“Unease with a Face of Certainty: A Personal Rhetorical History of My Imposter Syndrome”
by Sherwin Kawahakui Ranchez Sales | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020
A Glance Back
My mother comes from a family of educators in the Philippines. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Northern Luzon Teacher’s College (now MMSU) in the Philippines, she taught fifth and sixth grades. Her mother and father: also teachers in Ilocos Norte, a province in northern Philippines. However, after immigrating to the United States, my mother decided teaching was not for her, fearing the students would be too challenging to teach—not to mention the extra schooling she would have to complete because of the different requirements for her degree.
My father grew up on Hawai’i. After completing high school, he would attend community college shortly before dropping out and pursuing the hard labor and apprenticeship of boiler making. His mother, a native Hawaiian, worked as a waitress. His father, an immigrant from the Philippines, worked on the plantations in Hawai’i, working long hours, providing for three boys.
This reflection helps make sense of the community wealth capital I have, and it displays the boots given to me. Within this same symposium, Fischer, Rosche, and McCool (2020) relate a similar sentiment: as three white women, how do their positionalities simultaneously marginalize and empower them? Likewise, González (2020) acknowledges a comparable response to mine: how does being a male contribute to how we navigate the field? Both pieces recognize that with this awareness, “it is also our duty to help others cultivate their scholarly ethē; we must interrupt, advocate, and relate not only for ourselves, but for––and with––all persons who exist in marginalized spaces” (Fischer et al., 2020, “Conclusion”).
There is no teacher gene, but Yosso (2005) “refers to those cultural knowledges nurtured among familia (kin) [as] carry[ing] a sense of community history, memory and cultural intuition” (p. 79). This “familial capital” (Yosso, 2005, p. 79) becomes apparent on my mother’s side and continues on with my father’s educational journey—or lack thereof. A look back at his history (and his immigrant father) allows me to see how I fit in this rhetorical history. One that values hard labor and working hard. Both parents telling some sort of immigrant story. Stories such as these are important as I seek to understand narratives that are a part of me. In this symposium, González (2020) utilizes “counterstory” within his piece as well, explaining how its usage “reveal[s] the untold stories of racism, inequity, and injustice, as they are mobilized upon people of color” (“Introduction”). In regard to my own experience, I can recognize its power as it allows me a slightly clearer picture of why I may feel inadequate in such spaces, and as González (2020) explains further, this is especially powerful, “as [counterstories] infiltrate certain spaces like graduate studies in rhetoric in composition” (“Introduction”).
In regard to my own imposter syndrome, I think a combination of feeling an obligation to keep up the tradition of a hard-working person of color and recognizing that I am one of the (if not first) few in my immediate family to get this far in education are driving factors. Somewhere along the way, I decided to pursue a field that “a good number of people might think useless” (Nguyen, 2017, para. 11), especially my immigrant mother and native Hawaiian father. Although proud and supportive of me now, my parents were not always so keen on my decision to take up the humanities. When I was younger, I would get frustrated, but I have learned to appreciate their commentary, as it speaks to their experience and indirectly illustrates the struggle and lifestyle they had to endure. Becoming successful as a person of color, as an immigrant, as an indigenous, has historically looked a certain way. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and gaining financial stability: this has been synonymous with legitimacy in this country—for valid citizenship. I cannot be frustrated with their view on that. But I can push for “revisions that must take place within American culture to account for the literacy and rhetorical practices of people of color” (Young, 2004, p. 7). Nevertheless, perhaps my feelings of inadequacy stem from this need to prove my own legitimacy in their story. Not to prove them wrong per se, but to continue on a legacy of their American narrative, one that takes influence from theirs and re-envisions it, allowing fluidity of what success looks like. And I think my parents are coming along to this flexibility.