Education, Feminism, and Spanish: The Definition of a Library Cuban

Movida’s choice to leave her job shapes her feminist and educational identity. Her resignation initiated the birth of her educational identity. When she spoke of education in the interview, she spoke of receiving it as “one of the most incredible experiences of [her] life” and rubbed goose bumps off her arm. Movida went on to receive her bachelor’s degree with honors, attended a university at the advisement of a friend, and subsequently received her master’s and her Ph.D. Her fervor for her educational identity caused her to utilize her education as a weapon to break the glass ceiling and to transcend her mother’s idea along with the cookie cutter stereotypes of Latina women as “mothers” or “nurturers.” Movida refused these paradigms in order to pursue her education (Hurtado, 2001). Her mother makes a note of her resistance and breaking out of her role by telling her “Okay, school is good, master’s is good but stop there.” However, instead of listening to her mother, who tells her to “have some babies, get a man,” Movida goes beyond these gender roles—beyond the marginalizing center of power—by utilizing her education as a tool to challenge her exclusion (Torres-Salliant, 2003). By stating that “I’m gonna go until there is no more titles to be had,” she breaks out of the paradigms that her boss, her mother, and America have perpetuated in order to create for her own, and becomes a symbol of resistance and Latina feminism.

As a result of breaking out of the usual gender role for a Latina, Movida becomes, in her words, an anomaly: “Being a woman and being a fraction of the percentage of the population as a professor puts you in a really small category of people. And it’s not because you think of yourself, it’s not that I think of myself as different, but others perceive me as different.” Movida is different because of her refusal to fit into the normative Latina gender role. Movida’s Latina feminism does not fit easily into the male–female gender continuum, or any continuum at all, due to the fact that her identity is a chameleon entity susceptible to situational and contextual external stimuli. As a Latina feminist, she also lives in multiple realities and holds onto multiple dimensions of her identity (Hurtado, 1998; Torres-Salliant, 2003).