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About the Authors

Ashanka Kumari is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University – Commerce where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition and rhetoric. Her current research centers first-generation-to-college graduate students and the ways they negotiate the expectations of academia with their lives and other obligations. She is a founding member of the nextGEN Listserv.

Sweta Baniya is an incoming Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Professional and Technical Writing at Virginia Tech. Her research centers around transnational disaster response, crisis communication, and non-western rhetorics. Dr. Baniya is a founding member of the nextGEN listserv. 

Kyle Larson is a PhD Candidate at Miami University (OH). His research on counterpublic writing and rhetorics has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Peitho, and most recently Rhetoric Society Quarterly. At Miami, he teaches cultural studies courses on public writing and activist rhetorics. He also collaborates with students of color on campus to build and organize an insurgent, grassroots education program called Racial Consciousness 101 (race101mu.org). His current research focuses on the rhetorical processes by which social movements emerge and acquire power in the public sphere. He is a founding member of nextGEN.

Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Disruption

Part 2: Sacrifice

Part 3: Escalation

References

Introduction

On November 6, 2018, graduate students via nextGEN (2018) composed and sent a “listserv-to-listserv” email, actioning a collective and bold return to the Writing Program Administration-Listserv (WPA-L). Taking two weeks for a spontaneous graduate student collective to digitally complete, this response built upon momentum-based community organizing to escalate the contrast between the two listservs and spotlight the structural inadequacy and rhetorical irresponsibility of WPA-L’s genred discursive space.^[1] The nextGEN listserv itself emerged from a campaign to build an advocacy space for and by graduate students. The product of a single campaign cannot build and does not encompass the totality of a movement necessary for graduate students to achieve equity. nextGEN therefore responds to the needs of graduate students (domestic and international) and will build, organize, and grow as necessary. Since the symposium’s central themes concern sustainability, self-care, resources, equity, and justice, we, the first three nextGEN listserv moderators, reflect on the need for genre disruption in a field that touts striving for these values, but continuously replicates inequitable, unjust practices. We share insights from our praxis of creating, building, and organizing an advocacy space for graduate students centering around principles of justice, equity, and community. This essay focuses on nextGEN’s genre-disrupting, genre-creating orientation, drawing upon three rhetorical elements to social movement-building: disruption, sacrifice, and escalation. We suggest moving past limiting institutionalized genres, looking to opportunities that social movement genres afford for advancing and habitualizing equitable, just practices.

Part 1: Genre in Traditional Spaces: Disruption

Representing WPA-GO, Presswood and Schwarz (2020) draw us to think about how a precarious population might incite change within a field at large that does not seem to have structural support for holding people and programs accountable. This consideration’s importance cannot be overstated. Lack of accountability exists within our own institutions and the larger field. What would building robust accountability structures entail in Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp), a field Lauer (1984) described as a “dappled discipline” that reflects a patching-together of multiple disciplinary ideas leading to the “complex, messy, and rock-bottom realm [that is] Composition Studies” (p. 28)? We believe the answer involves dappling with, learning from, and building upon social movement genres. Here, we’re inspired by Kynard (2013), who “situate[s] the social world of composition studies in its connections to Black Power, Black Studies, and the Black Arts Movement” (p. 15). We also praise Bowman and Kovanen (2020), who advocate for the frameworks borrowed from labor activism, addressing how Rhet-Comp grew as a discipline in response to disputed labor conditions. Likewise, nextGEN’s creation spurred generally from protest over white language supremacy on WPA-L, and from faculty dismissal of and outrage over a graduate student’s anti-racist contribution. Historically “online forums including . . . listservs can be spaces where rising scholars like graduate students and junior scholars learn about the spirit of the field and contribute their emerging perspectives” (Glotfelter & Tham, 2018, para. 1). However, what happens if and when they are not welcome to do so?

WPA-L operates as a longstanding disciplinary space in existence since 1991, when writing studies was beginning to establish itself.^[2] Unfortunately, it has cultivated its genred discursive space over this time towards boundary-maintaining and mere information-sharing, rather than community-building and power-sharing. Graduate students therefore organized via their own already-existing social networking spaces, adopted the older genred technology of a listserv, and built a consolidated graduate-centered space dedicated to enriching conversations among graduate students, early-career faculty, non-tenure-track faculty, and adjuncts.^[3]

But listservs traditionally don’t organize community uplift spaces at conferences, collectively write responses to other listservs, and have Twitter accounts; however, nextGEN does. Several questions have therefore been posed to those involved in nextGEN: What does nextGEN want to be? An organization? A standing group? To respond, we ask ourselves and others: How would institutionalizing nextGEN into disciplinary academic genres dissolve some of nextGEN’s current and potential power?

As the first moderators, we don’t wish to assimilate to disciplinary genres that limit movement potential, but desire to build from and beyond them. We especially seek to disrupt historically institutionalized hierarchies and power structures reifying systemic oppressions. We work to disrupt the hierarchical genre of networking by emphasizing, first and foremost, the value of horizontal networking and the celebration of graduate student scholars, moving past the tradition of valuing and lauding veteran teacher-scholars more than new voices. nextGEN creates space for horizontal mentoring^[4] by cultivating a community praxis of uplifting and supporting one another rather than viewing each other as competition. It’s crucial to re-vision the hierarchical genre of mentoring that traditionally happens in one-on-one settings locally. Many graduate students may not receive adequate institutional support, and we hope and believe spaces like nextGEN can provide opportunities to experience the value of horizontal mentoring.

nextGEN’s existence necessitates this form of hierarchical genre disruption. After all, its genred discursive space works to flip the script of faculty power. We’ve been clear that faculty can have a presence on nextGEN. The community voted to have it be so. However, faculty must participate in a way that reflects the digital praxis of feminist methodological ethos, which emphasizes decentering themselves, uplifting underrepresented voices, and being open to critique (Larson, 2018). nextGEN thus has evolved as a space where graduate students offer guidance, provide resources, and support each other emotionally and professionally. We therefore see nextGEN as not only a community, but also a movement. It’s a rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) movement that grows and spreads by assembling via digital and conference spaces to advocate for graduate student welfare. We work to advance, at times, a disruptive movement in order to create hope, reliance, and space for Rhet-Comp graduate students, including us.

In what follows, the initial three nextGEN moderators reflect on the need for this genre disruption. To be clear, nextGEN isn’t an organization with a governing body—it’s a listserv that networks itself into other digital spaces (like Twitter); however, social movement organizing principles and practices have been instrumental to nextGEN. With the space established, a central consideration is what becomes of this space. Does it emerge to only sink from use and memory due to a lack of attention and engagement? What’s the role of moderation for a space without a developed cultural, disciplinary identity? It became clear, early on, that part of moderation would be community-building and -organizing.

