacher in life. Seven years my senior, I learned from her what it looked like to study hard and leave home to pursue college ambitions. In her, I saw my life in a movie like fashion as a single, independent, professional woman. She was the first feminist influence of my life, and to this day I am fully aware of how vastly different my life course would have been without the path she carved ahead of me.

I was 8 years old the first time my sister told me she would eventually leave home and go to college. Imagining this scenario made me worry about the day when I would be without her. While my eyes filled with tears, hers held nothing but eager anticipation for living life on a college campus. I could not see her vision of a future she had such certainty about, but I felt pulled into it simply because I could only envision my own life within proximity of hers. Seeing her ambitions 7 years advanced of mine planted a seed in my prepubescent mind that college was the path to follow. It was not necessarily the academics of college that interested me. College was more of a path that I perceived from my sister as a way to gain independence and to focus on myself before a life of marriage and family.

When I entered high school the reputation of my sister followed me. My sister is what I would lovingly call a Mexican Marsha Brady. Her hair was straight, long, and she dressed conservatively. She was perfectly behaved, shy, well studied, and did not challenge authority. There was never a time when she was in trouble or disciplined in school. To the surprise of my teachers, my unruly ways set me apart from my sister, and over time I became accustomed to eyes of disappointment and lack of encouragement for my academic growth. Any hope of me following in my sister’s footsteps to be the second valedictorian of our family faded quickly. School was a means to an end for me. The end was getting to college to eventually be with my sister.

I spent summers under her watch on a major university campus internalizing what was possible for me in the building of my life. She took me to classes, social gatherings, snuck me into bars, and encouraged me to date as many people as possible. She went to school and worked and I stayed in her apartment attending to cleaning and cooking. Being with her was the training ground for my young adulthood filled with studying, living independently, work, and a wardrobe of relationships. At 15 years of age, I wanted to fulfill this lifestyle so badly that I forged my birth certificate to work during the summers I stayed with her and drove her car without a license. I was 15 but living the life of a 21-year-old in every way possible.

When I think of what it means for a woman to break through the glass ceiling, I think of my sister. I think of the many jobs she took to support herself through college. I think of the disdain she endured from peers who assumed she was accepted to law school as an affirmative action quota requirement. I remember her falling asleep each night surrounded by many books and waking in a panic if she dared to close her eyes. I remember that relationships with men were tenuous and often incapable of nurturing our ambitions.

It is safe to say, my sister was the most intelligent woman I knew and my real education came from her taking me under her wing for much of my youth. My parents could not be happier that we went to the same university and lived together for much of my initial college experiences. We graduated from our respective colleges on the same day, symbolizing to us the end of a long journey. I learned degrees were not the ultimate measure of success, but the ways families journeyed together was. I learned education was a path of liberation to secure a future of our choosing, to be independent women, and to realize the power of who we are as Chicanas. I generalized these truths to other Chicana/o relationships; that when shattered gave me great pause in the academic and professional adventures to come.

As I reflect on those years we seemed destined for fulfilling careers and lives. We shattered a statistical glass ceiling of college completion for Chicanas and ended up with six degrees between us. We pursued life on a timeline that began where our parent’s education left off. The new timeline included high school, college, marriage, and kids. Happily ever after, however, took a significant detour when the shattered glass ceiling only gave way to the labyrinth of professional relationships caught in a 1950’s time warp.

Labyrinth of Chicana/o Relationships.What I did not understand at the time was the metaphor of the glass ceiling lacked the complexities of the realities women of color experience in contrast to White women. The term originally coined by Mary Louden, in a 1978 panel discussion about women’s aspirations, arose as a counternarrative to the notion that women were inherently unfit to be positioned in positions of leadership. Mary Louden challenged the cultural construction of women as more of a barrier in their professional advancement than any personal trait. Forty-two years later we understand that breaking the glass ceiling did not chip away at the ways in which the social construction of gender is imposed; nor has the glass ceiling been shattered for women of color. Particularly, in the professoriate, Chicanas represent three percent of professors and less than one percent of full professors (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).

