Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Amplified Voices, Intersecting Identities: First-Gen PhDs Navigating Institutional Power overcame deeply unequal educational systems to become the first in their families to finish college. Now, they are among the 3% of first-generation undergraduate students to go on to graduate school, in spite of structural barriers that worked against them. These scholars write of socialization to the professoriate through the complex lens of intersectional identities of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class. These first-generation graduate students have crafted critical narratives of the structural obstacles within higher education that stand in the way of brilliant scholars who are poor and working-class, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, immigrant, queer, white, and women. They write of agency in creating defiant networks of support, of sustaining connections to family and communities, of their activism and advocacy on campus. They refuse to perpetuate the myths of meritocracy that reproduce the inequalities of higher education. In response to research literature and to campus programming that frames their identities around “need”, they write instead of agentive and politicized intersectional identities as first-generation graduate students, committed to institutional change through their research, teaching, and service. Contributors are: Lamesha C. Brown, LaToya Brown, Altheria Caldera, Araceli Calderón, Marisa V. Cervantes, Joy Cobb, Raven K. Cokley, Francine R. Coston, Angela Gay, Josué R. López, Rebecca Morgan, Gloria A. Negrete-Lopez, Lisa S. Palacios, Takeshia Pierre, Alejandra I. Ramírez, Matt Reid, Ebony Russ, Jaye Sablan, Travis Smith, Phitsamay S. Uy, Jane A. Van Galen, Jason K. Wallace and Lin Wu.
Table of ContentsList of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction: Amplified Voices, Intersecting Identities: First-Gen PhDs Navigating Institutional Power Jaye Sablan and Jane Van Galen 1 Memories and Migration in Misanthropic Times Josué López 2 Scenes from the Life of a Burgeoning Mother-Scholar Becky Morgan 3 A Doctoral Odyssey: Navigating Family, Culture, and Community in a Foreign Land Travis C. Smith 4 Confessions of a Single Mother in Academia Araceli Calderón 5 “I Wish Someone Had Told Me It Was Going to Be Like This”: Lessons Learned as a PhD Student Marisa V. Cervantes 6 Black and in Grad School: Demystifying the Intersections of Race and Gender in Higher Education LaToya W. Brown 7 Locating Struggles with Sociology and Surviving with Mindfulness Matt Reid 8 From the Mekong and Delaware River to the Merrimack River: The Intentional Road to the Doctorate Phitsamay Sychitkokhong Uy and Francine Rudd Coston 9 Enduring: The Misadventures of Navigating a PWI as the Mythical Being Named a Strong Black Woman Takeshia Pierre 10 Smile Now, Cry Later: Navigating Structures of Inequality in Academia through Resistance, Resilience, and Humor in Our Women of Color Writing Group Gloria Negrete-Lopez, Lisa S. Palacios and Alejandra I. Ramírez 11 A One-Sided Conversation with Academia Joy Cobb 12 Just What Is a First-Generation Chinese Male Immigrant and College Student Doing in a Nice Field Like Teacher Education? Lin Wu 13 Strangers Can Make No Noise Altheria Caldera 14 A Black Girl’s Magic Is Often Her Blues Angela Gay 15 A Particularly Ferocious Fire within Me Ebony N. Russ 16 This Is Soul Work – A Portrait of Three Black First-Gen Docs Jason K. Wallace, Raven K. Cokley and Lamesha C. Brown Author Index Subject Index