Part 2: First Year Moderator Reflections: Sacrifice

Kyle Larson’s Moderating Story

I wrote an antiracist response to the reaction on WPA-L to Vershawn Young’s (2018) 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication call for proposals. Consequently, senior scholars publicly shamed me and privately wrote a “mentor” of mine, who subsequently distanced themselves from me and with whom I no longer work. It says a lot about the field’s center of power when the most vocal reaction to antiracism is outrage, rather than outrage being directed toward the alignment with white supremacist discourse.

Some graduate students and early-career faculty expressed solidarity with me on different social platforms. On Twitter, Lucy Johnson, Estee Beck, and I began discussing the need for graduate students to have our own space. Estee Beck then named nextGEN and secured the listserv space through her university. Lucy and I met that weekend on March 25, 2018, to strategize actualizing nextGEN. We subsequently tweeted a recruitment call for Startup Team members. Less than two weeks after my response on WPA-L, nextGEN went live.

Three Startup Team members volunteered to become moderators: Sweta Baniya, Ashanka Kumari, and me. To be perfectly honest, I volunteered to moderate based more on a feeling of responsibility than excitement. The genre of moderation just felt lacking and tired… It felt disconnected from the reasons behind the space’s exigence, history, and emerging identity. It became clear, however, in its first week that this space needed more than the dominant genre of moderation if it was going to develop into an important and sustained space of community engagement. It didn’t need moderators; it needed community organizers.

Maybe our willingness to move past institutionalized academic genres results from the three of us being first-generation students. I’m not sure. But I do know I have been incredibly fortunate to co-moderate with Sweta and Ashanka.

Sweta Baniya’s Moderating Story

I didn’t know WPA-L existed or I could ever be a part of it. As an international student navigating the field, there was a dearth of information on these kinds of spaces. After reading discussions on WPA-L, I as an international student felt very out of place, as I came here leaving a patriarchal, hierarchical, and gendered space in Nepal. As Twitter was/is my space for navigating academia, I saw Kyle’s tweet calling for students interested in creating a listserv, and I expressed my interest.

Historically, international students have fewer opportunities at home institutions, which limits our abilities to gain professional experience. That’s why I signed up. Being involved with the Startup Team offered a chance to contribute and be a voice for international Rhet-Comp graduate students. Scholarship invites conversations from around the world; however, the field remains limited in understanding and hiring international graduate students. Responding to this, nextGEN members wrote a letter against discriminatory hiring practices regarding international graduate students. This letter, composed by listserv members, calls for faculty (who serve as search committee chairs, members, and beyond) to advocate for international scholars and against policies adversely impacting them (nextGEN, 2019). This statement has been pivotal in raising awareness about international graduate student issues. We gathered signatures of support from nearly four hundred scholars, faculty members, organizations, caucuses, and special interest groups.

When I started my role as a moderator, I didn’t know what role I was taking up. A year and a half later, I have found that nextGEN has been an important asset in helping me establish my identity as an international graduate student. nextGEN was the need of the hour—to raise, discuss, and share graduate student concerns and push the field towards becoming more graduate-student friendly.

Ashanka Kumari’s Moderating Story

Moderating nextGEN has evolved far from what we expected. In fact, Kyle, Sweta, and I recently discussed how the term “moderator” in the traditional sense doesn’t really encapsulate our work so much as “community organizer.” The work of initiating and growing nextGEN means shaping a space that grew and continues to grow rather quickly, and striving to build guidelines and support that best meet and serve the community. Because of the dynamic response, we continue to give nextGEN our energy to maintain momentum.

It’s been a little more than a year since we established this space. Today, we have more than 500 listserv subscribers, engaging in weekly discussions on a variety of Rhet-Comp topics. We’ve made numerous professional strides to be proud of, including a collaboratively co-authored listserv-to-listserv response to problematic decorum on WPA-L, calling for a code of conduct and moderators in that space (nextGEN, 2018), and an international students anti-discriminatory open letter (nextGEN, 2019).^[1] Additionally, nextGEN co-founders have helped organize numerous graduate student gatherings at national conferences. In his greeting message, 2019 CCCC Program Chair Vershawn Ashanti Young (2019) highlighted the role of nextGEN as a “group of multiracial graduate students talkin’ bout: we at the C’s and in dis profession, y’all better recognize” (p. 5). Recently, the Startup Team’s service was recognized with the 2019 Kairos Service Award—and this was just in its first year.

And while these numerous steps forward, recognitions, and movements appear impressive, they would not exist without the labor of numerous unpaid graduate students including and beyond the Startup Team. Our discipline continually values research and teaching labor above service work. Service like editing journals, organizing conferences, serving on committees, and, in this case, moderating a listserv are historically unpaid labor, typically not valued like research and teaching for tenure. Arguably, many of us spend as much if not more time in service roles, places where we interact with community members within and outside our institutional borders. So why do we continue to ignore or undervalue this labor?

For hundreds of graduate students in precarious positions, nextGEN offers an additional avenue to receive mentorship, gain insight about the discipline, and grow as teacher-scholars. We ask questions. We build bibliographies. We share resources. We collaborate.

Part 3: Conclusions about Advocacy Space: Escalation

nextGEN is an evolving advocacy space. Traditional academic genres alone are insufficient in building praxis necessary for responding to institutionalized inequities. Including social movement genres into the disciplinary assemblage of possibilities, however, affords opportunities to quickly act and campaign in kairotic response to community and disciplinary needs. nextGEN builds and disrupts traditional academic genres to achieve community uplift for and with graduate students. We originating moderators see this space as demonstrating and escalating disciplinary re-visions necessary for actualizing community, equity, empowerment, and justice. In every way, our space fosters networked partnerships among graduate students while supporting our rights and welfare. And, we hope nextGEN will continue to do so.

^[1] We follow Nowacek (2011) in defining “genred discursive space” as a “constellation of associated social relations, goals, identities, ways of knowing [and feeling], and even knowledge domains” (p. 19).

^[2] According to Flaherty (2019), “Dave Schwalm, professor emeritus of English at Arizona State University, founded the listserv in 1991, when writing studies was still an emerging field and considered to be a “duty” of many English departments. (Today there are about 4,000 subscribers, though many accounts are probably inactive.)” (“The End of the List?” para. 6)

^[3] See the Glotfelter & Tham’s (2018) interview with representatives of nextGEN’s Startup Team for more on nextGEN’s formation.

^[4] VanHaitsma and Ceraso (2017) describe horizontal mentoring “quite simply, as mentoring (the offering of help, guidance, and training) that is carried out within a horizontal rather than hierarchical relationship (between peers, as opposed to a more and less experience mentor and mentee” (p. 211).

