‘To You, Who May Find Yourself in This Story’: What a Baker’s Memoir Taught an Emerging Education Scholar

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the ways in which pleasure-reading a Jackie Kai Ellis’ memoir, The Measure of my Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris turned into an intense exercise of critical reflection on personal growth and grief in pursuing academia. This story resonated deeply with me, especially due to how Ellis’ endeavouring to excel, find space, and secure a place in her work as an entrepeneur baker connects to the sometimes painful and often precarious path that so many scholars take to author themselves in the neoliberal university.

KEYWORDS:

• Academia
• graduate school
• grief
• memoir

Acknowledgements

I am so grateful to the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship program, the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, and Dr. Elizabeth Marshall in particular for her endless support.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 That is, a critical theory concept especially developed by Julia Kristeva (1982) that has to do with intense reactions (e.g. fear) to that which can break down meaning between self and other, subject and object, and so on; for example, think about how we respond to blood, corpses, vomit, and yes, shit.

2 That is, an opportunity for emerging scholars with a PhD to continue training in their field before finding a permanent academic position.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

Notes on contributors

Amber Moore

Amber Moore is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests include adolescent literacies, feminist pedagogies, teacher education, arts-based research, rape culture, and trauma literature, particularly YA sexual assault narratives. She is published in Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and Qualitative Inquiry, among others.