Cassandra Carrasco: Wondering Where to Begin
February 18, 2013 § 2 Comments
I have been thinking about the best way to approach my research topic which is “Cholas,” urban Latina females, most often associated with street gangs. I realized that last week during discussion I was set on critiquing the popular narrative of urban Chicanas in American society but at this point I really need to shift my focus to the historical research aspect. Below is my initial research goals/questions set as per the Booth formula:
I am studying:
Cholas
Because I am trying to find out:
how they are defined in historical and popular culture / where they see themselves in relation to American mainstream society / what their narrative is from their own point-of-view / how they define their culture (their American-ness), and their ethnicity (their Latin roots)
In order to help my readers understand:
that the mass media depiction of Chicana women is narrow, misleading, simplistic, and often wrong / that multiple narratives can be/are woven depending on perspective.
My keyword cloud includes the following OskiCat search words and phrases:
Chola / Pachuca / Pachuca AND chola / chicana / chicana AND gang / chicana AND politics / chicana AND fashion / Mexican-American AND Teenage / Latina AND Social Status / Chicana AND urban / Latina AND urban
A brief list of some especially promising resources that I found are: “The Pachuca in Chicana/o Art. Literature, and History: reexamining nation, cultural nationalism, and resistance” (Catherine Sue Ramirez),”Chicana/o Subjectivity and the Politics of Identity” (Carlos Gallego), “Postnationalism in Chicana/o Literature and Culture” (Ellie D. Hernandez), “The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory” (Catherine Sue Ramirez).
I obviously have a lot of work ahead of me. I have many broad questions. I know that I need to narrow further and that this will depend on the type of published information I can find. Some questions that are nagging me are: Where do I begin? How far back to the “beginning” is sufficient? One hundred years? Fifty? Do I consider the Pachuca the precursor to the chola? Is this accurate? Should I be focusing on immigration? Assimilation? Poverty and class? Race/Ethnicity? Gender? All of the above?
Ha! My congratulations and apologies for getting clued in to the historian’s curse. When everything’s part of a continuity, how do you zone in on a meaningful beginning + end frame for your narrative without egregiously ignoring other historical contingencies?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a great single sentence answer for that. But don’t feel pressured to tell the story of the Pachuca and/or Chola in its entirety just yet.
Here’s some advice from the History Department’s 101 Thesis Manual, pg. 4 (http://history.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pictures/101_student_manual.pdf):
“The trick is often to find a limited and manageable subject that opens up bigger historical questions. Those bigger questions can be the ones that initially define your interests; they can also emerge out of the process of your research.”
Since you’re a Rhetoric major, I assume you’re sensitive to word choice: I’d advise you not to fixate on “accuracy” (i.e.the either or – is the Pachuca a precursor of the Chola or isn’t she?). Don’t worry just yet about either proving/disproving the thesis – right now we’re just searching for rich questions that allow you to zoom in on some sources you’d like to spend some quality time with this semester.
Here’s an example if you choose to pursue the Pachuca further. Instead of worrying about drawing a clear lineage from the Chola to the Pachuca, focus on raising questions that allow you to compare/contrast the two meaningfully.
In examining the cultural history of the Pachuca, you might ask questions such as: how was the Pachuca portrayed by news media? If you have access to oral histories or memoirs, you can how do Pachucas viewed their own position in society? Through photographs and other material culture, perhaps you can examine the ways in which Pachucas identified themselves. From a social history perspective, you might take a look at various kinds of demographic data to investigate this particular generation’s work and education status. When you examine their social position (labor roles, education, income, age of marriage, etc.) in relation to Pachucos, you can determine some interesting ideas about the formation of Pachuca femininity. When you turn to ask these questions of the Chola, you may find that some of the conclusions you draw do not have a direct analogue, you’d have an interesting argument to make about differences in portrayals and identity of the “defiant Latina” over time.
I’d suggest either taking a particular historical moment, an incident involving Pachucas or Cholas that you could center your research on (a confrontation with the police? labor unrest? a beauty pageant? I’m not familiar with your subject area, so I’ll leave that to your expertise).
Rather than try to ask a particular question about a wide span of time, try starting with a small incident and attacking it with a storm of questions. The broader conclusions will come to you later.
Hey! This is Katie, the facilitator for the other section. I read The Woman in the Zoot suit for a class last year, and I highly recommend it. It’s a great book, but also has its flaws. I think reading it might help you out with some of the questions you have!