Who Tells Our Stories?

In a profile of Sarahy Torres, a remarkable first-generation student graduating from UCLA this year, she describes her mother taking her to the library in the summer when she wasn't working in the fields. We are told that the library was named after a community member who had not finished high school but "uplifted education". Torres also describes her parents as always "uplifting" education.

The author of the article then goes much further:

For Torres’ parents, campesinos who emigrated from Mexico and began working in the farmlands of Oxnard in their late teens, a good education opened the door for their children to prosper. Torres, like Soliz and her parents, has found her own way to uplift education for others.

Yet these are not Torres' words. She is not quoted as characterizing her K-12 education as "good". She is not quoted as saying that people who are educated there "prosper". Instead, she refers often to the lack of resources in her community.

So who does get to tell Torres' story in a profile about Torres?

I want to think more about this question of who tells the stories of first-generation students and to look more closely at the stories that campuses tell themselves about academically successful poor and working-class students. These profile of first-generation students so often (appropriately) celebrate campus resources that successful students leverage to overcome disadvantage, while saying so little about the causes of those disadvantages. First generation students (and faculty) may be portrayed as inspirational resources for other first-gens, but rarely as contributing to campus or public knowledge about communities like theirs.

Let's look more closely about what Torres says and what she isn't given space to say:

A Good Enough Education?

What is described in this profile as a "good" education that enables the children of farmworkers to "prosper"? It takes only a few minutes to learn that the library that anchors this story of aspiration is is closed on weekends and open only a few hours a day most weekdays. Her school district? Students attend shools that are deeply segregated by race and social class: 86.6% of the students are Hispanic, 70% of the children qualify for school lunch subsidies because of low family income, and achievement test scores are in the bottom half of their state. Fewer than half the students in the county graduate with the coursework required for admission to the state's public colleges.

Torres deserves every syllable of praise in this profile. She's a remarkable scholar committed to a greater good for others. And we might imagine that she'd be allowed to describe her schooling in her own words.

Speaking of Her Family and Community

We know that Torres is grateful that her mother could take her to the public library when it was open and her mother was not working in the fields. We know that when she was growing up, farm workers often worked six days a week, from dawn to dusk, so we are left unclear about how much time her mother had for these visits.

We don't read anything in this profile about Torres' understanding of why most farmworkers working such long hours (and only recently qualifying for overtime pay) make so little that they qualify for public assistance. We don't learn anything about the deep challenges of raising children while working long days in dangerous jobs yet earning so little.

(Not) Speaking About Her Scholarly Contributions

We learn that Torres did several undergraduate research projects in her community but learn surprisingly little about her scholarly perspectives or about how her work contributes to public understanding of her community.

We learn that one research project as part of her preparation for graduate school:

Torres conducted pláticas — a Chicana/Latina feminist research methodology — with farm-working women to learn more about their level of access to food resources, particularly when they first began working in agriculture as newly arrived immigrants.

Torres isn't given space to explain to readers what she learned about women's access to "food resources", though there are clear public policy implications in women who are vital workers in a national food supply chain having trouble accessing food for themselves. There are clear tensions between parents searching for food after long work weeks and also "uplifting" their children's education. We are told that Torres is involved in leadership in a food bank and advocacy organization in her community but she isn't given space to explain how her scholarly work informs that leadership or what her advocacy entails.

We learn that Torres also co-authored a research paper as an undergraduate and presented that work at national research conferences. Wow. The link in the profile to the published article that she co-authored makes recommendations about changes in academic policy, practice, and research to create more culturally engaged campuses to better serve the children of rural farmworkers. Yet in a profile in a campus publication, she isn't given space to articulate those recommendations to her own academic community.

(In contrast is this profile of a white woman graduate student at UCLA that includes detailed descriptions of her narrow research questions and explanations of why those questions matter to a broader public).

It's fair to be curious about why Torres, with a remarkable record of undergraduate research, is portrayed as inspirational to her own community but not as contributing anything of general interest to a scholarly understanding of those communities.

Casting Her Work on Inequitable Campus Practices as Inspirational

Torres speaks in the article about how she and others from the community had inequitable access to information about enrolling and staying in college. We are invited to admire her work to better inform students in her high school (on top of her courses, research, campus committees, and work with campus support services) as inspirational without questioning why the campus does not simply do this work with high school students themselves.

To make her dream of attending UCLA possible, Torres diligently pursued and earned a series of scholarships so she could fund the majority of her undergraduate education. And so she has made it a point to share her scholarship knowledge and strategies with other students, delivering presentations through the Future Leaders of America advocacy group as well as directly to high schoolers in her home county.

“To this day, some of my former high school teachers continue to ask me if I can speak with their students, many who also have farm-working backgrounds,” Torres said. “As a non-STEM major, it’s important for me to share all I know about scholarships, internships and research opportunities because I believe that’s what will help them build a community in higher education — just like the one I’ve built at UCLA.”

There's not a single sentence in this profile about her thoughts on why a public college isn't simply affordable for anyone admitted, or why, beyond everything else on her plate, she had to "diligently" pursue scholarships to stay in school or whether the search for funding was stressful or rewarding.

Nor does the article speak to why she and students in her community aren't routinely provided information that they need about how to afford college unless someone from their own community "diligently" tracks down that information and then returns to teach them. It could be argued that such information would be routine in a "good" education.

Silence About Inequalities in a Story about Inequality

Throughout this profile, we learn a great deal about inequalities that shaped Ms. Torres' childhood. We learn that women who work long hours in difficult jobs experience food insecurity and often rely on public support to supplement their wages. We learn from her research that colleges outreach to students like her is limited. We learn that it's difficult for low-income students to find information about how to pay for college. We know that public institutions – from the library to the schools – are under resourced.

All of these things are matters of public policy, yet the only remedy mentioned for the poverty and food insecurity and struggling segregated schools is for successful college students from the community to return and "uplift" others.

There's no mention of a broader public responsibility for adequate funding for public schools and libraries, no mention of the decades-long fight for better protections for farm workers, no mention of why there is food insecurity in a state that feeds so much of the rest of the country, no mention that their low-wages have to be supplemented with public social safety net programs. There's no mention of immigration policy that renders so many undocumented farm workers powerless.

And most tellingly, in a profile of a new college graduate, there's no mention of Ms. Torres' scholarly historical, or political perspectives on any of this though she double majored in Chicana/o and Central American studies and in the activist oriented Education and Social Transformation program. We read about how she will eventually return to her community to "uplift" them with the "gift" of education, but the word "gift" in reference to a public good is the author's, not Torres'.

In a profile of an exceptionally an accomplished college graduate, we learn nothing about how her studies will inform her work when she returns home but are to understand that her mere example will be inspirational to others.

Torres deserves every syllable of praise in this profile. She is remarkable. Yet there's an unexplored tension in so many these inspiring profiles of first-generation students. Implicitly, their stories are used to assure readers that disparities in school quality, in access to public resources and even to food, in basic information about getting to and affording college are mere speed bumps in an otherwise open road of opportunity. Implicitly, we're to understand that colleges do great work in supporting these students, though enrollment and then graduation rates for first-generation students continue to lag those of other students.

This story of a young woman working very hard to overcome a childhood of deep social class inequalities is framed instead to assure readers that she came from a place that provided a "good" education so that students like her can "prosper" when parents uplift education.

I'm very curious to know what she'd have said had she told her own story, in her own words, about what she's learned at UCLA about the circumstances of her community and how she might become part of more creating a more just future for the students there.