Narratives of Homeplacing in Hostile Territory: Mentoring Black Women Graduate Students, Truth-Telling, and Difficult Dialogues

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Contemplating Questions of Home and Ethnicity

Abstract

Through scholarly personal narrative (Nash, 2004),we explore the ways Black women mentors (do not) reveal to their mentees their lived-experiences and the personal pain associated with the pursuit of careers in higher education; how and why their narratives of pain and pursuit are negotiated, sanctioned, and/or strategically altered; and the impact these decisions have on the development of Black women graduate students. We draw on hooks’ notions of “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (2015) and “radical honesty” (2004), to more critically examine this idea.

Authors

• Ebony C. Pope, University of Oklahoma

• Kirsten T. Edwards, University of Oklahoma