Beyond Survival in the Ivory Tower: Black and Brown Women's Living Narratives

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze our personal narratives and explore what it means to be African American and Latina graduate students at a predominately white university in the Southeastern U.S. We examine the meaning(s) of occupying our positions within locations that have denied us the right to be legitimate knowledge constructors. We analyze negotiations of race, gender, and class dynamics in our narratives and within the university's institutional discourses. Implications point to the benefits of employing Critical Narrative Analysis as a tool for facilitating the personal and professional development of women of color in similar locations, addressing the question of how women of color succeed and thrive in such an environment.

Mariana Souto-Manning is assistant professor of Child and Family Development at the University of Georgia. From a critical perspective, her research examines the sociocultural and historical foundations of schooling, language development, literacy practices, cultures, and discourses. She studies how children, families, and teachers from diverse backgrounds shape and are shaped by discursive practices, employing a methodology that combines discourse analysis with ethnographic investigation.

Nichole M. Ray recently received her Ph.D. in Adult Education at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the careers of African American women faculty in the academy.

Notes

NOTE

1. Latin@s has been used in this article to signify a hybrid of Latinos and Latinas, employing gender-fair language.

2. Here, meta-awareness is defined as awareness that one person's perception of an issue is not the only view; for each issue or theme there are a plethora of possible interpretations, a multitude of perspectives. Taking these different perspectives into consideration without bias of your initial perspective as being the true or the best one allows for meta-awareness. While awareness suggests knowledge of commonplace surface issues, meta-awareness (which Freire, 2000, referred to as conscientization) allows people to develop a level of consciousness. Meta-awareness involves a relationship of appropriation with language (using language as a resource), as opposed to being colonized by language (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999). Such critical meta-awareness of how institutional discourses are recycled in conversational narratives allows narrators to understand the social construction of the reality in which they live.