How and Why Did I Become: A Testimonio from a First-Generation Chicana Anthropologist
By Veronica Miranda (Santa Clara University)
When I was a little girl, my father always told me I would become a doctor. He migrated to the United States from Mexico with his family when he was three years old. My father was a lover of knowledge, and once he learned how to read, he never stopped. I grew up in the community of Lincoln Heights, in the city of Los Angeles. We lived in a house built at the end of the nineteenth century that my father grew up in. It had high ceilings, cold walls, bars on the windows, padlocks at the front and back doors, a big backyard, and enormous gardenia bushes in the front yard.
In a back room of our house, there was a bookshelf full of the complete set of 1970s Encyclopedia Britannica. I grew up sharing my home with those books. I still remember their feel and weight. They seemed so overpowering and inaccessible. And the smell—they had that old book smell. Damp and musty. My father read those books as a child, cover to cover. I did not.
The author holding a photograph of her and her parents circa 1981.
I was a child of the 1980s. I liked to read and did well in school, but I loved cartoons. I was in love with television. I was transfixed by the flashing colors, bright lights, and quick movements. My morning routine often included eating a bowl of cereal, usually Froot Loops or Cap’n Crunch, and watching whatever cartoon show was on, maybe Jem and the Holograms, DuckTales, or Inspector Gadget. I even watched He-Man, but it wasn’t my favorite. I did like She-Ra, though. My little brain was seized. But I loved my captor. Pop culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and consumerism were all drilled into me in my formative years.
My father graduated early from high school. He was also valedictorian of his class. I was a good student, with good grades, but I was not the best. I was not at the top of my class. I was not like my father in that way.
But he said I would become a doctor someday. In fact, it was something that he boasted about to all his friends. But I guarantee you, when he said I would become a doctor, he meant the kind of doctor that you see when you’re sick. The ones that fix bones and hand out prescriptions and make a lot of money.
My father would never see me become a doctor. He would never see or know me as an adult. That was robbed from him. From me. My father became an innocent casualty of the global war on drugs and its aftermath. Another death to add to the statistics. He was kidnapped, tortured, and killed when I was nine years old. Years later, while in graduate school, I was taking an anthropological theory course, and after reading several articles on state violence, I decided to look up my father’s name on the internet. I found a human rights case submitted on the behalf of my father that charged the Mexican government with inaction and possible corruption for their handling of the investigation into his murder. The report detailed the wounds left on his broken body. The rope burns around his ankles and wrists. The bullet hole in his head. How he was found naked, face down, in a culvert in Tijuana, Mexico.
Sometimes these images collide and compete with the last memory I have of my father. Of us running late to school. Something that happened regularly. Him telling my younger sister and me that our mom “would kill him if we were late again.” I know we were rushed, but my mind replays it all at a slow, calm speed. I remember the sound of the engine roaring. Looking out at the shiny hood of his cherry-red 1968 Mustang. I remember my long hair being pulled by the metal emblem sticking out from the black leather front seat. And I remember him giving me a kiss and saying goodbye as my sister and I ran through the school gate.
I grew up knowing that I would go to college. And my mother made sure that would happen. Like my father, she migrated to the United States from Mexico as a child. And she also did not have the opportunity to attend college. She left high school right before graduating to get married. As young newlyweds without inherited wealth, my parents needed to join the workforce in order to immediately secure an income that supported a growing family.
Although I knew I would go to college, I did not know what that would look like. Where it would be was left open. So was the reason why I was going. I did not attend college to become someone, a specific professional. It had been a decade since my father died, and becoming a doctor felt more like his dream than mine. Instead, I approached college with complete openness and the ability, for the first time in my life, to study in depth anything I was interested in.
In the end, I applied to only one school. I chose a university in the California State University system that was the farthest from Los Angeles. I wanted to get out of LA and live somewhere completely different but still qualify for in-state tuition. Almost two decades after I graduated, I returned to my alma mater for a campus interview. While there I learned I was part of an early wave of Latinx students, mainly from LA, who came and eventually changed the demographics of the university and surrounding communities. For the first time, I was surrounded by students that looked like me and shared similar backgrounds and experiences, something I couldn't imagine being possible while I was there as an undergraduate. I will always cherish that experience. It brought me hope and joy to see a new generation of young Latinx students, many who were first generation, having an opportunity to make their own way and fulfill their own dreams. Today that university is a Hispanic-serving institution with 33 percent of its students identifying as Hispanic/Latinx.
