Table Of ContentBarrio Nerds
Barrio Nerds
Latino Males, Schooling, and the Beautiful Struggle
Juan F. Carrillo
School of Education, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6300-765-8 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-766-5 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-767-2 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858,
3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
https://www.sensepublishers.com/
All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.
Chapter 2 was previously published as: Carrillo, J. F. (2007). Lost in degree:
A Chicano Ph.D. student’s search for missing clothes. Journal of Latinos and
Education, 6(4), 347–350. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis LLC
(http://www.tandfonline.com).
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the
exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and
executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Beautiful Struggle 1
Toll Fees and Intersecting Roads 1
Contributions of Prior Scholarship 6
Cultural-Ecological Perspective 13
Latin@ Education Scholarship 13
Gifted Latin@ Literature 14
Limitations of Prior Scholarship 17
Chapter 2: Lost in Degree 23
Chapter 3: Home 27
Graduate Students: Mario and Antonio 29
Faculty: Carlos and Dave 45
David: Home as a Struggle 56
Summary 60
Chapter 4: Masculinities, Class, and Power 63
Introduction 63
Summary 79
Chapter 5: Toward a Ghetto Nerd Framework 83
Subtractive Schooling and Unacknowledged Intelligences 85
MI: Meeting Gardner and Unpacking the Theory 86
Towards a Mestiz@ Theory of Intelligences (MTI) 88
Negotiating Multiple Worlds: MTI and Portraits of Mexican
Ghetto Nerds 94
Weaving the Portraits Together: A Commitment to Social Justice
and Extending MI Theory 105
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 6: Revisiting Richard Rodriguez 111
Moving Up 111
Language 115
Memory 118
The Way Out Is In 121
References 123
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The crafting of words and the thank you have origins in a collaborative-
people, spaces, acceptance, rejections, love, and nurture, and that word: pain.
This book is a collection of all these things. I write these words as I sit in
one important location: Lady Bird Lake (nostalgically and lovingly referred
to as “Town Lake”). Draped by the Austin, Texas skyline, turtles in its water,
dogs take a swim, people walk, run, and sit on a rock and daydream. It is
here where two crucial things happened that made this book possible: I got
married (for a second time) and I often found clarity amidst the ambiguity
that is writing. There were so many moments when the ideas that are in this
book were pushed along as I walked near this waterway, amidst this airwave,
amidst the way the sunlight reflected off a creek or over someone’s kayak.
Water, it has always found its way into my vision. I am blessed that this place
found me.
From Town Lake, I begin by thanking my wife. Theorizing, caring,
pushing me along, and even draping me with spiritual hope—this book is
a manifestation of your love and your immense intelligence. Perhaps this is
the world we are given, but when you speak, I am reminded of what initial
hope I had for this book: transcendence, healing, naming injustice, and even,
clarifying what the song really is so that we could dance, really dance. With
this, you helped me write a new chapter-becoming a father again: Natalia
and Emiliano, may these words inspire and get you closer and closer to your
journey’s humanity. I love you all.
In Arizona, I have a group of people that also contributed to this book: my
parents, sister, and my sons, Gabriel and Chris. You all have found your way
into this book by reminding me of how surreal, glorious, and difficult being
alive can be-and you were always there for me as I try to straddle words with
the person that I am, the person that I becoming. I love you, may this book
help to bridge any distance and incompleteness, and may this book forge new
paths for our love. Thank you.
While in graduate school, this book developed its core form as a result
of the steadfast mentorship of my committee. Special thanks to Angela
Valenzuela, Luis Urrieta, Jr., Cinthia Salinas, Victoria Maria MacDonald,
and Iliana Alanís. Your guidance, care, and theoretical support continues to
push my ideas along. While not in my formal committee, Douglas Foley also
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
shared jokes, insight, and a constant “Iowa” push – get it done, I can hear
him say. Thank you.
Richard Rodriguez. You had to write your books for me to write mine.
Your prose and vulnerability made more people like me possible. It’s crazy.
Scholarship boys from California: from one to another, from one generation
to another. Where our ideas may differ I still see an audience and that is
where the reader decides which lane they will pick and push the stroller
down the swirling road. Gracias.
Funding from the Spencer Foundation, various fellowships at the
University of Texas at Austin, and an important sabbatical at the University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill made this book possible. I appreciate the
support.
Many friends also played an important role in this work. I am particularly
indebted to Dave and Rob. You both were willing to take my calls late into the
night and provide your feedback. Moreover, the soul of this works in many
ways draws from our coming of age and the ways in which we groomed
our personalities to be aware, engage art, space, people, human dignity and
rights, and feelings with transparency. Also, my friend Macario helped me
to see some of the key themes in this book and his brotherly advice make
these pages possible in many ways. I will also never forget the comedic part
of our friendship – it almost feels like it is a process by which we catch the
myths and interrogate our personal growth amidst so many metaphors that
constrain the human experience. Gracias.
To working-class Los Angeles, CA – “home.” Thank you for the wisdom.
To the teachers, the community, the libraries, the swapmeets, it all formed
into this and I thank you all for your nurture.
To scholarship boys and girls all over the world: you inspire me. May the
words in this book serve as my thank you card.
viii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The Beautiful Struggle
Haunted by the knowledge that one chooses to become a student.
(Education is not an inevitable or natural step in growing up.) Here is a
child who cannot forget that his academic success distances him from a
life he loved, even from his own memory of himself.
(Rodriguez, 1982, p. 48)
TOLL FEES AND INTERSECTING ROADS
My words have motion because I saw jellyfish at a young age. These moving
things that sting have always drawn my attention. Water, flow, swimming
through “pipelines” and schooling trajectories of gain and loss. This is a love
letter. This is a collection of stories. I have collected dead ends and roads with
toll fees. I also made it to a little Mexican coastal town as morning drank
coffee; I still spiritually connect with the waves, the Spanish that bounced
around the air. The blue in the sky. The crude softness of time. I am writing
this book for the existential searchers. I deliver a message across borders and
living rooms. I am in Taos, New Mexico, I am in Los Angeles, California, I
am in São Paulo, Brazil, I am in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: in prisons, in schools,
in countries where a “slum,” a barrio, a ghetto, is home. This book is about
a universal language around hope and sadness, triumph and ambivalence.
These words are for the poets, the kids with skittles in their side pocket, the
skaters, and all those watching the movie with a wideshot. There are also the
“professionals” caught navigating myths of success – some of you have dark
secrets. At 1 am you walk through an alley in your soul; you wander in an out
of your own innocence, those intimate moments of childhood in working-
class contexts narrate your ongoing questions of who you are, where you
are, how you talk, how you feel and think. You may feel alone and homeless.
These voices. These feelings have expiration and rebirth dates. Mother: where
are you? This city of lost of angels has killed many. This book is a telling and
coming to terms, or maybe just a way to meet new friends.
Today, I am a father, son, husband, and I have a professional title of
“academic.” But I hope you feel so free in the way I water the literary
1
