From Oppression to Grace: Women of Color and Their Dilemmas within the Academy.  Theodorea Regina Berry and Nathalie D. Mizelle, eds. Sterling: Stylus Publishing, LLC, 2006.  264 pp.

Reviewed by: Lourdes Díaz Soto

Shattering the Foundations of the Ivory Tower in the Amerikkk Academy

This edited volume of narratives relates the complex experiences and voices of Women of Color (WOC) representing multiple ethnicities and backgrounds in the academy. Relying on slices of Critical Race Feminism (CRF), the contributors place Women of Color at the center rather than at the margins of the discussion. A short autobiography highlighting the contributors’ personal and academic journey precedes each chapter.

The introduction caught my attention with its title, “What the Fuck, Now What?” The themes described by the contributors include issues of race, familial influences, social networks, identity struggles, humiliation, the academy as the “hood”, shared oppression, religion, and the role of allies. The book represents  women of African, Native American, Latina, East Indian, Korean and Japanese descent who are completing degrees or who are  faculty. The narratives describe three stages of development: the graduate student; the junior faculty;and the established faculty. Each of the 19 contributions represents diverse yet  common predicaments encountered as an integral part of the struggle to succeed in the university.

The first part of the book entitled, Move On Up A Little Higher; Completing The Terminal Degree, relates issues encountered while struggling to complete the degree; the second part entitled, Pride And Prejudice: Finding Your; Place After The Degree  , describes the lives of women as scholars and  members of families who deal  with the daily lived realities of a private life and a public life. The third section of the book entitled, Words Of Womanhood Wisdom: Voices Of Senior Faculty Who Are Women Of Color, reveals the thinking and experiences of senior faculty.

The strength of the piece is its ability to complicate the experiences of WOC in the academy. What are disappointing are the somewhat sterile self-portraits presented in the third person. Presenting the narratives in the third person takes away from the possibility of richer thicker passionate descriptive examples of  the challenging and complex experiences that WOC face in the academy. The overall contribution lies in the theoretical realm of CRF and the re-telling of the daily-lived realities that often remain silent and taboo in the academy. Its overall usefulness for readers’ teaching and research lies not only in its portrayals but also in the documentation of  the academic journeys.

The piece begs the question: whose dilemma and whose loss? When the voices of WOC are disregarded and silenced. Women of color  have experienced loneliness, oppression, mistreatment, disrespect  in the academy. Our numbers are small as data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (2005) document the disparities. NCES notes that  2/3 (67%) of all degrees during 2002-2003 were awarded to White students. The data is not aggregated in ways that we can learn about  the impact on women of color but we can surmise the low numbers from the information provided. NCES, for example,  notes that doctoral degrees were awarded to 56.9% White, 5.1 % Black , 3.2% Hispanic, and 4.9% Asian/Pacific Islanders. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72.

Reading this edited volume can remind us that we are not alone in the struggle and that our presence by its very nature is what scares the patriarchal white established norms of the academy. Instead of celebrating our entry into the otherwise white male­-dominated bastion we are made to feel as the “other,” incompetent, unintelligible, and weak.   Yet all the energy that the “privileged ones” spend attempting to dissuade us only serves to remind us that we are indeed the “new insiders” and that we are shattering the very foundations of the ivory tower in the racist, sexist American academy. Our mere presence frightens the established norms and reminds us of  W. E. B. Dubois prediction that the greatest challenge of the twenty first century would be the issue of the color line.

 For WOC the privileged life in the academy is not a dream but a difficult terrain to manage and survive in.   We have a mission: to rebuild the ivory tower into a humane establishment that cares for those it educates and for the future of our nation. We can only be faculty out of our own beings and therefore have the courage to continue to shatter the foundations, the gates, and the ceilings because ultimately our work will serve the greater cause of social justice and equity. We have stood on the shoulders of courageous gigantic women‑including our mothers, our sisters, and our ancestors.We are not only moving  from oppression to grace, as this book highlights,  but from oppression to victory.