So while I managed to squeeze through a crevice of the glass ceiling it not only remained intact, but I stepped into the labyrinth of a professional life oppressed by gender impositions. I find myself on three fronts; joining efforts to hammer cracks in the glass ceiling, hanging on to my professional livelihood, and negotiating the multiple and shifting mazelike paths of the academy. It is the relationships of the academy that hold up the glass ceiling and make up the walls of the labyrinth, that in the profession of Education has excluded women of color and left it remarkably unchanged over the last 100 years (Montgomery, 2009). The gatekeepers of knowledge; those who teach our children, those who administrate educational organizations, and those who prepare educators are positioned in relationships of congeniality that govern the academy in patriarchy and toxic heteronormativity. To demolish the labyrinth from within; the relationships within must be transformed to take responsibility for our own words, actions, and practices that keep the labyrinth of exclusion in place.

More specifically, I want to speak to the relationship between Chicana/o academics. For if we are to be represented in the academy, we must find the solutions collectively. We cannot leave it up to the White canon to direct or shape the pathways needed for our presence and epistemological origins to thrive at all levels of the educational pipeline. Unfortunately, my assumptions about the solidarity I might experience with my Chicano brothers were put to the test time and time again. I’ve had a Chicano professor review my curriculum vitae whose only comments were, “Your mentors haven’t packaged you right. You’re not going to get a job with this research agenda.” Mind you, my research agenda is focused on Chicana Feminism. I left this encounter offended by the characterization of me needing to be packaged as a human being put together like a robot from the design of Chicano mentors. In another incident a Chicano professor discussed his disgust that a young Latina doctoral student “kept pumping out babies” and she should just focus on her doctoral studies. Yet another Latino professor, who extended his arm toward me, palm facing me, and fingers spread like a stop sign to angrily communicate for me to cease speaking so that a male student could speak first. And finally, a Brown professor who thought it appropriate to comment on my breasts and send sexually provocative messages. While these are not all of the incidents, what they hold in common with experiences unwritten is the devaluing and demeaning of my intellect and contributions to the profession by my Chicano brothers. The cumulative nature of experiences left me bathed in the awareness that I only existed in the macho narrative of a Chicano psyche that had yet to be deconstructed.

It is a different kind of pain to be devalued by my Chicano brothers who I want to believe are in this struggle with me and not against me. It grieves me in the way a severe conflict would with a beloved family member. It places my mind in a numb fog where time stands still, and a movie clip runs in my head replaying scenes of their machismo misogyny. It makes me remember that as a woman I will always contend with this beastly side of men; there is no retreat from these experiences.

There remains a ravine between Chicana/os in which a feminist lens escapes the ongoing development of a critical consciousness and results in the devaluing of Chicana intellect and entry into the academy. This reality sunk in when I began to choose a dissertation committee. I had one option for a Chicana to be on my committee from my department, Dr. Mendez, and I hesitated to ask her because it seemed like every Chicana/o student chose her as a committee member. I don’t know how she even found the time to mentor all of these students. It made me take pause and think about the history of our department; How was it that we only had one Chicana professor at a Hispanic Serving Institution in my department? How many women applicants were overlooked and why? Sadly, I knew of no Chicana graduates of my program to achieve professor positions at any university. Why are we contending with our people to open spaces for Chicana/o academics?

Crushing Gender Binaries with Authentic Feminist Solidarity.The hidden curriculum of toxic, heteronormative bound relationships in academia is my reality as a Chicana scholar. Chicana/Chicano relationships are weaved within a complex duality brought together in a common cultural struggle and simultaneously divided by a consciousness driven by the subjugation of women. It is the beast hidden within my Chicano brothers, nourished by the tools of the colonizer that enables the suppression of feminist knowledge and upholds male privilege. We must confront the way our relationships with one another must be decolonized in the house of the academy.

