Pushing Out and Pulling In Writers: A Student's Journey Through Higher Education

• In Event: 64.085 - Centering Marginalized Voices: Emergent and Experienced Bilinguals as Writers "in the Struggle"

Abstract

Author2 was very proud and excited about being accepted at Big Green University (BGU). As a bilingual Latina from the “inner-city,” it was a goal that many people had told her she would be unable to accomplish. Yet, less than a year after her first class at BGU she “dropped out.” To an outsider, it could appear that Author2’s English writing proficiency was the reason that she left BGU. After all, she barely passed either of the writing courses to which she as assigned. Moreover, existing research documents the difficulties encountered by students with similar backgrounds encounter in the higher education writing classrooms (Kibler, 2013; Ruecker, 2013; Wojahn et al., 2016). However, no one ever asked Author2 why she left BGU. She logged in to the online system and silently “un-enrolled.” Yet, five years later this young woman who was positioned as a “deficient” writer graduated from Lilac University. In this paper, we (Author 1 and Author 2) draw on Lorde’s (2007) emphasis on transforming silence into language and action by investigating the following research questions:
1. How does Author2 describe the factors that “pushed” her out Big Green University?
2. What resources did Author2 use to facilitate her successful completion of Lilac University?

In order to ensure that the Author2’s voice and perspective were privileged, she wrote out her interpretation of her pathway through higher education. Then, the Author1 developed interview questions based on this narrative and existing scholarship on multilingual writers. Then, Author1 and Author2 engaged in three 70-90 minute audio-recorded interviews. Next, Author1 used iterative emergent descriptive coding and analytic memoing (Saldaña, 2013), which were guided by research questions, to analyze interview transcripts. Finally, member-checking was used to ensure that the analytic process coincided with Author2’s interpretations (Cresswell & Miller, 2000).

The findings shared within this paper center on four pivotal periods in Author2’s higher education trajectory: racism within the first year composition classroom that pushed her out of BGU, family and community support that pushed her into La Familia Community College, La Familia’s academic literacy program that facilitated her transfer to Lilac University, and the sustaining familial and institutional support she received at Lilac University. Through detailing Author2’s experiences in each of these pivotal periods, this paper highlights how Author2’s writing abilities were not the roadblock to her initial success in higher education. Her refusal of dehumanizing schooling led to her “dropping out” of BGU. She found success in educational and community environments that recognized her humanity.

This research was conducted through a lens that did not privilege the institutional understandings of “dropping out” or “college success.” Instead, we used Author2’s own words to express how she makes meaning of her own experiences. This perspective is necessary to create schooling contexts that create humanizing experiences for linguistically and racially minoritized writers in higher education. Moreover, it calls attention to factors outside of the traditional focus on dominant notions of decontextualized writing pedagogy.

Authors

• Maneka Deanna Brooks, Texas State University

• Arlene M. Alvarado