Virginia RodriguezGrad student Virginia Rodriguez relates an early childhood memory of working with her family picking grapes in the San Joaquin Valley in California. The adults and older kids actually picked the grapes, but 6-year old Virginia’s job was to lay out the paper used to dry the grapes to become raisins. “It was a special kind of paper, kind of like butcher paper, but really, really thin. There were hundreds of sheets to spread out between the rows of grape vines. My fingers would become covered with tiny paper cuts and then the juice from the grapes would get into those tiny cuts. It’s funny how those little memories can stay with you.”

Not surprising that such a physically imprinted memory would stay with her, and convey a reality about the lives of migrant farm works not to be gained by just reading about them. Rodriguez also lived with the daily fear of being deported until the age of 16. There was a time when she wished she was anyone other than who she was –specifically anyone white.

It was not until her family left California and settled in Arizona that she saw herself surrounded by a Mexican-American community and people of color in positions of respect and power and not seen just as field labor. With her bright mind and curious spirit she began to take steps to move her life forward…not in an orderly, tidy path but exploring anything and everything she found interesting.

She entered community college, taking one class at a time as she worked to support herself, and eventually transferred into the University of Washington. Initially pre-med, she changed her mind to study art history, and then again to focus on gender issues. “I took oodles and oodles of classes - I am full of so much information it is not even funny. From microbiology to oil painting, just ask me anything” says Rodriguez with characteristic humor.

And then she took Comparative History of Ideas 110, The Question of Human Nature, taught by Jim Clowes, a much loved and respected teacher who died of cancer in 2004. His influence on Rodriguez was life-changing as he helped her see the importance of her own unique life experience and how the world we grow up in shapes and frames our views. Rodriguez realized that her studies were informed and enriched by her Latina experience.

In 2003, Rodriguez was one of 20 students awarded a Summer Research Institute Scholarship. The scholarship allowed her to devote herself to intense research usually not undertaken until graduate school. She chose a topic she is passionate about and which resulted in her paper on “The Murdered Women of Juarez: A Look at Violence Against Women through an Interdisciplinary Lens” which she presented at the summer symposium.

The very thing she thought she wanted to disown earlier in her life – herself- became what was most valuable to embrace. As Rodriguez puts it “I came into my own.”Her personal experience of being “less than,” of not being “mainstream” provided her with the empathy and understanding of what things might be like for others who find themselves struggling in our society. Her concerns and passion led to her current pursuit of a Master’s in Social Work.

Life experiences, even the stinging fingers felt as a 6-year old, shape who you are and the choices you make. One cannot help but feel that the seed of compassion was growing in Virginia at a very young age as she developed into the caring and committed person that she is today.

— Written by Alyce Mallett