One of my Chicano brothers, Juan, has joined me in this unwieldy journey of honestly grappling with gender binaries of academia. We stumbled upon building our alliance in an honest, but unconventional way—we argued constantly and without abandon. He let go of his perceived mentoring role in teaching me about gender equity and equality and began living it with me. This was not easy for either one of us. I had to speak up and confront him each time I felt devalued. There were many brash discussions, frustrations, and heated arguments as my feminist identity took hold professionally. Comments that would have rolled off my back now infuriated me, and it took time for us to find a common ground of understanding. He had to be willing to critically reflect on the way his words, actions, and practices sometimes upheld male privilege. There were times we argued. There were times the sting of our conversations pushed us apart for days. There were times we yelled. There were times I thought our relationship would end. But out of all our honesty and raw emotion came solidarity.

The day after one of our arguments he said,” I am happy to have these tense conversations with you. It puts things into perspective. I want to improve and so I must welcome critique—although it’s not always easy.” I told him, “I know it’s not easy. It’s terrifyingly necessary. I believe in us just as much as I do my own family. We ground each other. Sometimes we do so gracefully. Sometimes messily. Sometimes in rants—but ultimately to become more humanized.” I learned that solidarity doesn’t come from congenial conversations and it isn’t solely an intellectual endeavor. Solidarity does emerge from feeling real struggle; from being so close to struggling that the spirit of it becomes lodged in your body like a fountain of knowledge from where you can no longer justify injustice. I read an unauthored quote recently that made me understand the shift in my relationship with Juan that stated, “If you are struggling and your people are just sitting there watching you struggle, they’re not your people.” This captures what I know to be true of the academy of smiles that foster relationships of good intentions to avoid the discomfort of real change.

I knew Juan was in the struggle with me for good when he told me, “Tu es mi otro yo.” Those five little words brought tears to my eyes because I knew he understood our struggle must become one if we are not only to survive the academy, but thrive, and to have the collective ganas to carve new paths toward a reality of emancipation for all of our gente. Relationships reconciled is our way out of the labyrinth that leaves it in a trail of dust from our wake. I call upon my Chicano brothers to be allies not only in words but with the powerful choices they make to position themselves close to the Chicana struggle by reading and exposing students to Chicana Feminist literature, in their ability to critique all aspects of their personal and professional relationships with a critical feminist lens, and in their willingness to dismantle male privilege in higher education and beyond. Shattering the glass ceiling is really to shatter the relationships that keep it intact. Dismantling the labyrinth is tearing down the gatekeeping mazes that keep our Chicana/os in opposition to one another. If we do not do this work, who will?

I grew up in the borderlands of deep south Texas, in the most southern town of the United States. Every day I went to school with folks who looked like me, and because of that similarity, differences went unnoticed. Yet, the difference we endured was not physical, but more social and cultural. As a young student, I didn’t do the activities or sports my older brother did. I preferred the arts and was in the band until I graduated high school. After school, I preferred to read and do my homework. I rarely played in the neighborhood sports but had a great friendship with many of the kids, especially with Carlos and Jose. Some of them were in my class. It was during school time where I would talk with them about school and sports. However, they never questioned me or pressured me to go out to play. They knew that I enjoyed doing my homework and the learning process. Fortunately, Carlos and Jose followed me to high school. Although after elementary school, I was never in classes with them, our friendship endured through the grade level challenges.

I did extremely well in my K-12 experience since I enjoyed reading and completing assignments; however, because of this dedication in the educational system, most of my academic accomplishments were shared in environments where the majority of students were females. Almost all academic celebrations comprised a room full of girls with two or three other boys. For me, it became familiar to be in environments where females were the majority. I learned that talking with females was just like talking with my male friends from the neighborhood. While I can recall some shaming from these experiences, specifically from two unruly boys, Larry and Julian. I learned at a very young age that I was a good student and that if other boys wanted to call me names, it was just because they didn’t or couldn’t excel academically. Interestingly, these two kids never made fun of me while others were present, especially when Carlos and Jose were around. Reflecting on my experiences, I can say that I had Carlos and Jose mentored me in navigating the schooling experience. Needless to say, I graduated from high school without engaging in a fight or a referral to the principal’s office. I recall having the biggest panic attack when deciding to participate in senior skip day. Luckily, I had my good friend Erika to convince me and we got in my car and headed to the beach.

