On Becoming Chicana in the Midwest: a Phenomenology of Decolonization

This study is a phenomenological exploration anddescription of Mexican American identity. I focus on the conditionsthat made possible my muted ethnic identity, in which althoughI was a third generation Mexican American, who was predominantlyraised by first generation immigrants, I came to understand myself aswhite. I also focus on the process of decolonization that isparticular to my experience in Northwest Indiana, a location to whichthousands of Mexicans and many other immigrants migrated to workin the steel industry in the 1920s. By examining my own identityconstitution through the intersection of race, class, gender, andindustry in Northwest Indiana, I argue that those intersectionsin that Midwestern locale shaped an experience that is related to, butsignificantly different from, the far more thoroughly researchedcomparable experience in the Southwest. and one that shaped myidentity as an industrial, insurgent Chicana.