Tell us something about you that is interesting / that is difficult to forget.

I grew up on the last street in Manhattan––a part of the city where there is no east or west side, where the river and green space wrap around the northern tip of the island, and where you can walk cross a bridge into the Bronx. I share this because it’s an exception to the way so many people tend to think of Manhattan, defined by its east and west side neighborhoods, and because I want the LAILAC community to know how much it means to me to join the program and the GC community as a New Yorker deeply committed to our city and our public education system.

What is your life/personal motto?

I think I have a few, but the one that immediately comes to mind is “p’alante, siempre, p’alante; p’atras ni pa’ coger impulso.” This is one of my Abuela Aurea’s commonly-used refranes, the title of the Young Lords periodical from the early 1970’s, and a phrase that my parents have imparted to me at key moments in life. It stays with me as a motto, inflected with the history of my Puerto Rican family and community, and a motivating phrase to draw on that history while remaining forward looking.

Dr. Ariana Mangual Figueroa is an Associate Professor at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. Her work draws from the fields of language socialization and linguistic anthropology to examine language use and learning in Latinx communities living in the United States. Her ethnographic research documents the ways in which linguistic and cultural development is shaped by citizenship status and schooling practices during everyday, routine interactions. Her collaborative mixed-methods research explores the intersections between immigration policy and educator’s roles on school districts across the country. Dr. Mangual Figueroa’s research has been funded by the W.T. Grant and Spencer Foundations.

Dr. Mangual Figueroa has focused her work on the ways in which discourses of citizenship circulate across home and school settings in mixed-status communities with articles published in Anthropology & Education Quarterly and Language Policy, the ethics of conducting ethnographic research in mixed-status homes discussed in a 2014 article titled “Citizenship, beneficence, and informed consent: The ethics of working in mixed-status families,” and the ways in which children choose to disclose or disguise their citizenship status with her 2017 publication appearing in the American Educational Research Journal. Dr. Mangual Figueroa received her PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture, from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an Ms.Ed. in Bilingual Education, from the Bank Street College of Education. Prior to obtaining her PhD, she taught English as a Second Language and Spanish in public schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

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