Reticence and Recuperation: Addressing Discursive Responsibility in Feminist Ethnicity Research

AMY SHUMAN

PLACING THESE ESSAYS in conversation with each other, we have the opportunity to interrogate three different cases of how North American minority women claim their identities and shape their loyalties in the face of discrimination and oppression. In addition to the discussions in these papers about race, ethnicity, immigration, discrimination, trauma, survival, and gender, the authors offer an important meta-conversation about the difficulties of oral history research and more particularly, their subjects' reticence on the categories proposed by the researchers. The essays contribute to ongoing discussions of the entitlement to speak on behalf of others, negotiations between researchers and research subjects about political frameworks such as feminism and racism, and the recruitment of subjects to stand in for political causes.