Mi Raza: Portrait of a Family — Film Screening & Panel Conversation

About this event

Community Room. Watch the 1973 documentary and explore the experiences of a Mexican American family navigating culture, identity, and belonging in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Stay for a panel discussion with director Susan Stechnij, Professor Xóchitl Bada, and Brian Herrera as they reflect on the film's lasting relevance. In partnership with Building Peaceful Bridges. Susan Stechnij is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker whose work explores the lived experiences of Mexican American communities in Chicago. While completing her master's degree in anthropology at the University of Illinois, she directed and produced Mi Raza: Portrait of a Family (1973), an intimate documentary following the multi-generational Navarro family in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood as they navigate cultural identity, assimilation, and the emerging Chicano movement. Stechnij previously worked as an applied anthropologist in Pilsen and Little Village, using film and video to document community life for both scholarly research and the communities themselves. Her thoughtful, collaborative approach to ethnographic filmmaking continues to influence conversations about immigration, cultural preservation, and community-centered storytelling. Xóchitl Bada is a Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Forced Migration Review, Population, Space, and Place, Latino Studies, and Labor Studies Journal. She is the author of Mexican Hometown Associations in Chicagoacán: From Local to Transnational Civic Engagement (Rutgers University Press, 2014) and coauthor with Shannon Gleeson of Scaling Migrant Worker Rights (University of California Press, 2023). Her areas of specialization include migrant access to political and social rights, migrant organizing strategies, violence and displacement, and transnational labor advocacy mobilization in Mexico and the United States. She is co-editor of…

Description from glenviewpl.bibliocommons.com