Cultural Appropriation, Performance, and Agency in Mexicana Parent Involvement

Abstract

Parental agency is examined in the creation of a dance performance by a group of Mexican immigrant mothers that combined a mixture of genres into an educational message. The "folklorico" performance resulted from a process of cultural appropriation involving linguistic, cultural, and experiential "translations." This process was concerned with communicating a message of parental involvement in a culturally relevant form to Latino parents. The performance developed by the mothers can be understood as a definitional ceremony that rejected marginalization in favor of images of self-representation that represented Mexican mothers as they viewed themselves and as they desired to be viewed. (Contains 9 footnotes.)