ABSTRACT
Drawing on Critical Race Theory, which challenges systemic racism and its effects, this qualitative narrative study focuses on the loss and acquisition of Spanish as entangled in the author’s bicultural identity as a fifth-generation Mexican-American woman born and raised in Richmond, California. The author/narrator uses personal narratives told through journal entries kept over a year and a self-written memoir of her grandmother. The data set was synthesized into 15 language vignettes. These were analyzed through thematic and structural analysis aimed at understanding the following two questions: How do the narratives of a granddaughter and grandmother inform the relationship of intergenerational language loss, identity, and erasure in the United States’ educational system? How might the process of heritage language learning in public U.S. schools become a tool to combat erasure? From her grandmother’s experiences of being punished with a ruler for speaking Spanish, to the author’s efforts to recover her heritage language, the findings show how she reclaimed the ruler through language. The results may inform future bilingual educators, English as a Second Language teachers, and heritage language teachers as to the importance of promoting more multicultural, inclusive pedagogies.