At a young age, I faced moments where I was ridiculed for doing nothing other than earning high marks that allowed me to join certain celebrations. I am sure I was confused at that age to how a schooling experience with rewards was labeled as a female act or status. Nonetheless, I didn’t let those experiences guide my thinking or behavior. I knew better than to conform to others' expectations. I had learned from my mother not to adhere to others' expectations or norms. My feminist notions have been influenced by her way of leading and raising a large family.

My first educators were my parents. I learned the value of hard work from my father who was always working long hours to provide for the family. I learned from my mother the value of working against injustices. She is the matriarch of the family raising myself, my brother, and four sisters. It was through my mother’s actions that I learned to appreciate the work and efforts of women in my life. She was always present in our personal journey, leading us spiritually, as the disciplinarian, and as our biggest advocate in our educational and professional endeavors. I have always used my mother’s actions as a lens to better understand life’s complex struggles. My mother was one who never settled or accepted unfair treatment. I recall her voicing her concerns with school administration when she felt her children were not getting the appropriate learning experience. She questioned the cultural norms of being a single mother at a young age to only then become a stepmother when she married my father, a widower. My mother has been my role model, who regardless of not fluently speaking English had the courage to travel anywhere she wants, without needing interpreters. My mother embodies leadership, critical care, and justice that influenced me to decolonize my machismo ideals.

My mother, who shared her life, her love, and her space, helped me value the differences in life. She has never followed a recipe, not even in her cooking or baking, which showed me to appreciate the struggles. She would always remind me that without struggles there is no compassion. As such, as a Latino in academia, I adhere to her teachings who taught me the value of life, love, and space regardless of the varied ways gender or color are manifested.

I have challenged the cultural norms of masculinity since my childhood. While I don’t adhere to labels, I refuse to confine myself and identity as a static point, embracing a gender bender notion. Nonetheless, we live in a world condemned to meaning, meaning which mostly is given by the dominant, and heteronormative culture. However, I don’t play in that narrative game. Identity is self-imposed and fluid throughout our lifespan. Who I claim to be today, might not be the same individual of tomorrow. Therefore, as scholars, and humans, we must be respectful of the process and stop policing cultural, sexual, and societal practices to help us and others feel more comfortable. I have been challenged by some of my colleagues who wanted me to adhere to some common, and toxic practices of Latino machismo. Some might have confused my love for aesthetics as criteria for their limited understanding of masculinity.

Much like gender, sexuality, and notions of masculinity/femininity, race and cultural identity is one that continues to be problematic. The Latino concept in academia has been reduced to a simplistic set of looks, ideals, and practices. There are no set of cultural norms that Latina/o/x must adhere to, we created some to reduce and control our behaviors. As a Mestizo, Brown folx, I am free to create my own. However, in academia, I have encountered some resistance from scholars who view it differently. While I respect their viewpoint, it goes against all we believe as scholars, epistemologically, and ontologically. We all live in a space of contradiction, as such, we must learn to live it and model it. I have personally been asked to drop classes from Latino professors whose research and scholarship identity is rooted on creating community. I have been asked to shake hands more firmly as an affirmation of Latinos who represent labor and power. I have been asked too many times to adhere to some form of a stereotypical idea of what a proud male Latino should look like. I have been called out for wearing green or red pants to a faculty meeting. In the same vein, I have been denied access to promotions because I can speak two languages. Unfortunately, I have also experienced resistance from other Latinos because I don’t adhere to the norms of higher education in playing the game of publishing without meaning, where research never manifests itself in practice. Also, I have also been in spaces where social justice leaders don't advance equity and access for all since it calls for them to suspend their privilege in the system.

