My personal life and my academic life are not separate; they never have been. This book is no different. Who I am as an academic is deeply personal and it is this intimacy that weaves these pages together. This book is somewhat nostalgic, rigorously reflective, and always vulnerable. It is with a mix of excitement, responsibility, and apprehension that I present it. The excitement comes from the newness and surrealism of a first book. The responsibility comes from the obligation I have to share my research about undocumented students and my privilege in engaging in such a historically exclusive activity. The apprehension comes from the risk of sharing too much informationāpermanently. There is something about writing a book that comes as close to truth-telling as one can get and that feels heavy because you want to get it āright.ā But, as I have learned, there is no such thing as āpureā knowledge ; all knowledge passes through a filter of subjectivities and positionalities . So-called objectivity meets its limits through the permeable fibers of the authorās filter. Understanding this permeability is central to the consumption of knowledge ; it dictates the manner in which you ingest information and how you approach its analysis.
Who we are, how we are positioned, and how we position ourselves within our worlds shape what we write about and how we write about it. As Takacs (2003) notes, in one of my favorite articles, How Does Your Positionality Bias Your Epistemology:
In some instances, how oneās positionality impacts oneās epistemology is somewhat straightforward, like my positionality as a once undocumented immigrant writing about undocumented immigrants. My positionality , the multiple social identities , and unique experiences that situate me as a once undocumented immigrant inform my epistemology , how I come to view and make meaning of knowledge . In other instances, an authorās writing topic may seem neutral but you only need to peel back a few layers to understand that all writing comes from a personal place. As Takacs (2003) points out, āknowledge does not arrive unmediated from the world; rather knowledge gets constructed by interaction between the questioner and the worldā (p. 31). I dare you to come up with one author whose writing isnāt at all tied to who they are; some of us just choose to be explicit about this connection .Simply acknowledging that oneās views are not inevitableāthat oneās positionality can bias oneās epistemology āis itself a leap for many people, one that can help make us more open to the worldās possibilities. When we develop the skill of understanding how we know what we know, we acquire a key to lifelong learning. When we teach this skill, we help students sample the rigors and delights of the examined life. When we ask students to learn to think for themselves and to understand themselves as thinkersārather than telling them what to think and have them recite it backāwe can help foster habits of introspection, analysis, and open, joyous communication. (p. 28)
So, I am inviting you into an aspect of my world, knowing that there is some vulnerability involved. As Ruth Behar (1997) tells us:
So, while my writing carries some risk āthe possibility that I will embarrass myself by producing a less than moving self-revelation, for exampleāI believe that the benefit of encouraging other scholars, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, to write themselves into academia , outweighs any possible humiliation. I thank you for taking the time to get to know me and my work. It is easy to sail adrift in the exclusive world of academia , research , and writing . By reading this work, you provide me with an anchor, a reminder to keep this work relevant and rigorous. You give me a reason to keep on writing .Writing vulnerably takes as much skill, nuance, and willingness to follow through on all the ramifications of a complicated idea as does writing invulnerably and distantly. I would say it takes yet greater skill. The worst that can happen in an invulnerable text is that it will be boring. But when the author has made herself or himself vulnerable, the stakes are higher: a boring self-revelation, one that fails to move the reader, is more than embarrassing; it is humiliating. (pp. 13ā14)
In academia , we often get lost in our own bubble of language, prestige, recognition, and competition. Particularly, as scholars of marginalized identities , we grapple with the tension of serving the immediate needs of communities we so deeply care about and jumping through the requisite hoops of publishing, producing, teaching, and servicing. In writing this book, I have had the opportunity to reflect on why I chose to pursue an academic career.
I think this is an important place to start because why I chose academia directly relates to the notion that I introduce and emphasize so strongly in this bookāhyperdocumentation . Hyperdocumentation is a personās excessive production of documents, texts, and papers in an effort to compensate for a feeling of unworthiness. In my context, I hyperdocumented in an attempt to compensate for my undocumented immigrant status. In many ways, I still do. Even though I am now technically an American citizen , my identity of being once undocumented, apart from the privileges that I now enjoy as an officiated legal immigrant, will always be with me, along with all of the associated behaviors that went along with that status. Arriving to academia was not a straight and narrow path nor one that I chose blindly. In fact, I pretty much resisted it from the start. I was a high school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, program coordinator at the University of California at Berkeley, educational manager at the College Board, student affairs administrator at the University of Texas at Austin, and director of the McNair Scholars Program at Beloit College before this phase in my life, opting for the practical, on the ground, āin the trenchesā kind of work. But even before my work life began, I was a seemingly simple immigrant kid going to and from school, doing homework, chores, going to mass and playing, thinking about how I couldnāt wait to grow upālife seemed so slow then. Now, my life canāt seem to slow down enough; instead, it is filled with compounding deadlines, appointments and multi-technological communications with a pace that I could have hardly understood as a child.
