This study explores the interplay of bilingualism, identity, literacy and culture for Cuban- American students in the Cuban diaspora. I contextualize their experiences within the social, historical, and political background of Cuban immigration, situating their stories within the conflicting narratives of Cuban-American imagination in the U.S., to explore how manifestations of Cubania shape the language and literacy practices of Cuban-American youth across generations and contexts, within three U.S. states.Inspired by traditions of phenomenology and narrative inquiry (Clandelin & Connoly, 2000), this study is an intentional narrative "reconstruction of a person's experience in relationship both to the other and to a social milieu" (CC 200-5), drawing from three narratives of experience, including my own. The three narratives are based on the experiences Cuban- American adolescent girls growing up in different contexts, in search of answers to the following questions:a) For each participant in this study, what are the manifestations of Cuban identity, or Cubania? b) What are the factors that sustain different or similar manifestations of Cubania, both within and across generations of immigrants? c) How, if at all, do manifestations of Cubania shape the language and literacy practices of Cuban-American youth?The narratives in this study demonstrate how language, collective memory, and context become semiotic resources that come to bear on the diasporic identities of the participants. Our ideas about Cuban-ness, as well as our experience of Cuban-ness, are somewhat different,because of the ecologies in which we experienced the culture, as well as our unique family history with Cuba. The relationship between each family and their history with Cuba also shapes what Cuba is to these individuals, making it possible to have different imaginaries of Cuba, as they construct their Cuban identities based on the physical, historical, and emotional sediment that they stand on.Translanguaging emerges as a language practice that provides key opportunities to enact Cuban identity, as well as to feel connected to Cuban-ness. During times of developing proficiency, translanguaging becomes a scaffold that facilitates inclusion in conversations in their midst. For two participants, their experiences reading and discussing the bible in two languages through translanguaging serves to build and reinforce their Spanish literacy and fluency, as they use their academic language of English to inform their understanding of the Spanish bible. Thus translanguaging and religious literacies emerge as funds of knowledge and a bridge to biliteracy. However, constraints to translanguaging emerge for one participant, who has little opportunity to navigate spaces of Spanish use on her own, and becomes limited in her ability to hold conversations with Spanish speakers who cannot translanguage.This research on Cuban American students is timely, considering that Hispanics are the majority minority in public schools, and largest minority in at least twenty-two states, including states that previously had little contact with immigration at all (Pew, 2013).Such an in depth look at a small sample of students is helpful in teasing out the nuances that exist in areas that are known to be both foundational and meaningful to student success in school, such as identity and culture. However, these are nuances that are easily rendered invisible with when we engage in the project of categorization that essentializes all students as one thing or another, in this case, Spanish language heritage students as "Hispanic" or "Latino".
Read
