As a Transfemme Queer First-Generation Cubana in Linguistics

Since coming into the field of linguistics, I felt called to expand on what it means to be an educated Latina; a trans femme scholar; a queer linguist; a first-generation Cuban American in academia. I searched within the academy to find others like me–I was frightened, confronted with traditional viewpoints that discounted my existence, met with microaggressions, and often felt alone. As difficult as it is to say, as a transgender Latina, I will be approaching my life expectancy by the time I hope to defend my dissertation. Violence, hatred, and ignorance threaten the existence of people of my experience on a daily basis. My life and the lives of my community depend on the transformative work of critical sociocultural catalysts of social justice to bring forth positive widespread transformation.

For me, taking up space was always met with a battle. I grew up first-generation South Floridian in a Cuban home of conservative Catholic refugees. I am one of four very different siblings. I was effeminate and outspoken for as long as I could remember. My feminine disposition and “mannerisms'' were frowned upon by my parents and my complaints of bullying were met with a “kill them with kindness” attitude.

I was middle-class but ran to full-time college and high school dual-enrollment while working part-time at Starbucks in order to escape some of the harsher realities and painfully-uncomfortable experiences of growing up queer and trans in Miami. It was my chosen family that truly embraced me, and to this day shows me constantly that being trans and queer is a gift. My LGBTQ+ community and our growing libraries of queer stories empower me to keep pushing, even when I feel most alone.

Learning American Sign Language as a teenager and entering Deaf spaces also opened my eyes further to the oppression and discrimination that subverts our daily lives that often goes unnoticed. As a linguist interested in social justice now, I am the same as 15-year-old me: fascinated by stories; listening to and spotlighting underrepresented experiences; connecting and learning through conversation; unpacking those pervasive biases that you come to know; and always hoping that every day a new challenge may further open my eyes, heart, and mind.

As a Hearing Person in Signed Language Linguistics

I am a graduate student of linguistics in Deaf space, navigating an array of intersectional experiences. An interpreter, former teacher, avid-Gallaudet-homecoming-attendee, world traveler and sign language enthusiast, my perspective as a M2L2 hearing signer brings a plethora of crucial considerations for how sociocultural studies in community spaces are to be conducted.

There have been an abundance of situations where the perception of my sign language usage caused hearing people to erroneously view me as a Deaf person. Of course, there were times where this went unnoticed or even unmitigated, for an array of reasons. Whether it be that I am was attending a Deaf event, out with Deaf friends, in class or even working as an ASL interpreter, these situations seldom required intervention. Nevertheless, the sociocultural consequences of Deafness–oppression, discrimination and namely, audism and linguicism–rarely managed to impact my personal life. Simply put, perception of identity does not always lead to the consequences that the reality of identity brings.

However, as a hearing person taking space in these Deaf or ASL spaces, I have a privileged access to spoken messages as uttered by the hearing folks who occupy or pass by these spaces. Remarks, reactions and side comments from these folks can inform authentic ideologies of multimodal communication seen in the real world. Further, there are times where I am perceived to be a hearing individual with no sign language knowledge and as such, I am akin to other authentic attitudes or positions about signed languages and the Deaf community that may never intentionally be brought up to someone seen to be within the ASL community.

This navigation between perceived identities positions me as a linguist and researcher with hearing privilege that must be unpacked and brought to the forefront of my conscious mind constantly. This is especially so as hearing privilege grants economic and academic social capital unequivocally to hearing sign language linguists. In being a hearing person, I may gain exposure to some ideologies and attitudes and as such, bring some of these findings as data to projects. These views from individuals who make up hegemonic societies, with good, bad or neutral intentions or insights, share these very ideals with the wider world by way of their rhetoric and actions. Deaf people can make these same discoveries, albeit, in an array of other ways. Nevertheless, I am wholeheartedly in the belief that Deaf linguists own, have full autonomy over, and possess a birthright to the domain of sign language linguistics.

There is an unparalleled advantage that comes when I collaborate with Deaf scholars on sign language research projects. This colloboration elicits an unmatched reciprocity across differences in our research teams. It is here where genuine insight into social and linguistic structures, its motivations and the phenomena which underpins it can be holistically presented in the growing literature of signed language linguistics.

As a field, we must continue to uplift, spotlight and open the door to the next generation of Deaf and hard of hearing linguists. They are truly the ones within their own right to investigate the very languages they co-construct and utilize in their daily lives. There is no sign language linguistics without Deaf people. Our work is for, in collaboration with, and always indebted to the Deaf community.