¡hola! こんにちは! hello! —————
[⬅︎ Japan, 2019.]
I'm Jenny Sawada Vega, a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan specializing in Educational Studies with a focus on Literacy, Language, and Culture.
I am a qualitative researcher at the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC). Originally from an Arizona border town, my research is influenced by the Borderlands context and what it means to exist in liminal spaces. My work is deeply rooted in my history and my family: Amparo, my mother from Palos Altos, Jalisco, Mexico; Toshiaki, my father from Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan; and my brother, Edgar, who shares with me the first gen experience as a child of immigrants. My research has looked at how youth work in deliberate ways to honor their backgrounds and lived experiences, as well as how they resist and challenge harmful narratives via their literacy practices. More broadly, my work has often been designed as participatory action research, emphasizing practices such as oral history, community narrative, and co-constructed representation. I aim to center youth and participant knowledge, and my work often takes the form of counter-storytelling to challenge the traditional mediums of academia.
Please feel free to reach out:
jlsawada (at) unc (dot) edu.
i am 澤田 vega jenny りさ。
I am the child of immigrants—of a beautiful mother from Guadalajara, Jalisco, México; of a wonderful father from 旭川市 北海道 日本。I was raised just 15 minutes north of the Mexican border in Arizona, in the small town of Rio Rico. My third language was English, at the cost of my Japanese which I now continue to re-learn (頑張っています！). Our home language and my native tongue is Spanish; I was an ELL student. But I never quite fit in because I am not perceived as Mexican. And so, having largely lost the language, I clung to my Japanese identity to protect it, asserting it in the ways that I could, from k-12 through my undergraduate career at the University of Arizona. Then I moved to Michigan.
Photo: my beautiful mother, whose name means “protection” or “refuge” in Spanish.
the borderlands.
Research is autobiographical, to a degree. In my case, my history and upbringing have motivated the entirety of my work. Having struggled with my identity as child and never feeling like I was quite enough of either of my parents, I lived perpetually in a borderlands space, and even after my move to Michigan, I continue to live in the borderlands. But here, the Latine community is much smaller. For the first time, I felt that I had to also assert my Mexican identity because it wasn’t “just there” anymore. I had taken the borderlands for granted, and in doing so, learned to embrace them: the physical borderlands of Arizona, as well as my own cultural borderlands.
Photo: our yard in the stunning Sonoran Desert that I call home.
私は 日系人 の 二世 です。
My parents eventually became U.S. citizens, but holding onto their respective citizenships was symbolic. It was a way to hold onto their culture and their roots in a country where they saw assimilation as necessary for success. It’s why they named me “Jennifer.” My dad said that, had it been up to him, my name would be “Natsuko” – summer child, for the season in which I was born. But my surname is already Japanese. He feared that, had he named me なつこ, I would never be accepted as fully American—the perpetual foreigner, as he is. But this is still the case, regardless of my name. Covid-19 has reminded me of the racial identity others have always ascribed to me: East Asian. I love being Japanese. But that is only part of me.
Photo: my wonderful father on our most recent visit to Japan.
también soy mexicana.
Growing up, I never felt Mexican enough for my peers. But it didn’t matter, because I knew I was, and because my culture was all around me. Despite feeling othered, I didn’t feel like I “wasn’t Mexican.” After all, I lived on the border. If others did’t see me as Mexican, I had my loving mother and my home life to affirm that piece of me. But my proximity to the border affected my perception of myself and my identity, as well as the ways that I made sense of the world. Sense-making is contextual. Moving to Michigan was a culture shock, and one that re-affirmed for me the many ways in which my practices and traditions are as Mexican as they are Japanese. And that has led my research back to the borderlands. Maybe it makes sense; it’s home.
Photo: tacos de carne asada, made by my dad. Featuring my brother’s sugary iced tea.
“The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them…. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.” — Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands
Photo: my family from two parts of the world. And my brother and me: the products of those worlds merging.
