The Perez sisters moved to Austin from San Antonio to attend the University of Texas. I was aware, however, of the early efforts of several Chicanas in Austin, including Sylvia Orozco, and sisters Cynthia and Libby Perez, to introduce Chicano art to a larger audience. I taught in the History Department at UT Austin in the 1980s but never had a chance to meet Sanchez. Sanchez, “Detained Series,” Oil on Masonite. Sanchez wrote: “My work slowly turned from being purely artistic to becoming art that served a purpose as I evolved from being a student to an artist, to a Chicana artist.” The Texas capital city also supported the emergence of local Chicano artists Raul Valdez, Luis Guerra, and Jose Trevino during the early 1980s. To find her voice as an artist, Sanchez gained inspiration from Austin’s many exhibitions, plays, and jazz sessions. Barraza and Peña emerged as central figures in the development of Chicano art in Texas. Sanchez also met Amado Peña who like Barraza, had studied at Texas A&M Kingsville. On the UT campus, she met Santa Barraza, a talented young artist and graduate student in the University’s Masters in Fine Arts program. Sanchez’s years at UT Austin were key to her development as a Chicana artist.

During her years in Austin, she worked part-time as a waitress at the famed Cisco’s Bakery on 6th Street on the Eastside of the city which reinforced her Chicana cultural roots. After two years, she transferred to the University of Texas at Austin where she majored in Fine Arts. Courtesy of the artist.įollowing high school graduation, Sanchez chose to enroll in the art program at Texas Women’s University in Denton where she had received partial scholarship assistance. “It’s a very exhilarating place to be because the work is getting done and you’re not alone.Sanchez, “Mother and Son,” oil on masonite. “I think it’s a really rigorous environment in terms of how people communicate and the sort of vision we have for equity, for social equity,” says Sánchez of the Cook Center. They push us to imagine better programs.”ĭuring the semester, she’ll also be teaching the GIRI seminar on Global Domestic Policy, one of four courses being offered as part of the Cook Center’s inaugural Duke Immerse program for undergraduates.įor these upcoming months, her schedule may be demanding, but from her perspective it’s a good problem to have. “And I want to capture those stories because they direct us to better models of education, and exhort us to not just tolerate but move toward acceptance and better ways of life. “Parents don’t want their kids to give up Spanish…they feel their children are competent enough to know both,” says Sánchez. The trial, which will expand to seventy schools in the next 18 months, is currently at its halfway point.

With the Cook Center, she’ll continue her work on an efficacy trial that’s testing new strategies of collaboration between ESL and classroom teachers, in hopes of making a difference in the literacy attainment of Latino English language learners.

By 2017, Sánchez had seized upon this chance discovery and developed a full-blown book, Fathering within and beyond the Failures of the State with Imagination, Work and Love: The Case of the Mexican Father.Īfter relocating from Chicago to North Carolina in 2005, Sánchez began exploring further research on educational inequality in national, transnational and international contexts. Speaking with a waiter at a favorite restaurant, she recalls, “I asked him, ‘Where do your daughters go to school?’ And he showed me pictures.” The waiter was working miles away from his family he was fathering at a distance. Sánchez’s first project started in rural North Carolina. “Academics and people who speak English have a lot of power and voice, and people who have citizenship status have a lot of power…I think families that we describe as immigrants but have really been here a lot longer than other people are not heard.” “I really am trying to help voices be heard,” she says. Sánchez, an educational anthropologist who has long studied the Mexican immigrant experience and the schooling of the Latinx population, describes her role as a “conduit of people,” the sort of lynchpin who can connect with those in the academy and the community. Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, as a visiting faculty fellow for the spring 2020 semester. The Cook Center welcomes Marta Sánchez, Assistant Professor of Social Foundations at the Donald R.

Marta sanchez wilmington nc