Immigration and the Transnational Experience
2 total works
Politics of Survival in Academia
by George D Spindler, Maria Chun, Eugenia Cowan, and Concha Delgado Gaitan
Published 1 January 2002
This volume presents the personal accounts of African American, Asian American, and Latino faculty who use 'narratives of struggles' to describe the challenges they faced in order to become bona fide members of the U.S. Academy. These narratives show how survival and success require a sophisticated knowledge of the politics of academia, insider knowledge of the requirements of legitimacy in scholarly efforts, and resourceful approach to facing dilemmas between cultural values, traditional racist practices, and academic resilience. The book also explores the empowerment process of these individuals who have created a new self without rejecting their 'enduring' self, the self strongly connected to their ethno/racial cultures and groups. Within the process of self -redefinition, this new faculty confronted racism, sexism, rejection, the clash of cultural values, and structural indifference to cultural diversity. The faculty recounts how they ultimately learned the skillful accommodation to all of these issues. It is through the analysis of survival and self-definition that women and faculty of color will establish a powerful foothold in the new academy of the twenty-first century.
Fifteen years ago, Concha Delgado-Gaitan began literacy research in Carpinteria, California. At that time, Mexican immigrants who laboured in nurseries, factories and housekeeping had almost no voice in how their children were educated. Committed to participative research, Delgado-Gaitan collaborated with the community to connect family, school and community. Regular community gatherings gave birth to the Comite de Padres Latinos. Refusing the role of victim, the Comite participants organized to reach out to everyone in the community, not just other Latino families. This is a critical work that shows how communities can pull together in the care of their children and ensure that they thrive academically, socially and personally.