Chapter 16: From Worrying to Writing: The Power of Self-Narratives During Unprecedented Times

In every piece that I write, I am in the practice of embedding a positionality statement, as I desire to openly acknowledge that how I view, interpret, and process the world is influenced by who I am, inclusive of my scholarly endeavors (Garcia 2014). Because this piece is written in narrative form and centered on my experiences during a particular time, I thought it was important to share my positionality and the major events of my life that brought my self-identification to the forefront.

I am the daughter of a Black man who was born in a Southern state and a Puerto Rican mother that was born in New York. Both relocated to the Midwest, my father arriving during the second great migration as a young adult and my mother arriving as a school-age child with her parent and siblings. My parents reared me in a suburb of a rust belt city, with my father working a job as a unionized tradesman at a major car manufacturer and my mother working in a secretarial position at a regional pharmaceutical company. They were able to purchase a house in an up and coming all Black neighborhood before I was born. I attended the local majority white public school district for my entire K-12 education where I was the only Black and the only girl that was placed in the gifted and talented program. The stark contrast I experienced between my home life and school life made me keenly aware at an early age that American society was racialized. I pursued education as a career choice, teaching early childhood/early elementary Montessori before moving into administration at a bilingual community-based program. I returned to graduate school to focus specifically on race and education, undoubtedly trying to make meaning of my own experiences. Additionally, by this point in my life, I was also trying to understand my three children’s educational life too, as experiencing schooling again from the perspective of a mother influenced my renewed interest in something that had already fascinated me, minoritized populations’ experiences in schooling, since my own formative years. These years greatly influenced my current identity as an Afro-Latina motherscholar, including how I navigate different parts of the professorship, inclusive of teaching, scholarship, and service. My other influences are my husband, my long-time college friends, my trusted colleagues of color, and my faith. It is from this vantage point that I share my story of breakthrough in the pandemic.