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Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression and Pain
Refreshing and radical, Decolonizing Academia speaks to those who have been taught to doubt themselves because of the politics of censorship, violence and silence that sustain the Ivory Tower. Clelia O. Rodriguez illustrates how academia is a racialized structure that erases the voices of people of colour, particularly women, and their potential. She offers readers a gleam of hope through the voice of an inquisitorial thinker and methods of decolonial expression: poetry, art and reflections that encompass more than theory.
Decolonizing Academia is the voice of a Latinx academic mother passing on the torch to her Latinx offspring to use as a tool to not only survive academic spaces but also dismantle systems of oppression. Rodriguez presents ideas that many have tried to appropriate, ignore, erase and consume in the name of "research." Her work is a survival guide for people of colour entering academia.
Decolonizing Academia is the voice of a Latinx academic mother passing on the torch to her Latinx offspring to use as a tool to not only survive academic spaces but also dismantle systems of oppression. Rodriguez presents ideas that many have tried to appropriate, ignore, erase and consume in the name of "research." Her work is a survival guide for people of colour entering academia.
150 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
May 26, 2019
An open, scathing critique of academia and the pain it inflicts upon people of color, women of color in particular. Clelia Rodríguez hits on so many important points in this book, ranging from discrimination against non-white and non-male academics, to how academics take the resources and the struggles of marginalized groups without disrupting the systems that marginalize them, and much more. Rodríguez's writing style, from her experimental prose to her poetry to how she calls in other POC writers from her community, acts as a powerful rejection of the white, eurocentric standard of writing. One quote out of many that I appreciated, directed toward white academics:
"The look on my face when I start browsing through positive reinforcement statements written by white administrators about how to politely ask the other how to offend the other in less otherizing ways is probably one that should belong in a catalogue selling medication for constipation. The derogatory termniology that one is forced to read and engage while continuing to be part of the race to become North America's Next Top Academic or its equivalent in European institutions has to be eliminated. Decolonizing in action means that, if you are a white person claiming to be teaching and researching in decolonizing practices, you must stop lining up to speak at conferences about injustice and start demanding change so POC can take up the space that has been denied to them. You do not get to speak about our pain, claiming authorship over what we go through and getting away with it."
An excellent read for anyone in academia, in particular white academics and academics with power in the system, or Black, Indigenous, and Latinx academics who seek solidarity. Yes, decolonizing entails tangible efforts like hiring radical academics of color and then supporting our voices and our anger. Decolonization also entails much more, like the dismantling of a system that exploits vulnerable populations and then publishes peer-reviewed articles on them, as Rodríguez writes about in detail in this book.
"The look on my face when I start browsing through positive reinforcement statements written by white administrators about how to politely ask the other how to offend the other in less otherizing ways is probably one that should belong in a catalogue selling medication for constipation. The derogatory termniology that one is forced to read and engage while continuing to be part of the race to become North America's Next Top Academic or its equivalent in European institutions has to be eliminated. Decolonizing in action means that, if you are a white person claiming to be teaching and researching in decolonizing practices, you must stop lining up to speak at conferences about injustice and start demanding change so POC can take up the space that has been denied to them. You do not get to speak about our pain, claiming authorship over what we go through and getting away with it."
An excellent read for anyone in academia, in particular white academics and academics with power in the system, or Black, Indigenous, and Latinx academics who seek solidarity. Yes, decolonizing entails tangible efforts like hiring radical academics of color and then supporting our voices and our anger. Decolonization also entails much more, like the dismantling of a system that exploits vulnerable populations and then publishes peer-reviewed articles on them, as Rodríguez writes about in detail in this book.
December 1, 2018
Thank you to NetGalley and Fernwood Publishing for giving me this ebook in exchange for an honest review.
I am very interested in how academia has been colonized by Euro-centric thought, standards, hiring practices, structure and more, but unfortunately Rodríguez does not explain any of these issues on a macro level with any research or investigation. Instead she focuses on her first-hand experiences. Even that would have been an interesting and illuminating read had it not been in a style unsuited for this type of narrative.
Rodríguez’s prose was more akin to poetry and the book would have been better as a longform poetic journey through colonized academia and the pain that walks hand in hand. The author has important experiences that all academics can and should learn from, but the book comes off as more of an extended diatribe than it does someone in search of tangible change.
One point she makes with which I agree wholeheartedly is that “we are not having the difficult conversations [in universities] because it is simply not convenient.” Academia purports to be about learning when it is often just a conveyor belt in a diploma factory.