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About the Authors

Amanda Presswood is a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Florida State University. Amanda is currently working on her dissertation “Epistemological Barriers in the Writing Center: Toward Language Difference as the Norm”. Which seeks to identify the epistemological assumptions that govern the ways that multilingual and L2 students are constructed within the literature of the field of rhetoric and composition and how that informs the theoretical and pedagogical approaches that are taken to educate writing tutors about working with multilingual students. Amanda is also the Current chair of the Writing Program Administrators Graduate Organization (WPA-GO).

Virginia M. Schwarz is a first-generation college student finishing her PhD in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Virginia researches assessment genres and the socio-rhetorical construction of merit. Her recent project investigates different forms of contract grading. Virginia returned to school after six years of teaching writing at multiple community colleges, and she currently teaches English and technical communication courses at Madison College. Her work appears in Critical Theory and Qualitative Data Analysis in Education, CCC, Composition Studies, and JWA. In the fall, she will begin her role as Assistant Professor of English at San Francisco State University.

Contents

Introduction

Equity-Centered Approaches to Assessment

Moving Forward Together

References

Introduction

The Writing Program Administrators Graduate Organization’s (WPA-GO) primary mission is to support graduate students at both the masters and doctoral levels as they prepare for careers related to writing program administration (e.g., curriculum revision, faculty development, program assessment). Throughout its ten-year history, many of WPA-GO’s structures and operational norms have been designed to mimic the successful parent organization, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), while at the same time providing a fresh perspective with its own initiatives that the CWPA has in turn adopted. Year by year, these accumulated blueprints have provided guidance to a series of members and leaders who participate in the organization during their graduate career. However, WPA-GO’s limited resources and rotating membership poses challenges for members to work towards growth and sustainability; in other words, WPA-GO and its members perpetually face a tension between navigating established organizational practices while continuously identifying and collectively finding ways forward.

To this end, we pose the following questions that we hope are productive for readers of this symposium: How does a graduate organization with practices reified over time respond meaningfully to calls for change? How might WPA-GO also advocate for change within the parent organization and the field at large? Finally, how might members interrogate their own practices and constantly push WPA-GO forward in developing new practices that serve a range of graduate students and interests?  To explore these questions, we will give a brief overview of WPA-GO and then describe three areas of growth central to the organization that also reflect broader concerns of graduate students in the field of Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp): mentorship and support, conference affordability, and equity-centered approaches to assessment. We hope that the exchange provided by this symposium with other organizations and graduate students helps us grow and learn, and that the stories we offer are generative for others’ thinking, too. The authors of this piece have both served as chairs of the organization (Amanda, 2019-2020; Virginia, 20015-2016); however, we want to clarify that we do not speak for all members of the organization.^[1] 

In 2010, WPA-GO began as an activist space as founders Cristyn Elder and Megan Schoen wanted to connect graduate students to one another and professionals in the field, and further their opportunities to build a profile in writing program administration (Elder, Schoen, & Skinnell, 2014). The following year, Elder, Schoen, and Skinnell drew from a national survey with 227 responses and found that many graduate students in Rhet-Comp were interested in program administration as a specialization but “did not have access to professional resources'' (p. 17). This signaled a gap in the field: a lack of WPA scholarship  and guided mentorship in Rhet-Comp graduate programs. CWPA and WPA-GO aimed to address this educational gap by establishing a graduate student presence at the annual conference and by supporting graduate student participation in the organization and its community. This goal of changing existing structures for increased access and opportunity has influenced the efforts of subsequent WPA-GO chairs, including the two authors of this piece.

Because of dedicated Master’s and PhD students who have served as members and leaders, WPA-GO has been able to continue and thrive. However, WPA-GO’s limited resources and rotating membership can pose challenges for assessing and responding to emerging graduate student needs. We think barriers to enacting change are important to acknowledge, so that we can collectively brainstorm ways to move beyond them.

For example, CWPA and WPA-GO are both volunteer-run organizations limited in their capacities for partnership, mentorship, and coalition building by other, more immediate demands from individual institutions and programs. As the leaders of nextGEN (Kumari, Baniya, & Larson, 2020) and the Writing Across the Curriculum Graduate Organization (WAC-GO) (Polk, Russell & Sockwell, 2020) note in this symposium, we are in a field that requires service work, but graduate students are not always directly compensated for the time and resources required to perform service roles. Furthermore, graduate student members are often juggling the excessive work and emotional labor of graduate school, and many are still exploring and developing their own professional identities. As Miller (2020) also notes in this symposium, graduate students may face multiple challenges within both the university and their own personal lives. Thus, while WPA-GO has been relatively successful in maintaining operations and key partnerships for over ten years, innovations, pilots, and long-term changes are really complex and challenging for members to accomplish.^[2] Additionally, some can take years and, as members graduate and leave the organization, require successfully documenting and transferring responsibility to incoming members.

While members may face these challenges, particularly in redesigning organizational structures and sustaining long-term projects, there have been areas of growth in terms of mentorship and support, conference affordability, and equity-centered approaches to assessment. These innovations offer a way forward in thinking about how graduate organizations can continue to supplement educational and professional experiences during graduate school.

The WPA-GO (2015) bylaws articulate a commitment to working “with the CWPA to support graduate student WPA preparation and strengthen connections between graduate students and professional WPAs” (p. 1). We see this as one of the central functions of the organization, and we are deeply grateful for the time that the members of WPA-GO’s parent organization, CWPA, have invested over the years in meeting with graduate students and offering their perspectives. We believe that through mentorship from those who are more experienced in the field, graduate students can learn from the trials and successes of those who are further into their careers.

One way that WPA-GO helps facilitate student-faculty mentorships is by providing graduate students with opportunities to meet those more seasoned in the field through its Breakfast Buddies program. This program matches mentors (experienced scholars) with mentees (graduate students or new WPAs) and offers these pairs or small groups a space to meet and enjoy a complimentary meal together during either the Conference on College Composition and Communication or CWPA Conference. Our hope is that the connection made between mentors and mentees will remain after the conclusions of the conferences.

WPA-GO members have made important additions to mentoring programs in the last few years. For example, WPA-GO has developed an online mentoring option for those who want to participate but are not able to attend these conferences. Additionally, members can participate in other mentoring activities that are more instructional in nature. These vary by year but have included the Research Writing Group (RWG), individual lessons led by senior scholars in the field, and antiracism workshops that are developed with and hosted by local organizations in the cities where conferences take place.^[3] Finally, WPA-GO has also developed community calls on various topics, such as contract grading, in order to invite more people into the organization and establish circles of peer-mentoring around a topic.

