Finding Purpose in the Process: Collective Writing of Women of Color as Healing

• In Event: The Value of Our Words: Sustaining Radical Women of Color Epistemologies in Qualitative Educational Research

Abstract

WoC within the academy must juggle a myriad of roles, balancing scholarship, teaching, service, and even our very survival. As five faculty members at a Midwestern Catholic PWI, we come from different socioeconomic, religious, racial/ethnic, linguistic, and age backgrounds, yet we continue to experience similar systems of oppression and marginalization that attempt to diminish our voices and lived realities as WoC scholars. In this study, we share the ways in which we have collectively worked to speak back and support one another at our institution--from taking on issues around tenure and promotion to being the “diversity voice” on every committee. We do this scholarly work in the hopes of bringing to light both the systemic inequities and acts of resistance of which we are a part.
WoC in the academy must engage in daily practices that protect them from an array of colorblind and racist ideologies. Dominant ideologies of meritocracy, individualism, and color-blindness continue to mask the complex struggles of BIPOC and the systems of oppression that create the conditions for those struggles (Pérez Huber, 2009) . To better conceptualize and anchor our experiences and those of other WoC, we draw upon the theoretical frameworks of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to “challenge the apartheid of knowledge present in academic research and reveals the ways oppression manifests in the experiences of People of Color” (Malagon, Perez Huber and Velez, 2009 p. 254).
This WoC collective has been able to support one another during a time when the world was uncertain. While physically isolated to protect ourselves and our loved ones, we met weekly in a virtual space to share and build together. These meetings mirrored a critical sisterhood praxis (CSP) as described by Reynolds, Botts and Pour-Khorshid (2021); “to name and disrupt these continuations of terror…[in] our schooling and careers” (p. 15).
Drawing upon the weekly virtual sessions, ongoing email and text conversations, as well as personal communications between individuals, we examined the acts of aggression and ignorance we had to grapple with as WoC and the methods of resistance, survival, and support in which we participated. The following themes emerged after careful analysis of the data by the researchers: (1) Representing: Celebrating our scholarship to represent for and with our communities as WoC; (2) Healing Circles: Surviving and supporting one another through academia’s toxicity towards WoC; and (3) Locking Arms in the Struggle: Working in solidarity with one another.
We offer our shared experience as counter story-telling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2011) and critical race testimonio (Perez Huber, 2010) to exemplify the ways in which WoC can and do support and celebrate each other so that we can survive and thrive in a system that was not built for us or by us. Finally, we do this to hold space for our students and all of the girls and WoC who aim to or occupy the seats in colleges and universities--to demonstrate for them how to build a context that supports and celebrates them.

Authors

• Erica R. Davila, Lewis University

• Jung E. Kim, Lewis University

• Joanna Maravilla, Lewis University

• Juana Maria Reyes, Lewis University

• Martha Wilkins, Lewis University