"Emerging through Critical Race Theory Counter-storytelling in a Rhetoric and Composition Graduate Studies Context"

by Caleb Lee González | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

📋 Contents

Introduction
A CRT Counterstory in English Graduate Studies
What about This CRT Counterstory?
The Traditions of CRT Counterstory
Conclusion
References
About the Author

This article is part of Xchanges 15.1’s Symposium on the Status of Graduate Study in Rhetoric and Composition.

Introduction: Critical Race Theory Counter-storytelling

Critical Race Theory (CRT) counterstory has emerged within and across education studies, educational equity, higher education studies, and Latin@ and Chican@ Studies (Delgado, 1989; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001; 2002; Yosso, 2005; Yosso, Villalpando, Bernal, & Solórzano, 2001). Additionally, scholars within the field of Rhetoric and Composition (Rhet-Comp) (Martinez, 2013; 2014; 2016; 2018; Pimentel, 2014; 2015) have explored the intricacies of CRT counter-storytelling in the form of cuentos, testimonios, narratives (autobiographical, biographical, and composite), personal experience, and parables, among other forms, as valid research and theoretical inquiry.

Martinez (2016) frames CRT counterstory as “a method of telling stories by people whose experiences are not often told” (p. 214). Martinez (2016) explains that counterstory as methodology thus “serves to expose, analyze, and challenge stock stories of racial privilege and can help to strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance” (p. 214). Stock stories, as Delgado (1989) explains, are built by people who navigate dominant positions and select, among a variety of available facts, a picture that is useful to their own positionality and interests. CRT counterstories are significant in that they not only reveal the untold stories of racism, inequity, and injustice as they are mobilized upon people of color, but become increasingly exigent in documenting the stamina of such forces as they infiltrate certain spaces like graduate studies in Rhet-Comp.

Some of the articles within this very symposium contain aspects of counter-storytelling through the use of the “I” (Fischer, Rosche, & McCool, 2020; Sales, 2020). Sherwin Kawahakui Ranchez Sales (2020), for example, examines the larger context of belonging that directly connects to feeling like an imposter. Fischer, Rosche, and McCool’s (2020) article on oppressive patriarchy within graduate studies in Rhet-Comp emphasize the “I” to relay lived experiences in ways “that other kinds of research cannot” (“Introduction”). My contribution also shares this notion of institutional belonging through the narrative and the theoretical.

Additionally, CRT counter-storytelling matters for the state of graduate studies as the field continues to explore how to confront racism, white language supremacy, and the varying degrees of microaggressions that we know exist and that continue to seep through the discipline (Inoue, 2019). It also matters as the field seeks to expand its own frameworks professionally, ontologically, and pedagogically for including and supporting marginalized graduate students. It’s also important considering the discursive space of the WPA-Listserv—a digital space that erupted in a racist attack in the Spring of 2019. How can we imagine, as a field, ways to counter these forces within graduate studies, as the stories, lived experiences, and contributions from marginalized graduate students come to the forefront?

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