Chapter 6: The Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Urban Leadership: Four School Leaders (Re)constructing Self and Identity

Narrative inquiry embraces narrative as both the method and phenomena of study. As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) put it, “People by nature lead storied lives and tell stories of those lives, whereas narrative researchers describe such lives, collect and tell stories of them, and write narratives of experience” (p. 2). The following is the narrative of our stories, the stories of how we became urban school leaders who, through a (re)construction of self and identity, ultimately use our positions of power to advocate for just and equitable schools. These are our testimonios—literally translated as testimony which can be defined as “a narrative that conveys personal, political, and social realities. One’s testimonio reveals an epistemology of truths and how one has come to understand them” (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012, p. 364). These narratives, though not all from the perspectives of persons of color, are all from perspectives of leaders who are frequently marginalized as a result of being advocates for justice and equity in spaces where that is often not accepted. These narratives are the testimony of our journeys, our (re)construction of self as social justice leaders in urban schools.