Graduate students often struggle with the expenses associated with conference travel, and graduate organizations have the capacity to advocate for reduced costs. For most conferences in the field, not only are there travel expenses but also registration and membership fees that typically range from $50 to $400. As leaders in WPA-GO, it has become a challenge for us to promote these professional conferences when we know how much money graduate students are being asked to spend and how much money graduate students typically make. For example, the chart below illustrates typical costs associated with traveling to a conference in 2020:

Table 1: Typical Costs of 2020 Conference Travel

Food at the conference, usually located in an expensive, downtown area, and transportation raise these costs. The total above also varies greatly depending on where graduate students live and their access to major airports. If they attend two conferences per year, that would mean spending at least $1,200. Thus, graduate students are being asked to spend between 8-10% of their income on conference travel when the average stipend is between $15,000-$20,000. While some have funding, reimbursement typically covers only a part of travel costs and can be distributed a full year after the expenses were incurred.

One of the ways that WPA-GO seeks to help graduate students attend these professional conferences is through travel grants. Each year WPA-GO offers three travel grants to WPA-GO members who wish to attend the annual CWPA Conference. These awards help to cover the cost of conference registration. This past year, WPA-GO collaborated with CWPA’s People of Color Caucus (POCC) to offer two additional grants, one research and one travel. Although these grants help offset the cost of attending conferences, the organization can only offer them to a small number of people. Thus, travel awards, while important, do not solve the underlying issue of conference expenses. Having attended board meetings, we know why conferences can be so expensive and understand some of the challenges associated with organizing them. We know that conference hotels and their food minimums can be expensive. WPA-GO members have advocated for other venues, such as local universities, and for supplementing these conferences with more online, distance options. Ultimately, conferences remain an issue we need to work together to address as individual organizations but also as a field. If graduate students are expected to present work at professional conferences, then everyone is responsible for critically addressing the affordability of these conferences.

Equity-Centered Approaches to Assessment

Another continuing possibility for not only challenging structures but making structures more challengeable to begin with is related to organizational elections, the process of voting in leaders who serve as chairs or graduate council members. This elected group is responsible for setting WPA-GO’s priorities and agenda for the academic year and organizing committee labor. In the past, WPA-GO elections have disproportionately benefited members from well-resourced or well-funded programs who already have the most on their CVs (and the time, financial means, energy, and resources to add more). These processes reveal graduate students’ problematic assessments of one another, reflecting biases in what/who we value (and in turn, devalue). For example, as discussed, graduate students have unequal access to opportunities at their home institutions (e.g., not all departments offer graduate WPA [gWPA] positions and not all gWPA positions are themselves distributed equitably). WPA-GO’s membership, representing a diversity of identities, scholarship, programs, and institutional types, should all feel they have a clear path to leadership and access to multiple means of challenging and changing organizational structures that are unjust. Otherwise, WPA-GO is reproducing existing inequalities in the field.

In 2012, WPA-GO implemented the first Diversity Task force, and members made recommendations explicitly addressing elections, including language to address diversity of intellectual labor. In 2017, the organization built on this previous work by collaborating with Asao Inoue to create an antiracist assessment workshop specifically for WPA-GO. Held at the CWPA Conference, this event was open to all graduate students and conference attendees, whether or not they were affiliated with WPA-GO. Together, this room of 40 members and outside readers engaged with organizational documents, offered thoughtful responses, and suggested possible revisions for future practices.

Moving Forward Together

As we conclude, we’d like to return to the questions we posed at the beginning of this piece that we hope can be productive for readers:

• How does a graduate organization with practices reified over time respond meaningfully to calls for change?
• How might graduate organizations also advocate for change within the parent organization and the field at large?
• Finally, how might members interrogate their own practices and constantly push their organizations forward in developing new practices that serve a range of graduate students and interests?

For WPA-GO, identifying openings for incremental change in the following areas has improved the organization and partially addressed, however incomplete, inequalities in Rhet-Comp graduate programs: mentorship and support, conference affordability, and equity-centered approaches to assessment. These have been areas of growth and growing for the organization and for many of its members. Change requires elected leadership and members to identify and challenge processes that are no longer (or never have) served them or the organization. And moving forward—that is, moving forward differently—can be complicated, uncomfortable, and risky. One takeaway for Amanda is that while change may be risky, new practices are necessary if we are to meet the needs of the graduate students that our organizations are there to support. Advocacy and equity-centered approaches need to be woven into the fabric of our organizations, not mere afterthoughts. Virginia believes that change needs to be planned for and facilitated through organizational documents and structures, and organizations should have frameworks for accountability. Advocacy and equity work also need to be transparent to all members, and everyone should be included in decisions about where the organization grows, moves, and changes.

^[1] The authors would like to thank past chairs Mandy Macklin and Clare Russell for their service and mentorship these past two years. We also want to thank the founders of WPA-GO, Megan Shoen and Cris Elder, and all former and current members. Without them this organization’s work would not be possible.

^[2] Here we want to give a shout out to the Labor Task Force, who is in the process of publishing data on graduate student labor conditions. Their project started in a WPA-GO committee and took five years to coordinate and complete. For more information see WPA-GO (2019).

^[3] RWG was developed through committees led by Al Harahap, Brian Hendrickson, and Laurie Pinkert in coordination with the CWPA Mentoring Committee.

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About the Authors

Lida Colón is a PhD student in the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric Program at Syracuse University. Her research interests include critical pedagogy, first year writing, critical race theory, and Black feminist thought. She is currently thinking most heavily about the potential influence that writing pedagogies outside of the academy can have on first year writing. She currently serves as an Area Liaison for DBLAC. When not reading and writing, she is riding her bike or eating french fries.  

Contents

Introduction

DBLAC Programs

DBLAC’s Impact

References

Introduction: Being a Black Graduate Student

In this symposium, graduate students detail the importance of mentorship. Presswood and Schwarz (2020) of the Writing Program Administrators Graduate Organization (WPA-GO) discuss the value of learning from the “trials and successes” of a network of established scholars (Introduction). The range of experiences relevant to Black graduate students includes, in addition to those mentioned throughout this issue, navigating professional structures that not too long ago actively excluded us from participation. This essay details some specific challenges faced by Black graduate students and argues for the importance of mentorship for Black scholars. It then details how one education nonprofit, DBLAC (Digital Black Lit and Composition), provides both conventional modes of mentorship as well as material support in order to serve as a learning community and pipeline for self-identified Black scholars including high school students, advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and junior and senior faculty.