I began my college years with the anticipation that once I completed my degree, the opportunities in my life would exponentially widen. I hoped college would be fun and exciting, but more importantly I needed it to give me the extra cushion necessary to make it in this world. But what would college look like for me as a first-generation Chicana student who was dependent on federal and state grants and loans? What did I have to be in order to make it? What would I call myself at the end?
My occupation did not become part of my identity until I was forty years old. It is still so new, and I sometimes stumble when I introduce myself as Dr. Veronica Miranda, assistant professor of anthropology.
It has been a long journey. And at times a painful one. An isolating one. But I am here.
I am a doctor.
Testimoniando: A Latina Collective was spearheaded by Jesica Fernández and Anna Sampaio, whose inspiration in creating a collaborative testimonio group for the few Latina faculty members at Santa Clara University was drawn from the groundbreaking Telling to Live collection. According to Fernández and Sampaio, the necessity and purpose of this collective, which is grounded in a Latina feminist epistemology, “was not only to retain Latina faculty, but more importantly it would help create a sustainable community and intellectually generative space for Latina faculty to thrive—socially, culturally, professionally, and intellectually.” During our shared writing session at the first meeting of the Latina Collective, the group was given the prompt “How and why did you become a…” This essay was my attempt to answer that question.
I first read Telling to Live in graduate school, at a time when I was still trying to find my voice. Until I read this collection, I did not feel my stories mattered. I was not given the space to reflect and explore how my own experiences, identity, and positionality impacted my work as a scholar and educator. In fact, this was often discouraged. Telling to Live changed my life. Words cannot express the gratitude I have to its contributors. For their labor of love in completing a book that has become foundational to me on a personal and professional level. The method and framework of testimonio has been liberating. It has helped me heal and find joy in writing and continues to influence all aspects of my work.
As a first-generation Chicana scholar, I was unprepared for the challenges of higher education. I had a hard time believing that a discipline that I was so passionate about, enough to give up so much in order to pursue a doctorate, could be such a toxic place. As a coping mechanism, sometimes I refused to see how the people I was learning with and from could participate in re-creating systems of inequity through their daily interactions with each other. I was tired of the competitiveness, neglect, and abuse that was excused by the rhetoric of “that’s just how it is.” I spent the last years of my graduate training finding and holding tight to colleagues who in their own ways pushed back, who labored emotionally and physically to continue the work of previous generations. I had to work hard to find supportive and giving people. And together we did the work of maintaining relationships and holding spaces where we could not only exist but grow. At my current institution, I have been held up and supported through the bonds of friendship and love by a group of amazing colegas and amigas. Yet, I want to stress that this did not come together on its own. It took labor to both create and maintain. And it was done by Latina faculty who were already overburdened. I am forever grateful to Anna and Jesica for spearheading the idea and carrying out the commitment to make a space for Latina faculty to thrive in an institution that historically did not hold or have or keep space for people like me.
As anthropologists, we know the stories we tell matter. In fact, they can be lifesaving. But how much are we allowed to value our own stories? Especially for anthropologists who are racially minoritized and/or marginalized. In sharing them, we can help heal, find joy, and build communities of belonging and solidarity. But in sharing our stories, our testimonios, we can also lay claim to places and rights in which we have been excluded, overlooked, or erased. Because these are our spaces, too.
Acknowledgments
In my life, I have been gifted with two loving and supportive fathers. My biological father, Sabino, laid the foundation for me to be the person I am today. My father, Brian, who came later in my life, held me up so that I could make my dreams possible. And my mother, Veronica, allowed me the freedom to find my own path. I thank them with all my heart.
Cite As
Miranda, Veronica. “How and Why Did I Become: A Testimonio from a First-Generation Chicana Anthropologist.” American Anthropologist website, August 25.