First-Generation Faculty of Color

Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service

Edited by Tracy Lachica Buenavista, Dimpal Jain, and María C. Ledesma; Foreword by Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner

Rutgers University Press

First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service is the first book to examine the experiences of racially minoritized faculty who were also the first in their families to graduate college in the United States. From contingent to tenured faculty who teach at community colleges, comprehensive, and research institutions, the book is a collection of critical narratives that collectively show the diversity of faculty of color, attentive to and beyond race. The book is organized into three major parts comprised of chapters in which faculty of color depict how first-generation college student identities continue to inform how minoritized people navigate academe well into their professional careers, and encourage them to reconceptualize research, teaching, and service responsibilities to better consider the families and communities that shaped their lives well before college.

Stories of love, affirmation, and resistance can find themselves in many places—real and imagined. We search for those stories, or they find us. Those powerful stories of First-Gen Scholars are here in the pages of this book. These are the chronicles previous generations of First-Gen Scholars would have benefited from reading. I know I would have. First-Gen Scholars of Color today and future generations will see themselves and be served by this gift. Daniel Solorzano, author of Racial Microaggressions: Using Critical Race Theory to Respond to Everyday Racism

This book stands alone in elevating voices of first-generation faculty of color who nuance what it means to gain access to academia while not always thriving in it. This volume unapologetically demands for us to honor the full humanity of first-generation faculty of color as they embark on breaking down traditional notions of research, humanizing teaching, and challenging the overburden of service in inhospitable campus climates. If universities, particularly those seeking designation as minority serving, seek to create an environment where first-generation students of color will feel as though they belong, they need to learn from the varied experiences of first-generation faculty of color who have been doing this work, uncompensated and unacknowledged.' Elizabeth Montaño, Associate Professor of Teaching at UC Davis and Chair of the Capital Area North Doctorate in Educati

TRACY LACHICA BUENAVISTA is a professor of Asian American studies at California State University, Northridge. She is the co-editor of Education At War!: The Fight for Students of Color in America’s Public Schools, and “White” Washing in American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies.

DIMPAL JAIN is a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at California State University, Northridge. She is the coauthor of Power to the Transfer: Critical Race Theory and a Transfer Receptive Culture.

MARÍA C. LEDESMA is a professor of educational leadership and the founding director of the Higher Education Leadership Program at San Jose State University.

Foreword
CAROLINE SOTELLO VIERNES TURNER
Preface
TRACY LACHICA BUENAVISTA, DIMPAL JAIN, AND MARÍA C. LEDESMA
Introduction: Toward a First-Generation Faculty Epistemology
MARÍA C. LEDESMA

PART ONE
Research Illustration: Research with Community, Not on Community
1 Food on the Table: The Hidden Curriculum of the Academic Job Market
DIMPAL JAIN
2 Neoliberal Racism and the Experiences of First-Generation Asian American Scholars
VARAXY YI AND SAMUEL D. MUSEUS
3 A Nanny’s Daughter in the Academy
MARIA ESTELA ZARATE
4 On Navigating with Flavor: A Reluctant Professor on the Pathway Here
DARRICK SMITH
5 What Are We Willing to Sacrifice? Mental Health among First-Generation Faculty of Color
OMAR RUVALCABA

PART TWO
Teaching Illustration: “Échale Ganas”

6 The Classroom as Negotiated Space: A Chinese-Vietnamese American Community College Faculty Experience
CINDY N. PHU
7 Taking Up Space: Reflections from a Latina and a Filipino American Faculty Teaching for Racial Justice
NORMA A. MARRUN AND CONSTANCIO R. ARNALDO JR.
8 Ambitions as a Ridah: Using Lived Experience as a Professional Asset Instead of a Liability
PATRICK ROZ CAMANGIAN
9 Sage and Tissue Boxes: Critical Race Feminista Perspectives on Office Hours
JOSÉ M. AGUILAR-HERNÁNDEZ AND ALMA ITZÉ FLORES

PART THREE
Service Illustration: Service Perception versus Service Reality
10 Financial Redistribution as Faculty Service: “The Hustle” and Challenging Racist Classism in the Neoliberal University
TRACY LACHICA BUENAVISTA
11 Mexicana and Boricua First-Generation Scholars: Serving Our Communities with Alma, Mente y Corazón
JUDITH FLORES CARMONA, IVELISSE TORRES FERNANDEZ, AND EDIL TORRES RIVERA
12 Continuing Cultural Mismatches: Reflections from a First-Generation Latina Faculty Navigating the Academy
REBECCA COVARRUBIAS
13 Fugitivity within the University as First-Generation Black-Pinay, Indigenous, and Chicanx Faculty: Cultivating an Undercommons
NINI HAYES, DOLORES CALDERÓN, AND VERÓNICA NELLY VÉLEZ

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index

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