Since joining academia, in the midst of the toxic heteronormativity, I have encountered wonderful mentors and friends who have the same spirit of teachings as my mother. While not all have been females, they all embrace the care and support in fostering authentic relationships. It was through their mentorship that I was able to navigate the tenure process. It was through their care that they shared their space so I can learn to claim my own. Now, as a tenured professor, I embrace the same notions of care in my mentorship with my friends and colegas, Claudia and Amanda. I appreciate them for being authentic and reminding me of our responsibility as professors to enact change. They are part of my familia, where disagreement and fighting happens, yet, the love for each other is what brings us back together. I want to see my academic sisters have a better journey than I did. I have witnessed how the system has been oppressive to them because they are Brown women. I must continue seeking the systemic change that needs to happen in order for Latina/o/x to claim their space in higher education. I find hope and promise with my mentors and fellow colegas as we seek solidarity.

I am a Yahualica, Jalisco-born Mexican mujer who grew up in Hood River, Oregon, a small rural community with a large wealthincome disparity. The majority of Latina/o/x— mostly Mexican immigrant farmworkers— were seen and treated like manual, disposable labor. We lacked representation in professional roles; including within schools where Latina/o/x children were often treated like problems to be handled rather than neglected brilliance. I learned how to be Mexican through Telenovelas on Univision (I now understand how incredibly classist, prejudice, patronizing, and colorblind noted programming was/is, but that topic is a testimonio for another time. During the winter months, we would pack up and go to Mexico where I was constantly reminded of how “pocha” and “gringa” I was by family members. My Spanglish was not real Spanish, my values were corrupt because I didn’t know how to make tortillas, and how dare I not know how to flip them without burning myself off the hot comal while simultaneously tending the open fire below? When we would return to the states, my educators would make comments like “you missed so much while you were gone, you really shouldn’t miss school” and “do your parents realize they caused you to fall behind?” I always felt like an outsider, as an observer in my educational journey.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by blissfully ignorant educators who insisted on imposing their cultural values onto children whose families lacked their type of cultural capital, amounted to a violent, demoralizing educational experience. I did not realize there were educators who looked like me; I had no idea they existed. I often pondered what it would be like to be surrounded by people who looked like me, who understood my cultural values and struggles, who understood what it was like to be a Brown body within largely White educational spaces. The saying of “be careful what you wish for because you just may get it” unfortunately became my reality. After moving to Texas for my doctoral program and securing a tenure-track position at a Hispanic serving institution, I felt like I had finally hit the jackpot. I was surrounded by educators, students, and a community that looked like me.

The experience has been nothing short of cathartic. Working, teaching, supporting mostly racially minoritized students has been an honor. We have grown together and advocated for change, enriched classroom learning/ teaching, and published critical work. However, most barriers I have encountered have largely been placed in my pathway by other Latina/o/x. Paradoxically, they have shared stories of how they encounter(ed) insurmountable barriers to their professional success—the same ones they have placed on mine. It seems like they may have forgotten, or frankly, feel like all of us must pay our dues. It has been incredibly heart-wrenching to feel more heavily scrutinized and diminished by them as I desperately felt they would become mentors; advocates. Admittedly, I’m still overcoming the shock of it trying to understand the why and how of this all too common phenomenon. To be clear, while I haven’t received the support I need(ed) within my department, I’ve been incredibly supported by a few Latina/o/x scholars outside of my institution—most outside my field.

The comradery, mutual support, and unspoken connection I ignorantly imagined would naturally surface with other Latina/o/x scholars have yet to arrive. Upon deep reflection, the reason why this hurts so much is because I couldn’t fathom having educators who looked like me, I didn’t think it was possible. Then, working in an environment where my colleagues look like me but employ(ed) traditional oppressive tactics have forced me into a rude awakening. It reinforces what Memi (1991) observed, the oppressed will learn to use the tools of the oppressor when they reach a status of power for they will fight with all their might to stay in control. I refuse to replicate oppressive, demoralizing, and exploitative practices in order to “make a name for myself.” I had been (and continue to be) warned that if I speak out and/or share my experiences there will be a price to be paid. The risk of being labeled “difficult to work with” or “stubborn and unmentorable” even “conceded and problematic” is a steep price to pay for speaking my truth. When I began to share my story with other mujeres, I learned that the barriers I encounter(ed) are not an anomaly and quite sadly, very common; the norm. They too had received the warning of speaking out. We shared the same fear: being pushed out of a field we work hard to enter only for speaking our truth. I am learning that silence is no longer an option.