I never once imagined that I would be a professor at a prestigious university when I was in my early years of schooling , college, or even during my masterās program. I always pictured professors in whiteāwhite skinned in white lab coats writing on white boards and going home to white picket fences. Instead, I convinced myself that I would use my academic pedigree to, as we say in the world of student affairs, to engage in ādirect serviceā with students. I was not cut out to live what I envisioned as a solitary ālife of the mindā nor did I see myself as at all worthy of professorship. While I knew I was good at doing school, the prospects of professor-hood never made it into the archives of my imagination. It simply seemed unrealistic. The only reason I ended up in academia was because I saw other women of color, like me, doing it and, like many others before me and alongside of me, I was encouraged to apply to a doctoral program by a couple of professors of color who basically āgave me the tapā and convinced me that it would be irresponsible of me not to use my talents in academia . Do you know how many people would dream of a job like this? Think of all the folks that havenāt had your same opportunities. Youāre a gifted writerādonāt waste your skills away. Do it because you CAN. I was āobligatedā into the profession; those professors, like Dr. Luis Urrieta and Dr. Gregory Vincent, knew me wellāthat Catholic guilt worked on me every time, not to mention my mama, who has always had incredibly high expectations and aspirations of me. What once seemed like a faraway institution only meant as a place for me to learn and be taught became an office in Chicagoās Lewis Towers with a name placard that reads Dra. Aurora Chang, where I teach courses, counsel students, conduct research , and write effusively. In retrospect, this career choice should come as no surprise to me. As it turns out, educational spaces have always been the spaces where I have felt most protected, most safe, most alive.
It is important to understand that I fit the trope of ādeserving immigrant ā and so do the undocumented students whom I have focused on in this book. We got straight Aās, maintained clean criminal records, held leadership positions, participated in the capitalist myth of meritocracy , and performed good cultural citizenry. Roberto Gonzales (2016) calls this phenomenon, āthe slippery slope of deservingnessā (p. 218). He notes:
He goes on to emphasize that āas long as there is an āundeserving ā category, there is always a risk that a random event or a change in the political tide can shift the discourse to cast all immigrants as undeserving ā (p. 219). He stresses that it is easy to have sympathy for āinnocentā children that are only in this country because of their parentsā āsinsā but that these children grow up and then what? This book is not about pitting some groups of immigrants against others or holding these particular undocumented immigrants as exceptional immigrants that somehow are more deserving than others. Rather, this book focuses on a small group of academically successful undocumented immigrantsā experiences of hyperdocumentation . If anything, their stories further support the slippery slope theory since their positive school experiences fail to guarantee citizenship .For many immigration restrictionists, āillegal is illegalā and there should be no shades of gray. But as immigration debates have heated up and legislative attempts have stalled, advocates have resorted to rhetorical measures and the promotion of policies that draw attention to two types of immigrants: those who deserve to be in the United States and those who do not. (p. 219)
As you will see in the chapters that follow, educational spaces have always been havens of mind, body, and spirit for me. As a shy immigrant girl from a chaotic and ultimately instrumental household, classroom walls provided the kind of control and structure that relieved my anxiety and allowed me to carve out a neat, warm, and safe spaceāone where I didnāt necessarily have to share tight quarters, facilitate grown-up arguments, attend to adult matters, or feel scared of what a bad mood might bring. At school, I forged my own identity . I was the first grader that showed up to class with anxiety-induced stomachaches every morning, hoping my teacher would take pity on me by isolating me in a reading corner or send me to the heavenly nurseās office where I could lay on the little couch, stare at the popcorn ceiling, and daydream all by myself. I was the seven-year-old that wrote short stories about Armageddon, causing my teacher to individually pull me aside (something I loved) and ask if anything was wrong at home. I was the quiet girl with the bowl haircut that made friends with all the outsidersāthe āweirdā kids that didnāt fit in. Perhaps that made me one of them. At school, I knew exactly what to do. I had the routine down.
At home, my only goal was to be a quintessential āgood girl.ā Within my Guatemalan, Catholic upbringing, this meant two thingsābe obedient and be quiet. I savored every minute I spent in the kitchen with Mati, what we used to call my mom. I was her right handāhelping to make daily breakfast for the eight of us, setting the table and washing dishes, rolling out masa for empanadas, turning the wooden spoon in circles in the pan of refried black beans until the consistency was just right. We seemed to use up ingredients as quickly as we bought them. Trips to Costco were a weekly occurrence with a flatbed cart stocked high with rolls of toilet paper, gallons of milk, boxes of cereal, and the occasional pair of shoes or jacket that one of the kids might need.
Nothing satisfied me more than pleasing my parents and teachers. In a household of eight, the six of us kids could barely get a word in edgewise with our parentsāthere was simply not enough time in a day. Each of us had a different strategy for accessing our parentsā scarce and golden attention. My academic prowess was my victorious way of earning that small but significant piece of attention. Kids at school thought they were teasing me by calling me a āteacherās petā; little did they know how much I relished that unintended accolade. It didnāt take much to fill me with joy hidden behind an awkward smile. I was a pretty serious kid and little crooked smiles were about as much excitement as I could muster at any given time. My academic life was the one thing that made everything in my life feel stable and secure. As long as my standing at school was good, so were all of my important ...