| Summary: | Drawing from a multiyear ethnography and a longitudinal case study, this article examines how one Guatemalan American teenager negotiates the multiple socializations to ethnic and gender identities in her home, her Pentecostal church, and her high school. She must face processes of Americanization and Mexicanization. Americanization's thrust is to replace the languages and cultures of Latino/a students with English and mainstream middle-class European American ways while Mexicanization pushes Central Americans to Mexican and Chicano dialects of Spanish and ways of being. With respect to gender, Amalia confronts a process of sexualization, particularly in school. Tensions between the socializations create spaces where Amalia enacts her agency and constructs her identities. The article is informed by research on multiple socializations, scholarship on identity and agency, and studies of Latino/a language and identities. [Latina, socialization, language, identity, agency].
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