Making meaning from the “yo no se:” Agency and truth-telling in Salvadoran women

In this article, we provide lessons learned from studying the ‘reticent’ participants–those whose answers to our questions ranged from “I don’t know” to “minding my own business” to an overpowering silence. These questions were posed to different Salvadoran women residing on Long Island, NY, and were based on two separate research projects–one examining diaspora politics and the other looking at community-policing relations. While combing through the interviews for patterns and themes for our respective research projects, we found combining our analyses helped us discover there is a lot to learn from the “yo no se” (“I don’t know”) responses. We argue this response is an entry point for us, as researchers, to strengthen our qualitative toolbox and, here, we provide tools for how to do this. We call on qualitative scholars to not ignore the silences or “I don’t know” responses and instead see this as a journey to discover the ‘aha’ moments.