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

by Caleb Lee González | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

Conclusion

CRT counter-storytelling can leave room for students to witness, examine, and interrogate the ways in which their experiences in graduate studies are shaped by the larger discourses of power and privilege, and, in turn, expose and resist those discourses, including the ways in which they are mobilized and framed as majoritarian. CRT counterstory asks the reader to engage with it as a disruptive mode of storying (I’m intentional about using the word story as one of action), one that invites storytelling, testimonio, and critical reflection that stems from the self for wider cultural, social, and political connections. This kind of praxis can position the writer, in this case the graduate student scholar, in a space of storytelling and can advance crucial conversations that wish to re-center the objectives of social justice advocacy and inclusivity. Readers are also challenged to re-think their positions and stances when addressing such issues, because of a counterstory that complicates the issue personally, narratively, and analytically.

“And for the person of color, it does more,” Villanueva (2004) says when writing about memoria. “The narrative of the person of color validates. It resonates. It awakens, particularly for those of us who are in institutions where our numbers are few” (p. 15).