Dr. Cecilia Shelton^[1], in a talk at the 2019 Conference for College Composition and Communication, recalled data of an original survey which asked Black students in Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp) graduate programs about their work and experiences. Ninety percent of respondents reported that their research at least somewhat related to blackness. Given the impetus for the birth of our field—the maintenance and protection of the ruling class through language education—the lack of coursework that centers Black Studies in Rhet-Comp departments and the scarcity of Black scholars on core graduate syllabi is unsurprising. This means, though, that students have a difficult time getting exposed to scholarship in their specialties. And, with Black faculty comprising only 6% of the total professoriate in the United States, including graduate faculty, Black students doing Black research must do more for themselves than those with more mainstreamed interests (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Utilizing nexuses of graduate resources like faculty and coursework with intersecting interests is a professionally essential convention of graduate study that may prove an obstacle for students researching in Black scholarship. Exposure to Black faculty and scholarship is key, and many programs may be unable to provide that to their students.

Kynard (2015) details the suspicion, dismissal, hyper-surveillance and blatant disrespect that students and faculty of color face in the academy in one anecdote after another, including some of her own as a Black woman. Lazos (2012) considers the data from a number of studies about the relationship between race and gender and student evaluations and concludes that “minority professors must negotiate many more burdens than non-minority professors from the moment they walk into the classroom” (p. 183). The above finding is reflected in Shelton’s (2019) survey as well, illuminating one of the many links between Black graduate student experiences and those of Black faculty. Many students learn from both colleagues and faculty how to navigate institutional racism, an intellectual and emotional labor for all parties involved that ultimately lends itself to a more inclusive and equitable workplace.

Polk, Russell, and Sockwell (2020) in this symposium consider the value of mentorship regarding the navigation of the line between opportunity and exploitation, reminding us that opportunities for service, including diversity work, have the potential to exploit graduate student labor in ways we do not anticipate, and that faculty mentorship is crucial to helping graduate students develop healthy boundaries. Ahmed (2012) points to how institutions’ reliance on diversity practitioners’ labor can undermine the oft echoed purpose of a more equitable academy because the investment and labor are not shared by everyone. Black graduate students, whose sometimes singular presence is often universities’ answer to accusations of unfair admissions practices, sometimes perform this labor in order to foster a more welcoming and supportive environment in which to do their work, but as Ahmed explains, “becoming the race person . . . can allow others not to turn up” (5). The diversity labor to which Ahmed refers goes even further than the department. Many Black students feel obligations to their families and communities, who are often both direct and indirect beneficiaries of Black scholarship. They may also feel obligated to serve as an example and necessary resource to black undergraduates, high school students, and intellectuals unknown and unnamed who have never been afforded the access we have been granted. It is a heavy weight to carry on top of a rigorous course load.

Enter Digital Black Lit and Composition (DBLAC)(n.d.), “a digital network of Black graduate students” that “provides safe spaces for members to testify to, discuss with, and share support for each other” (“Welcome and Mission Statement”). The organization’s direct service model advances three “Signature Programs”: the Virtual Writing Group (VWG), an online writing space used for motivation and accountability, the Reading Series, which “supplement[s] the work of Black graduate students within [the] network” (“Signature Programs”), and the Writing Retreats, an opportunity for Black scholars to gather, think, and write in community under the guidance of a Scholar-in-Residence. By utilizing this model, DBLAC provides the direct and pragmatic intellectual and emotional nourishment required for scholar-activists to collectively face larger systemic and institutional issues. The remainder of this essay will outline the aforementioned Programs and their impacts on my own experience.

DBLAC Programs

The VWG is a virtual writing space “open to all writers across disciplines and communities” via web portal facilitated and utilized by members that encourages attendees to check in with their specific goals for that session and check in periodically with encouraging and affirming thoughts for one another, facilitating cross-cultural community and writing accountability (DBLAC Virtual Writing Group, n.d.). The open nature of these sessions encourages the kind of coalition building not only between Black scholars but other scholars of color and white scholars that is essential to equitable futures. VWGs are the most frequent of the Signature Programs—they met 41 times over the 2019 summer months; there are now 60 sessions each academic term. There are early, mid-day, and late sessions that last either four or six hours, and participants are welcome to enter and exit the group as their schedules allow. The accountability and flexibility of VWGs have personally served to relieve me of the pressure of working every minute of the session; I feel accountable to the tasks I’ve shared with the other participants and work in a more concentrated way, affording myself less guilty breaks from my work. VWGs also encourage students to be conscious of work stamina and expectations of productivity, which is essential for graduate students, particularly those of us grappling with imposter syndrome exacerbated by cultural alienation (Sales, 2020). Encouragement from Black graduate students is a powerful negation of the academy’s dismissal of our perspectives and concerns. The representatives of nextGEN (Kumari, Baniya, & Larson, 2020) discuss reactions to these concerns by professional bodies; there are countless anecdotes of Black students that speak to this as well. The community fostered in the VWG’s has been invaluable in building crucial confidence in my skills that provides the stamina I need to finish my program successfully and contribute to a necessary and growing professoriate.

The DBLAC Reading Series is the most direct exposure to Black scholarship. A book is chosen by founders Drs. Khirsten Scott and Lou Maraj, now both faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, who coordinate with organization members a book giveaway, a Twitter chat, and a webinar-style discussion of the book open to the public on the organization’s Twitter feed. The author participates in the chat, a crucial component of the program’s benefit to Black graduate students specifically. Not only are students in contact with the scholarship and each other, but with the author as well—a Black scholar in the field. These reading series also provide community in a space where my perspective as a Black student is not dismissed or tokenized—as can happen in predominantly white classrooms—but respected, considered, and constructively critiqued.

The most comprehensive of the three initiatives is hosted by the founders. The Writing Retreat gathers Black graduate students “in any field related to the study of Black people” and one Scholar-in-Residence (“Signature Programs”). Completely funded by DBLAC (food, lodging, a travel budget, even travel grants for scholars who are coming from far away), the weekend is filled with professional development, networking, and writing groups with guidance from supportive faculty. Perhaps most importantly, the Writing Retreat provides a space for Black graduate students to be their entire selves outside of the academic space. This immersion in an academic environment that both welcomes and mirrors Black graduate students—particularly regarding our investment in our communities—is invaluable.

DBLAC’s Impact

DBLAC’s Signature Programs provide direct and immediately beneficial service to Black graduate students. This work, which offers both material and immaterial resources, has helped me develop emotional insulation made of affirmation by way of being reflected in the digital and in-person communities of the organization. The network members develop diverse frames of reference which serve as a resource when difficulties navigating the academy as a Black person arise. As a result of that support, students develop higher capacities to promote and advocate for diversity and equity at our home universities, as illustrated by my experience with the #NotAgainSU movement. In the wake of varied instances of racist violence, the Syracuse University administration responded by minimizing the safety concerns of Black students. As a Black person, and as an educator, my responsibility was clear, even as my concern for students, colleagues, and faculty of color took me away from my work in the last weeks of the semester. DBLAC actively and materially shared this responsibility with us, not only spreading awareness and providing emotional support, but also fundraising almost $1000 to buy food for protesters and to help students buy transportation home. Sharing this responsibility helps us do our work so that we can complete our degrees and continue serving as a resource to rising Black scholars.

