Unresolved feelings: notes on pleasure and pain from an accidental educator

Abstract

This essay – written autobiographically as a confession – charts uncomfortably and reflexively salient experiences and emotions of a queer educator of color. It unveils and analyzes unresolved feelings as messy examples in his journey as an urban school teacher, as a graduate student, and eventually as a university academic and administrator. In particular, it foregrounds the pleasure-pain dynamic that will be addressed, although often intertwined, separately for fuller exposition and examination. Drawing interpretive and methodological insights from women of color feminism, the essay enacts a theorizing from the personal to work against facile understanding of the cultural politics of identity and emotion. Rather, it marks a queer of color critique that is grounded in feminist theorizing as a framework and language for a more livable and humane world.

Keywords:

• Queer of color
• women of color feminism
• pleasure-pain
• confession
• LGBT educators of color

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roland Sintos Coloma

Roland Sintos Coloma is professor and assistant dean of the Division of Teacher Education and co-director of the Kaplan Center for Research on Urban Education at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He served as president of the American Educational Studies Association (2019-20) and editor of the Educational Studies journal (2014-17).