Shame and Pride in Narrative Mexican Women's Language Experiences at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Shame and Pride in Narrative examines Mexican women's emotionally charged accounts of language-related experiences on and close to the U.S.-Mexican border. Against the backdrop of the dominant language ideology of English monolingualism, the complexity of storytelling practices is explored, along with the emotions, agency, identity construction, social positionings and moral stances revealed in the narratives of Spanish speaking immigrants. The analysis shows how Mexican women in this study engage in an emotional performance of resistance and moralization in narrative. In doing so, they position themselves in relation to exclusionary social practices regulated by nationalism and a monolingual ideology prevalent in parts of the United States. They challenge dominant racializing discourses about Mexican immigration, border enforcement, and the role of the Spanish language in the country. The book reveals the power of narrative, understood as a social practice, to validate and give meaning to people's lives.

Ana María Relaño Pastor is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Department of Modern Philology (English Studies) at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. Her research interests include narrative, emotion and identity, language socialization of Latino communities in the USA, Spanish in the USA and linguistic education of immigrant communities in Spain. She has published her work in a number of journals including the Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Spanish in Context and Narrative Inquiry.

1. Mexicalifornia: Mexican Immigrant Women at the Tijuana-San Diego Border
2. Narrating Language Experiences
3. Mexicanas at La Clase Mágica
4. Racialization in Narratives of Language Experiences
5. Shame and Pride: Defendiéndose in Narrative
6. Conclusions: Narrative Revelations