Ahmed’s (2012) words about the unequal distribution of diversity labor come back to mind. The presence of Black-centered fellowships and research grants developed by institutions over the last half decade indicate an effort on the part of higher education to diversify the scholarship being produced by their graduate programs. Harper and Simmons (2019), however, reveal that many universities have difficulty graduating their Black undergraduates. Shelton’s (2019) survey responses lend themselves to a possible source of withdrawal rates amongst Black graduate students as well. Organizations that center Black experiences like DBLAC address students’ concerns and needs in ways that their departments and even other graduate student organizations are currently unable or even unwilling to do. DBLAC’s mission statement articulates our commitment to “the academic retention and success of Black graduate students” across disciplines (“Welcome and Mission Statement”); it is aware of and responsive to the interdisciplinary nature of our field. Among us are historians, anthropologists, theologians, sociologists, and creators of countless other knowledges.

Finally, not being drained by the emotional labor of simply existing as a Black graduate student means cultivating a life outside of the graduate school environment—oft-given advice to first-year graduate students. DBLAC’s material and immaterial support—the multiple levels of community, the exposure to Black scholarship, the advantages of a broad professional network—all works to take into account the unique challenges of being a Black graduate student in Rhet-Comp programs and responds with pragmatic solutions.

^[1] Dr. Shelton was a graduate student at East Carolina University at the time of this talk. She is now a faculty member at George Washington University.

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About the Author

Sherwin Kawahakui Ranchez Sales is a PhD candidate in English Rhetoric and Composition at Washington State University. He teaches first-year composition and various Asian Pacific American literature courses at WSU, and he also serves as a writing consultant for the university’s Graduate Writing Center. Prior to WSU, he has taught composition at California State University, Long Beach where he also earned his BA and MA in English. His research interests include Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies, Composition Studies, Cultural Rhetorics, Translingualism, and Writing Center Theory.

Contents

Introduction

Recognizing Community Cultural Wealth

A Glance Back

Conclusion

References

Introduction

At a conference, I sit next to fellow panelists. Because our session is small, we create a circle to discuss. I often dread these circles. I sometimes hope someone will ask me a question—so that I have an excuse to speak.

I’ve been conditioned to believe (some way or another) that speaking in these circles grants you validity. I’ve been conditioned to believe that articulating my thoughts in a complex way lets others know I’m supposed to be here. I feel I know what I’m talking about. I just need to be asked something. Or else I wouldn’t say anything at all.

Time passes, and no questions are asked. The conversation continues while I sit quietly, nodding along, but also listening for a moment to say something. I don’t find one.

Even several years into my graduate studies, I still fear my place is questioned. Those who feel this way get an itching feeling that we do not quite belong, finding excuses to validate how we got in; somehow it was a fluke. We compare ourselves. We are never doing enough. When I complete my graduate work, I suspect I will feel similar as a new PhD, feeling that I cannot say “I’m a graduate student” when I am unsure of something or if I make a mistake. I am afraid this feeling will never truly go away.

In my experience, however, what goes unexamined is the positionality of those who feel like an imposter. Throughout my academic journey, examining my cultural background and upbringing as to why I feel this way was an interrogation I did not like to do, but I have read enough to believe that one’s culture can in fact play a role in feelings of inadequacy: Young (2004) and Villanueva (1993) come to mind. Despite my reading of these scholars, I still believed my marginalization had no relation to my successes or failures. No excuses: bootstrap mentality. I can do it if I just try. As an Asian Pacific American, I have been shown this through the model minority myth, through my family, through media. It has taken me far too long, I think, to investigate these notions further. Villanueva (1993) writes that “the bootstraps break before the boots are on, that too many have no boots” (p. xiv), and I admit that I have had the privilege of possessing a decent pair.

I hope to reconsider how my place in academia is located within a larger personal rhetorical history, one that links aspects of my family and their own experiences to my feelings of uncertainty. To do this, I employ the personal as it “contributes to understanding the multiple locations we occupy as researchers, teachers, and citizens” (Young, 2004, p. 16). Additionally, as an emerging academic of color, I find reassurance in these types of scholarship, yet I also believe building networks and having mentors that understand your experience (even just a little bit) is crucial in this business.

Recognizing Community Cultural Wealth

In a graduate seminar, I take out the response paper I wrote regarding Delgado and Stefancic (2012). I look at it, highlighter in hand, marking the potential parts that I feel comfortable sharing. I still have trouble speaking in class, despite all the things I want to say. People have told me that it comes with time. It comes with vocabulary and from practice. But whenever I say something, it seems like nonsense. My voice shakes. I think, it comes from making a fool out of myself.         

For the majority of my time in graduate school, I have had a fixed notion of what success looks like. Present at everything. Submit to journals to publish. Speak in class. Push back against what the professor says. Challenge the text. I have tried to fit into some of these aspects throughout my time as a graduate student, though I cannot say I have always felt the impulse to pursue them all. I find much value in these characteristics, yet I also recognize that doing so potentially overlooks what Yosso (2005) calls “community cultural wealth” (p. 69). These “knowledge[s], skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color” shift hegemonic notions of power so that they may “survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” (p. 77). In other words, there is value in my decisions to not chase such professional development. Such assets and narratives as these contribute to individuals feeling like “empowered participants, hearing their own stories and the stories of others, listening to how the arguments against them are framed and learning to make arguments to defend themselves” (p. 75). Just as I ask students to interrogate their own narratives, I think it is about time I take a closer look at mine, especially as these feelings of imposter syndrome continue to be part of that story.

A Glance Back

My mother comes from a family of educators in the Philippines. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Northern Luzon Teacher’s College (now MMSU) in the Philippines, she taught fifth and sixth grades. Her mother and father: also teachers in Ilocos Norte, a province in northern Philippines. However, after immigrating to the United States, my mother decided teaching was not for her, fearing the students would be too challenging to teach—not to mention the extra schooling she would have to complete because of the different requirements for her degree.

My father grew up on Hawai’i. After completing high school, he would attend community college shortly before dropping out and pursuing the hard labor and apprenticeship of boiler making. His mother, a native Hawaiian, worked as a waitress. His father, an immigrant from the Philippines, worked on the plantations in Hawai’i, working long hours, providing for three boys.

This reflection helps make sense of the community wealth capital I have, and it displays the boots given to me. Within this same symposium, Fischer, Rosche, and McCool (2020) relate a similar sentiment: as three white women, how do their positionalities simultaneously marginalize and empower them? Likewise, González (2020) acknowledges a comparable response to mine: how does being a male contribute to how we navigate the field? Both pieces recognize that with this awareness, “it is also our duty to help others cultivate their scholarly ethē; we must interrupt, advocate, and relate not only for ourselves, but for––and with––all persons who exist in marginalized spaces” (Fischer et al., 2020, “Conclusion”).