For me, to share in testimonio means to make known the harsh realities that mujeres are forced to endure. It necessitates coming to terms that despite someone identifying as Latina/o/x does not rid them of oppressive behaviors and abuse of power. However, I have hope that the more we engage in the sharing of testimonio, we will make known our stories and create a culture of change; I see it happening in my inner circle and that gives me hope.

We share our raw testimonios as Brown faculty members to urge an accounting for, confrontation of, and reimagining of how we manifest our strong history of relationship resistance in the everyday dialogues and spaces of academic life. We assert that to dismantle the orchestration of relationships that mark the lived experiences of gendered oppression, the discomfort of calling it out in our everyday lives, in plain language, and directly to the individuals and structures that perpetuate it must become the new norm. We learned that our silence, fear of rebuke, or unwillingness to publicly reconcile where we sit on the arm of patriarchy only served to place us at further odds with our profession, Brown folx, and ourselves in the long term.

In the unfolding of our work together we discovered our own cultural process of “becoming” more authentically committed to our solidarity as Brown feminist scholars. Turning up the “heat” (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981) on one another forged relationships of resistance that did not look like or sound like the congenial or collegial spaces of our academic life that patrol the way we express ourselves; nor did they originate in intellectual diatribes. We acknowledge the voices of the many who came before us that made the politics of the Chicana known and seeded the promise of stronger, more authentic solidarity among Brown folx from the sharing of their own gendered oppressions. Chicanas such as Mailei Blackwell (2012) made the “chisme” of the Chicano Movement a central point from which to press our cultural relationships and roles to be narrated in the reality and richness of identity plurality that we know to exist. Chicanas, such as Anzaldua (1999), confronted the fiction of gendered binaries and made explicit the damage we inflict on one another by enacting relationships and building institutions upon the faulty premise of a woman versus man oppositional dichotomy. We build on the work of our Chicana Feminist sisters, in the hopes of building more truthful coalitions of solidarity among Brown folx by sharing our own attempts to shape one.

A critical aspect of building more authentic relationships of resistance to forge more active solidarity is the way we centered cultural ways of knowing and sharing utilizing chismeo academico and testimonio. We came to understand and know how we identify and the gendered ways our identities are dehumanized in academia within our own relations and with other Brown folx. In our sharing, we were more like comadres sharing the latest chisme of academic life; that if it were not painfully true would be the makings of a world-class novela. The emotions of fear, anger, frustration, rage, and disappointment were palatable as we shared chisme that signaled a real trust to unveil ourselves more vulnerably. What is different about chismeo academico is that in addition to trusting each other to listen and hold stories of pain in our sacred space, we challenged one another to advocate more vocally for one another and other Brown folx in the academic spaces that silence us. We also challenged each other to understand how our own words, actions, and privileges contribute to gendered oppression in the academy. We felt the “heat” of hurtful situations and the emotional aftermath of pain for which we, as Brown folx, were culpable. In essence, our chismeo academico added on the thoughts, feelings, and reckoning we needed to make clear what actions of solidarity would look like in our academic worlds in the precise moments we are marginalized. In realizing where we fell short, there also came an opportunity to make right or forecast how to resist these wrongs in the future. We point out, however, this level of authenticity only emerged once we centered our cultural ways of thinking, being, and speaking and after years of professional life took hold. We are still learning, attempting, and critically reflecting on acting more quickly in the moments that make up who we become in the academy.

