"Ongoing missionary labor": building, maintaining, and expanding Chicana studies/history: an interview with Vicki L. Ruiz.(Interview)

Vicki L. Ruiz is the dean of the School of Humanities and a professor of Chicano/Latino studies and history at the University of California, Irvine. Ruiz is one of the most prolific scholars of and fiercest advocates for Chicana/Latina studies and history. While at Florida State University as an undergraduate she envisioned a postgraduate path in teaching, but when she was encouraged by one of her mentors, Jean Gould-Bryant, to think about graduate school she decided to apply--"on a whim," she says in the interview that follows. In graduate school at Stanford University, working with Albert Camarillo and Estelle Freedman, she sought ways to both uncover the lives and tell the stories of Chicanas and Mexican American women. Through graduate school and several decades in the historical profession she has continued these journeys--as a teacher fighting to incorporate Chicana, Mexicana, and Latina narratives and historical contexts into the mainstream U.S. historical and American studies canons; as a mentor to students struggling to find a past that helps them better situate themselves and their experiences and a voice in fields that continue to be marginal within the academy; as a scholar documenting the lives of Chicanas and Latinas and always contesting the canons that frame such inquiries. As she explains,

 
  When I was a child, I learned two types of history--the one at home 
  and the one. at school. My mother and grandmother would regale me 
  with stories about their Colorado girlhoods, stories of village life, 
  coal mines, strikes, discrimination, and family lore. At school, 
  scattered references were made to Coronado, Ponce de Leon, the 
  Alamo, and Pancho Villa. That was the extent of Latino history. 
  Bridging the memories told at the table with printed historical 
  narratives fueled my decision to become a historian. (1) 

From her initial historical monograph documenting the lives of female cannery workers in southern California in the early twentieth century, to her sweeping study of the lives of Chicanas, Mexicanas, and Mexican American women in the United States during the twentieth century, to the groundbreaking anthology Unequal Sisters that she coedited with Ellen DuBois, Ruiz has been tireless in her efforts to bring greater visibility to Chicanas, Mexicanas, and Latinas historically. (2) One indicator of the success of these efforts can be seen by the fact that Unequal Sisters is now a standard text in many U.S. women's history classes and was/is the "first collection that provides for a more inclusive, multicultural women's history, focusing on the experiences of Latinas, African American women, Asian American women, and Native American women." (3) Most recently Ruiz coedited with Virginia Sanchez Korrol the encyclopedia, Latinas in the United States. (4) Of this three-volume publication Ruiz notes, "We didn't want this to be a dry encyclopedia .... We wanted to show these women's lives in their historical moment .... I wanted these women to reveal themselves in their own words and on their own terms, whether through a letter, a court case, diary or interview." (5) This statement exemplifies Vicki Ruiz's approach to the profession; to make history, especially Chicana history, accessible to everyone and to be responsible to the subjects of her studies.

Vicki Ruiz has been one of the critical inspirations for this special issue of Feminist Studies. Seeking to heed her call for greater attention to the Spanish borderlands and to the lives of Chicanas, we hope that this volume continues the path laid out by Ruiz through her own life and work. (6)

--Leisa D. Meyer

Leisa Meyer: Could you talk a little about your early experiences as a Chicana scholar?

Vicki Ruiz: I think that for all of us, the cohort that was in graduate school in the '70s, there was a burden of proving yourself, of proving that you belonged. When I went to my first job interview [in the early '80s] I was not asked--I may have been but I don't remember being asked--a single question about my research. It was assumed that I knew Chicano history, but they asked, "How would I teach Progressivism?" or "How would I teach the New Deal?" I left the interview with the idea that "Wow, I have just taken orals again!" It was that sense of "Okay, what do you know?"