There is no teacher gene, but Yosso (2005) “refers to those cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (kin) [as] carry[ing] a sense of community history, memory and cultural intuition” (p. 79). This “familial capital” (Yosso, 2005, p. 79) becomes apparent on my mother’s side and continues on with my father’s educational journey—or lack thereof. A look back at his history (and his immigrant father) allows me to see how I fit in this rhetorical history. One that values hard labor and working hard. Both parents telling some sort of immigrant story. Stories such as these are important as I seek to understand narratives that are a part of me. In this symposium, González (2020) utilizes “counterstory” within his piece as well, explaining how its usage “reveal[s] the untold stories of racism, inequity, and injustice, as they are mobilized upon people of color” (“Introduction”). In regard to my own experience, I can recognize its power as it allows me a slightly clearer picture of why I may feel inadequate in such spaces, and as González (2020) explains further, this is especially powerful, “as [counterstories] infiltrate certain spaces like graduate studies in rhetoric in composition” (“Introduction”).

In regard to my own imposter syndrome, I think a combination of feeling an obligation to keep up the tradition of a hard-working person of color and recognizing that I am one of the (if not first) few in my immediate family to get this far in education are driving factors. Somewhere along the way, I decided to pursue a field that “a good number of people might think useless” (Nguyen, 2017, para. 11), especially my immigrant mother and native Hawaiian father. Although proud and supportive of me now, my parents were not always so keen on my decision to take up the humanities. When I was younger, I would get frustrated, but I have learned to appreciate their commentary, as it speaks to their experience and indirectly illustrates the struggle and lifestyle they had to endure. Becoming successful as a person of color, as an immigrant, as an indigenous, has historically looked a certain way. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and gaining financial stability: this has been synonymous with legitimacy in this country—for valid citizenship. I cannot be frustrated with their view on that. But I can push for “revisions that must take place within American culture to account for the literacy and rhetorical practices of people of color” (Young, 2004, p. 7). Nevertheless, perhaps my feelings of inadequacy stem from this need to prove my own legitimacy in their story. Not to prove them wrong per se, but to continue on a legacy of their American narrative, one that takes influence from theirs and re-envisions it, allowing fluidity of what success looks like. And I think my parents are coming along to this flexibility.

Conclusion

As emerging scholars, we may not know how to approach situations that speak to our cultural experiences, and for some (not all), we can find comfort in the familiar—at least until we can fully understand the struggles we face, and how to create space so that those unfamiliar spaces feel more and more our own. Mentorship, therefore, in any capacity is particularly important as it can reassure individuals who feel out of place.

The opportunities for mentorship in our field should increase. However, how would we do this without furthering the burden that these potential mentors already carry? Yes, as graduate students, we know who some of these scholars are; we are assigned to read them, after all. Approaching and talking with them are different matters. For some of us, it is simply more difficult than marching right up to them and introducing ourselves.

The caucuses provide a good starting point for those new scholars who flourish more in smaller group settings. My brief experience with the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Asian/Asian American Caucus (AAAC) has been extremely helpful, and what I found meaningful were the stories and personal histories that were shared. I think the field can benefit from learning from the rhetorical history of scholars who are willing to share. While meeting scholars is a worthwhile experience, I also believe learning about scholars’ journeys (especially those that may identify with a marginalized community) can influence upcoming academics.

I return to one of Yosso’s (2005) forms of capital through community cultural wealth: “aspirational capital” (p. 77). She describes it as “the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers” (p. 77). For some, those barriers take the form of not having boots that have stepped foot on that road to graduate education. For some of us, we take the boots that were given and continue to tread, finding others who have taken it upon themselves to continue that “culture of possibility” (Yosso, 2005, p. 78).

At an AAAC sponsored session, I sit at yet another circle. But something is different here. We share stories of feeling like a foreigner in places where we shouldn’t. We question what it means to be “Asian Pacific American.” How it is fluid, not fixed. How we all sit in a rhetorical history that shouldn’t ignore the past. I open my mouth to speak at what feels like a good time. My voice still shakes. I’m still nervous—but promising nods guide me, and I feel a little stronger. A little less of a fool.

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About the Author

Caleb González is a PhD student in the Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Program at The Ohio State University. His research interests include composition histories at Hispanic-Serving Institutions and the ways in which such histories have shaped and continue to shape composition pedagogies among Latinx student communities. His work has been published in the peer-reviewed journal TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses. He’s also recently contributed to a collaborative book chapter on an autoethnography graduate course that is forthcoming in Self+Culture+Writing: Autoethnography for/as Writing Studies (Utah State University Press) edited by Rebecca Jackson and Jackie Grutsch McKinney.

Contents

Introduction

A CRT Counterstory in English Graduate Studies

What about This CRT Counterstory?

The Traditions of CRT Counterstory

Conclusion

References

Introduction: Critical Race Theory Counter-storytelling

Critical Race Theory (CRT) counterstory has emerged within and across education studies, educational equity, higher education studies, and Latin@ and Chican@ Studies (Delgado, 1989; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001; 2002; Yosso, 2005; Yosso, Villalpando, Bernal, & Solórzano, 2001;). Additionally, scholars within the field of Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp)(Martinez, 2013; 2014; 2016; 2018; Pimentel, 2014; 2015) have explored the intricacies of CRT counter-storytelling in the form of cuentos, testimonios, narratives (autobiographical, biographical, and composite), personal experience, and parables, among other forms, as valid research and theoretical inquiry.

Martinez (2016) frames CRT counterstory as “a method of telling stories by people whose experiences are not often told” (p. 214). Martinez (2016) explains that counterstory as methodology thus “serves to expose, analyze, and challenge stock stories of racial privilege and can help to strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance” (p. 214). Stock stories, as Delgado (1989) explains, are built by people who navigate dominant positions and select, among a variety of available facts, a picture that is useful to their own positionality and interests. CRT counterstories are significant in that they not only reveal the untold stories of racism, inequity, and injustice as they are mobilized upon people of color, but become increasingly exigent in documenting the stamina of such forces as they infiltrate certain spaces like graduate studies in Rhet-Comp.

Some of the articles within this very symposium contain aspects of counter-storytelling through the use of the “I” (Fischer, Rosche, & McCool, 2020; Sales, 2020). Sherwin Kawahakui Ranchez Sales (2020), for example, examines the larger context of belonging that directly connects to feeling like an imposter. Fischer, Rosche, and McCool’s (2020) article on oppressive patriarchy within graduate studies in Rhet-Comp emphasize the “I” to relay lived experiences in ways “that other kinds of research cannot” (“Introduction”). My contribution also shares this notion of institutional belonging through the narrative and the theoretical.

