A response to"We are stronger together: reflective testimonios of female scholars of color in a research and writing collective" by Melissa A. Martinez, Danielle J. Alsandor, Laura J. Cortez, Anjale D. Welton & Aurora Chang
I understand testimonios to be a research method and a teaching pedagogy. Using testimonios for research involves a subject who tells a somewhat long and uninterrupted story of their life. It has been revelatory for learning about hidden socio-political realities in brutally repressive or violent cultures or countries. They speak or write the truths that are difficult to say and they give meanings and wisdom they have ascribed as their truths over their lives. Often used in Latin American civil rights struggles and Chicana feminism, Testimonios also uniquely address the mind, body and spirit of the subject. In this way, the story and wisdom of what people’s bodies have been through is also told and revered as a source of wisdom. Unlike traditional western thought, the body is given value, reverence, and accorded wisdom.
It is my understanding that looking so very closely at the experiences and details of one woman’s life, we may find a truth about many women’s lives. In her story we will see the impact of social, political, and economic forces at work. Her life will be a bridge to knowledge and collective action to right the wrongs she may have experienced. From her story we may also learn what it takes to heal from oppressive experiences. This differs from narrative research in that it seems to call for solidarity with the testimonio and work specifically toward disrupting silenced voices, expose brutalities and work for social justice.
To me the form of testimonios also sounds like a tool for the survival of oppression itself – a type of mental health therapy that is off the couch and into sisterhood. It is often done with sister, friends, comrades for the sake of transformative action. It reminds me of what Audre Lorde says in Silence into Language and Action, “What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until you sicken and die still in silence?” This is a kind of healing. Healing by speaking and healing by being witnessed believed and mirrored back by other women.
In my own therapy the other day I realized how long I have spent hiding. I have worked with LGBT youth and on social justice youth development for 20 years. I could be speaking on panels, putting myself out there, writing more. I have just now realized how desperately I have been hiding while secretly wishing to speak. It is as Lorde says, I am afraid of many things: judgement, sounding stupid, challenge, but also visibility, and recognition. As a woman I think I have learned hiding as a form of survival I remember coaching my younger sister as teenager on how to hide her body so she wouldn’t get constantly sexually harassed. I had been doing it mostly successfully for years. In my silence and invisibility, I thought I had the upper hand, and could control what happened to me and perhaps it was a good tool for the survival of my adolescence. But I am 49 now. It is not serving me and it is not easy to unlearn this lifelong pattern. In a way it feels like #metoo is a public testimonios moment as each woman comes forward and tells her story. The detailed story told by Lupita Nyong’o in the NY Times of her harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein had the qualities of a testimonios and felt powerful as a tool for collective healing, solidarity and action. In her words “I speak up to contribute to the end of the conspiracy of silence.”
I felt that the ideas from “We are Stronger Together”
gave a kind of pathway for survival for critical intersectional feminists in academia. She says that in her moments of academic despair, loneliness of writing, manuscript rejections—the company of her comadres provide her the safety, trust and support to move on. I have recently found a group of women with whom I have formed a research collective. It was a bumpy start and not at all clear that we would work together again. It took us three years to finish our first project together and many times I almost gave up, thought someone was not pulling their weight, thought I wasn’t pulling my weight, thought I wasn’t smart enough, we were too disorganized, not experienced enough. But when we recently published a paper on our project, I realized that’s just what real sisterhood looks like—sometimes you fall and others carry more of the work load; sometimes you think you won’t make it and someone else carries the emotional load for a while—what a gift, this sisterhood. I would not still be in this PhD program if I had not found it. My confidence in the old neoliberal individualism is gone. I can’t hide and I can’t do this alone and when I am feeling strong I will help carry my sisters to the finish line, to claim our birthright and make our voices heard.