Caminante, No Hay Puentes, Se Hacen Puentes Al Andar: The Autoethnographic Account of a Mexican American Scholar

The purpose of this autoethnography is to explore a young Latina’s educational pathways through a deep-rooted rewriting of the self as an illustration of experience to the greater literature. It contributes to the sociology of Latinxs by exploring my experiences as a Mexican American woman in a feminist reflexive. More specifically, it focuses on the personal, familial, and academic challenges Latinas face in their journey to higher education. In the ‘autobiographical genre of writing,’ is a study of culture that involves the self used to connect with the reader and allows my audience to share mi camino, my path. With this method, I draw both from ethno-cultural theories and from sociological literature. This is the voice of authority to my self, my personal experiences, voices, and emotions. I write this piece and embed my reflections and memories in it to shed light on some of the perspectives that affect the identity of Latinas and the self-perceptions we structure in academia. This piece is a contribution by bringing in the concept of familial intimate labor to help answer theoretical questions of academic success, assimilation to the academic culture, familial expectations, and self-perceptions In conclusion, this autoethnographic piece is a contribution to a dualistic form of feminist thought and reflexivity. I propose a way of looking at a young Latina’s educational path and the writing of the self in terms of experience and because of a desire for social integration. The awareness of a collective consciousness is just the beginning of a powerful answer to many of our pressing social issues, it is a way of showing how reality is constructed, how knowledge is produced, and how identities are created; it is a way of reading the world