Additionally, CRT counter-storytelling matters for the state of graduate studies as the field continues to explore how to confront racism, white language supremacy, and the varying degrees of microaggressions that we know exist and that continue to seep through the discipline (Inoue, 2019). It also matters as the field seeks to expand its own frameworks professionally, ontologically, and pedagogically for including and supporting marginalized graduate students. It’s also important considering the discursive space of the WPA-Listserv—a digital space that erupted in a racist attack in the Spring of 2019. How can we imagine, as a field, ways to counter these forces within graduate studies, as the stories, lived experiences, and contributions from marginalized graduate students come to the forefront?

A CRT Counterstory in English Graduate Studies

One of my CRT counterstories highlights a specific writing class I took at the very beginning of my graduate school journey. There were a number of poems and essays on the syllabus, and the most notable, to me, was Morábito’s (2010) poem “Oil,” written in English. Before class, I also decided to read the same poem by Morábito, “El Aceite,” in Spanish, to find interesting points of analysis and understanding, especially within, but also between the two languages. I was relying on my linguistic heritage to help me engage with the text.

As my peers began to discuss the poem, some shared their confusion for what it could be about. When I looked it up in Spanish earlier, I learned that the poem was situated in a book of twelve poems called Caja de Herramientas. Each poem focuses on a small tool or item that is seemingly insignificant (e.g. screw, water, sponge, dishrag, hammer), which could be a nod at observing objects that reveal the details of life, including how our lives are shaped by the micro and seemingly ordinary. I read two other poems (“El Trapo” and “El Martillo”) for greater context. I shared with my peers that upon reading three of Morábito’s poems in Spanish, I found myself wondering more about the contextual situatedness of the poem within a larger work titled Toolbox. I was also wondering about the similarities and differences between the original and the translation of the book and what the poem might say to readers in both Spanish and English. After a few seconds of silence and with the sound of crickets outside, one of my white peers quickly changed the subject.

What about This CRT Counterstory?

I tell this story to connect a personal experience in graduate studies with a larger (though very subtle) force of power and privilege that is often at work within the classroom. This matters as we continue to work toward pedagogical frameworks of inclusivity and making sure that the voices and experiences of graduate students who already find themselves on the margins are supported and heard. My story is one example that could have been taken up by the teacher with a few pedagogical moves such as, Hmm, say more about that, or, Let’s linger there for a moment.

Furthermore, Yosso (2005) talks about the cultural wealth model as a framework to understand how students of color access and experience college from a strengths-based perspective. In this symposium, Sales (2020) also references Yosso’s (2005) cultural wealth model in terms of aspirational capital. Another form that Yosso (2005) mentions is linguistic capital which alludes to the language and communication skills that students bring to the college space. In terms of my specific counterstory, I also can’t help but wonder that if a white peer of mine had shared the exact same knowledge of having come across the work in another language and reading a few more poems for greater context and working across two languages for greater meaning, the response may have been quite different.

This is only speculation, of course, but this is where the workings of educational access, privilege, and belonging that Martinez (2018), Ahmed (2012), and Yosso (2005) allude to in their work become important. Whose epistemologies and cultural wealth is valued or authorized within the educational space or even the class conversation? This matters for graduate studies in Rhet-Comp if we are to seek out ways of resisting such notions by ensuring that contributions of marginalized graduate students be accounted for within spaces of learning.

The Traditions of CRT Counterstory

Solorzano and Yosso (2001) ask a similar question about understanding the state of graduate education as experienced by Chicana and Chicano students. Their answer is developed through CRT and the traditions of counterstory, since the practice of storytelling has “a rich and continuing tradition in African-American (Berkeley Art Center, 1982; Bell, 1987, 1992, 1996; Lawrence, 1992), Chicana/o (Paredes, 1977; Delgado, 1989, 1995a, 1996; Olivas, 1990), and Native American (Deloria, 1969; Williams, 1997b) communities” (p. 475). For oppressed groups, stories have often been linked to survival and resistance (Delgado, 1989).

CRT counterstory, then, is significant as it brings with it a history and practice of documenting the perpetual workings of racism within the institutional spaces of education (Delgado, 1989; Martinez, 2016; 2018; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001; Yosso, 2005; Yosso, Villalpando, Bernal, & Solórzano, 2001). While I argue that marginalized graduate students in the field can be a part of this important practice (even in the context of risk through the documentation of one’s own narrative), I also argue that because of the situatedness of CRT within storytelling traditions, counter-storytelling can function to expose and resist the persistence of racism (Yosso, 2005) as it springs up in a variety of ways within graduate studies in rhetoric and composition.

Yosso (2005) leans on Anzaldúa (1987) and Ikemoto (1997) to emphasize that counter-storytelling is not so much about reacting to the stories of racial privilege, as this can function to keep a clear focus on majoritarian stories. Nor is the key focus to prove that racism exists. We know (or should know) that it does. It is, rather, a way of documenting racism and the ways in which it endures and is significant within spaces of education, and in particular, the space of graduate studies in Rhet-Comp. This is why CRT counterstories are often organized through narrative and critical reflection with specific traditions of testimonios and witnessing. As Yosso (2005) states,

So while counterstories challenge mainstream society’s denial of the ongoing significance of race and racism, they do so by offering a critical reflection on the lived experiences and histories of People of Color. In its multiple forms, counterstorytelling can strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance. (p. 10)

This matters to graduate studies in that as students in Rhet-Comp engage in this practice, the field might not only consider what majoritarian stories have historically been, but how they are operated and mobilized by institutional entities possessing both power and privilege.

Conclusion

CRT counter-storytelling can leave room for students to witness, examine, and interrogate the ways in which their experiences in graduate studies are shaped by the larger discourses of power and privilege, and, in turn, expose and resist those discourses, including the ways in which they are mobilized and framed as majoritarian. CRT counterstory asks the reader to engage with it as a disruptive mode of storying (I’m intentional about using the word story as one of action), one that invites storytelling, testimonio, and critical reflection that stems from the self for wider cultural, social, and political connections. This kind of praxis can position the writer, in this case the graduate student scholar, in a space of storytelling and can advance crucial conversations that wish to re-center the objectives of social justice advocacy and inclusivity. Readers are also challenged to re-think their positions and stances when addressing such issues, because of a counterstory that complicates the issue personally, narratively, and analytically. “And for the person of color, it does more,” Villanueva (2004) says when writing about memoria. “The narrative of the person of color validates. It resonates. It awakens, particularly for those of us who are in institutions where our numbers are few” (p. 15).