Envisioning an Academic Readership: Latina/o Performativities Per the Form of Publication

I AM an Angry Black Woman: Black Feminist Autoethnography, Voice, and Resistance

“…Furthermore, many Black female scholars struggle to achieve ''real'' scholar status as academics whose work is widely published, read, respected, and celebrated (Davis, 1999;Hendrix, 2002Hendrix, , 2005Hendrix, , 2010. Always already concerned with the struggles of publishing race-related research, which is often received with accusations of self-interest, narcissism, and vendetta (Calafell & Moreman, 2009;Hendrix, 2005Hendrix, , 2010Orbe et al, 2010), choosing a contested and subjective method such as autoethnography (Ellis, 2009;Shields, 2000) runs the risk of providing more ammunition for those with a vested interest in silencing our voices.…”

“…3 As a methodology positioned to embrace subjectivity, engage critical self-reflexivity, speak rather than being spoken for, interrogate power, and resist oppression (Calafell & Moreman, 2009;Denzin, 1997;Jones, 2005;Warren, 2001), autoethnography can be productively coupled with Black feminist thought for Black female scholars to ''look in (at themselves) and out (at the world) connecting the personal to the cultural'' (Boylorn, 2008, p. 413). In addition, Black women with access to academic privilege can use BFA as a means to speak to, with, and at times for Black women ''who have no direct access to the public forums of our conferences, journals, and books'' (Houston, 1992, p. 55).…”

“…Affirming Collins's (2009) assertion that the experiential insight of Black women offers a ''unique angle of vision'' (p. 39) despite our orchestrated exclusion from the epistemological realm, Davis (1999) says, ''Black women have been invisible to the dominant culture; their unique ways of knowing and understanding the world have not been known'' (p. 152). Positioned to contest this absence, the formal conceptualization 4 of BFA renders Black women more visible in the realm of autoethnography, which in the academy is more often associated with and published by White women (Calafell, 2007;Calafell & Moreman, 2009). Such writing exposes, politicizes, and narrates the ''subjugated knowledge'' (Collins, 2009) birthed from a standpoint informed by intersectionality (Beale, 1970;Crenshaw, 1995;King, 1988).…”

“…In the field of communication, autoethnographic ''Other stories'' (Calafell & Moreman, 2009) that work against systemic forces such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism from the perspectives of women of color remain rare. 3 As a methodology positioned to embrace subjectivity, engage critical self-reflexivity, speak rather than being spoken for, interrogate power, and resist oppression (Calafell & Moreman, 2009;Denzin, 1997;Jones, 2005;Warren, 2001), autoethnography can be productively coupled with Black feminist thought for Black female scholars to ''look in (at themselves) and out (at the world) connecting the personal to the cultural'' (Boylorn, 2008, p. 413).…”

“…This work is dedicated to every woman of color who has had to bite her tongue so hard that it bleeds to protect her body, mind, soul, loved ones, livelihood, or even her life. Preparing us for this venture, Calafell and Moreman (2009) remind us that ''Feminists of color have long argued for the importance of listening to the experiences of women of color and attending to the politics that underlie these voices' ' (p. 124). More expressly in relation to Black women, numerous scholars within and beyond the field of communication have marked the invisibility of scholarship by and about Black women (Collins, 1986(Collins, , 2009Davis, 1998Davis, , 1999hooks, 1981;Houston, 1992;Houston & Davis, 2002).…”