Engaging this form of chismeo academico gave way to the writing of our testimonios to speak directly to Brown folx and cement it in the canon of the knowledge. Our testimonios, marked points on a map of solidarity, to check the alignment of our thinking and actions more precisely to more authentically enact relationships of resistance. A bridge between the lived and unexplored transpired in the writing of our testimonios that served to shift discourses toward actions of confronting, healing, and relationship building (Delgado Bernal, 1998). The Latina Feminist Group (2001) refers to this process as theorizing in the flesh, taking the painful and turning it into seeds of hope and reflection. We theorized our pain to reflect on the real discourses, work, and relationship reshaping we engage to resist cultural and institutional norms that breed overlapping, gendered oppressions. Our testimonios urge a more critical discourse to emerge in the dayto-day interactions of academics to mold the image of who a faculty member is, what they look like, and how they share knowledge from the plurality of gendered identities we know to exist. It is in our solidarity as Brown feminist scholars that we located our collective experiences with racism, classism, and sexism that acted to split and appropriate our identities. Our testimonios claim space for our varied identities: Claudia; a Mexican immigrant and #LatinaMamiScholar, Amanda; a Chicana and Mestiza, and Juan; a Mestizo and gender nonconforming, to form stronger relationships of resistance by knowing and challenging one another more authentically. We assert our relationships of resistance as a more truthful canon of knowledge that makes visible the climate, experiences, and discourses of academia that uphold social norms of patriarchy. It is a resistance we encourage academics to engage in the hallways, parking lots, private office space, workrooms, pedagogies, practices, processes, and canons of academic institutions.

Our testimonios add to a body of literature that makes visible marginalization exacted under the conditions of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and sexism perpetrated in the academy. We recognize, higher education was not created for Brown folx like us and thus, our mutual survival and ability to thrive is contingent upon the strength of our resistance, pushback, and solidarity. While our own stories are ones of resiliency; this is not the legacy we seek to pass on to the next generation of Brown scholars. On the contrary, the reality that in the year 2021 Brown folx must contend with gendered situated oppressions as a form of resiliency, remind us of the work that needs to be done to dismantle the “determinism of gender meanings inscribed on anatomically differentiated bodies, where those bodies are understood as passive recipients of an inexorable cultural law” (Butler, 1999, p. 12).

On the heels of completing our testimonios, we recognize the discomfort of chismeo academico must be understood as an act of radical love to acknowledge the day-to-day interactions and discourses that result in a dehumanized academy. Chismeo academico places a direct challenge to the never-ending and all too common institutional responses of “we don’t do that here” or “that’s the way it's always been done.” It says experiences of marginalization should not be exploited for the overall research agenda of an institution. Instead, the chisme needs to enter the committee spaces, the tenure review, scholarly collaborations, and all that encompasses academic life to mark a corrective, reconciliatory space in the academy. It must become expected to speak truth at the moment the attempt is made to silence it. If the “chisme” I am going to speak at happy hour with my Brown confidants is my experience of being mansplained in a faculty meeting; that is the chisme that should be expected to erupt in the faculty meeting. And, I should expect at minimum, Brown folx, to speak up in solidarity. We bring chismeo academico into our academic spaces for this purpose; to bring the pain of what is spoken in the shadows to the people and in the spaces where that pain is exacted for healing, reconciliation, and the eradication of gendered tyranny. Struggle spectatorship can no longer be an option; and no one in the academy is without the residue of engaging the tools of the oppressor.

Our testimonios act as a form of radical love capable of eradicating the stranglehold of patriarchal and heteronormative notions of the professorship, that declare the binary social construction of gender as antithetical to the advancement of our Brown community, and that replace congeniality with the real talk of chismeo academico. We present our testimonios to state the rule of patriarchy and heteronormativity that seeps into the academic relationships between Brown colleagues must end for us to be free of oppression. Our relationships of resistance are the path out of the academic labyrinth that command binary impositions marking our humanity in a static, oppressed state. Rebuilding the house of the academy in our image is invoked at the intersection of our Brown bodies, spirits, and tongues that give rise to culturally curated emancipatory practice