“Unease with a Face of Certainty: A Personal Rhetorical History of My Imposter Syndrome”

by Sherwin Kawahakui Ranchez Sales | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

Recognizing Community Cultural Wealth

In a graduate seminar, I take out the response paper I wrote regarding Delgado and Stefancic (2012). I look at it, highlighter in hand, marking the potential parts that I feel comfortable sharing. I still have trouble speaking in class, despite all the things I want to say. People have told me that it comes with time. It comes with vocabulary and from practice. But whenever I say something, it seems like nonsense. My voice shakes. I think, it comes from making a fool out of myself.

For the majority of my time in graduate school, I have had a fixed notion of what success looks like. Present at everything. Submit to journals to publish. Speak in class. Push back against what the professor says. Challenge the text. I have tried to fit into some of these aspects throughout my time as a graduate student, though I cannot say I have always felt the impulse to pursue them all. I find much value in these characteristics, yet I also recognize that doing so potentially overlooks what Yosso (2005) calls “community cultural wealth” (p. 69). These “knowledge[s], skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color” shift hegemonic notions of power so that they may “survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” (p. 77). In other words, there is value in my decisions to not chase such professional development. Such assets and narratives as these contribute to individuals feeling like “empowered participants, hearing their own stories and the stories of others, listening to how the arguments against them are framed and learning to make arguments to defend themselves” (p. 75). Just as I ask students to interrogate their own narratives, I think it is about time I take a closer look at mine, especially as these feelings of imposter syndrome continue to be part of that story.