Reflections on the Experience of
St. Simon's Island
Sara Garcia, Associate Professor
Department of Education Santa Clara University

I have been mulling over the my emotive responses from the experience of meeting and interacting with the folks at the Working Colloquium. The most lasting emotion is that something truly deeply-moving was happening. What I walked away with took a hiatus the moment I got to the airport and did not resurface for more than a week. This occurred because of the circumstances of my trip back to California and having to conjure the psychological stamina to finish the courses I was teaching, reshifting my thinking to work on a proposal (which at many levels is linked to the ultimate goal of the conference) that I am presently writing. Basically, I need to realign my thinking on a number of professional issues concerning the transition of my own growth and direction within and outside of the academy, which under present circumstances are too numerous and complex to comment on since it is, in my view, a life process. My commitments to social and educational change (which are one in the same) have not wavered over the years. On the contrary, they have become stronger but perhaps deeper and I think requires, within my own psyche, a more painful process from day to day. This layering process was exacerbated by my participation in the St. Simon retreat. I am just beginning to decipher what the experience did for my soul.

As the only Latina woman at the gathering I felt a bit disconcerted initially. This uneasiness though shortly vanished not only with yours and Gloria’s presence but by the warmth and caring acceptance of the other women such as Lisa Delpit, Annette Henry, Kassie Freeman and even Sylvia Wynter, whom I had never spoken to one-on-one but have so admired from a distance. Meeting Dr. Bonilla was a special treat. I had to reflect (consistently) on the fact that since he is Puertoriqueno, he has an advantage in his heritage that I somehow struggled with during the course of the conference; his contact with a lived heritage, even if it is mixed, includes dimensions of African culture that is truly present in his person. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of what I have been mulling over since the conference.I am a person of mixed background and I see everything through those lens. My view of African as well as Native cultures in the New world is present in all that I conceptualize in how I view Latino culture. I see it as a synchronized dimension of how we practice culture. I also acknowledge the strong aspect of having ones culture present and as a dominate base for the development of self identity through culture and the importance of maintaining cultural values that are otherwise diminished by assimilation, suffocation, oppression and other extinguishing phenomenon that come about from robbing peoples of their heritage through hegemonic practices and sheer nihilism. This is where the crux of my reflections causes me continual turmoil. My strongest feeling is that we need to acknowledge our synchronized commonalties. I am proposing an epistemology around the concept of interrelatedness.

I understand the need to focus on qualities that are unique to our lived cultural experiences but I think that we are ready for weaving through our identities for discerning from a whole approach and the "the pattern that connects". The paradoxes of continual reflection and changes that will always be incomplete. We make and participate in our realities, we do not simply observe. The linkages that are present in our heritages are very clear to me and that is why I had the need to feel and act cathartic during our last evening as a group when the Georgia Sea Island Singers as a family became part of what you were weaving into a "family" with your personal selection of invitees to the conference. The conflict that I feel is also part of this interrelatedness that has to be recognized in the conduct of how we view education for Black and Latino children. This conflict is essential to a stronger movement toward an ideology that is more inclusive and that is in strong opposition to the invisibilizing of a people’s heritage.

At a global level, in concert with Dr. Bonilla’s treatise on multicultural notions of the various connections of prominent groups, such as African, Asian and Latino cultures, we as leaders of those global connections cannot make absolute distinctions of self with the world. Asa Hilliard’s work on identity and belonging is essential in maintaining what can also be discerned from a global perspective. The essence of spiritual strength and culture is what contributes to a substantial synchronized identity that provides a bicognitive dimension of the world for those of us searching to belong and feel the warmth of the spirit as accepted "others" in a milieu of change and transformation in our communities.

I cannot put into words what I felt that last evening during the singing and dancing and after the Elders spoke. I arrived late on Friday evening and did not participate in the Story Circle and I chose not to go to visit Ibo Landing. I regret not being there for the Story Circle but I am glad I did not go to the Church visit. I took a nap and had a chance to do some self reflection which I think that ultimately it was a wise move. The Georgia Sea Island Singers are a gem. I absolutely loved the stories that they shared with the singing. This is what I consider cultural strength and substance. In spite of the suffering and pain portrayed in the songs, cultural agency, language transmutation, goodness, mercy and justice were being shared and enveloped an entire group of people that did not, as a group, know each other personally. My initial trepidation of being the only Latina woman vanished that evening and I realized when I went to bed that night that I had been transformed. This transformation strengthens my commitment to searching for the connectedness of our mutual cultures. Not in the way proposed by those multicultural theorists who essentialize the essence of our cultures but in a way that acknowledges the conflicts and tensions that provide us with those links to one another in the conduct of human affairs. I will end by quoting Stuart Hall in an essay entitled, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies," in which he states the following:

I think it is time to forge forward with these ideas in a form of an epistemology for weaving into our work with Black and Latino children, early on, the notion of our synchronized lives from a cultural perspective. Conflict, tension and adversity will continually drive us to engage in discourse that could be filtered into pedagogy and practice towards experiential and interactive approaches for learning about ourselves in the world.