However, I disagree that people cannot and should not write about things they have not directly experienced. If that is the standard we are using for investigative knowledge, we are resigning ourselves to ignorance. There is a place for anger in academia. For radicalism. For rage. But making this declaration is dangerous.
I hope Rodríguez writes more about her experiences in academia as a push toward change. In the future, I would be interested in reading something more suited to her stream of consciousness style.
I am very interested in how academia has been colonized by Euro-centric thought, standards, hiring practices, structure and more, but unfortunately Rodríguez does not explain any of these issues on a macro level with any research or investigation. Instead she focuses on her first-hand experiences. Even that would have been an interesting and illuminating read had it not been in a style unsuited for this type of narrative.
Rodríguez’s prose was more akin to poetry and the book would have been better as a longform poetic journey through colonized academia and the pain that walks hand in hand. The author has important experiences that all academics can and should learn from, but the book comes off as more of an extended diatribe than it does someone in search of tangible change.
One point she makes with which I agree wholeheartedly is that “we are not having the difficult conversations [in universities] because it is simply not convenient.” Academia purports to be about learning when it is often just a conveyor belt in a diploma factory.
However, I disagree that people cannot and should not write about things they have not directly experienced. If that is the standard we are using for investigative knowledge, we are resigning ourselves to ignorance. There is a place for anger in academia. For radicalism. For rage. But making this declaration is dangerous.
I hope Rodríguez writes more about her experiences in academia as a push toward change. In the future, I would be interested in reading something more suited to her stream of consciousness style.
October 17, 2018
Why are the humanities failing humans? This is the main issue that is being addressed in this essay. I do not agree with most of the reviewers. I think this book touches something very important and I hope this is the first of many more to come! This essay is very useful for any discipline that exercises field work. I had a lot of fun while reading it. The style of the book is the perfect mixture between experimental Latin American literature (magical realism) and contemporary or prospective human sciences. However, I would love to see the cover re-edited since it does not do the content of the book any justice.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the author, Clelia O. Rodriguez, and the publisher, Fernwood Publishing, for this opportunity.
#DecolonizingAcademia #NetGalley
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the author, Clelia O. Rodriguez, and the publisher, Fernwood Publishing, for this opportunity.
#DecolonizingAcademia #NetGalley
January 22, 2019
Thank you to Fernwood Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Out now!
Rodriguez is a powerful writer who transforms her essays and nonfiction prose into poetry. What does it mean to decolonize? How do we go about this? First and foremost, this is not something we can define as white people. Academia is inherently a colonial institution. In social justice communities, it's often en vogue to say we're going to "decolonize" something without following the leadership of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx people. We think curating syllabi to be conscious of our oppression of others is enough, but it isn't. We often lack the self awareness and consciousness of how our syllabi, simply as a matter of existing, creates a colonial structure and power dynamic within an academic setting. Rodriguez carefully illustrates the micro- and macro-aggressive ways white people and others play into the system in seemingly innocuous ways that results in oppression, othering, and discrimination of Indigenous peoples. I am a white woman and don't want to mischaracterize the themes in this book as it's not my lived experience, but please go read this if you're in academia or tangential to it. We are often unaware of the gravity and power that we have in the classroom and academic fields, and Rodriguez holds up a necessary mirror to whiteness and colonialism.
Rodriguez is a powerful writer who transforms her essays and nonfiction prose into poetry. What does it mean to decolonize? How do we go about this? First and foremost, this is not something we can define as white people. Academia is inherently a colonial institution. In social justice communities, it's often en vogue to say we're going to "decolonize" something without following the leadership of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx people. We think curating syllabi to be conscious of our oppression of others is enough, but it isn't. We often lack the self awareness and consciousness of how our syllabi, simply as a matter of existing, creates a colonial structure and power dynamic within an academic setting. Rodriguez carefully illustrates the micro- and macro-aggressive ways white people and others play into the system in seemingly innocuous ways that results in oppression, othering, and discrimination of Indigenous peoples. I am a white woman and don't want to mischaracterize the themes in this book as it's not my lived experience, but please go read this if you're in academia or tangential to it. We are often unaware of the gravity and power that we have in the classroom and academic fields, and Rodriguez holds up a necessary mirror to whiteness and colonialism.
August 30, 2018
I received a copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book brings up a lot of really important questions that academics in the West, who conceive of themselves as self-aware about themselves and their place in the world, need to confront rather than hide from. Some of the threads the author tries to bring up include:
1. How academia functions by fitting the diverse voices and cultures into certain theoretical frameworks, and expects its students, even those from those cultures, to speak about their experiences on its terms. There's also very little thought about how the methods of academia might disrupt local traditions and cultures by their very application (ie., through constantly having groups of students fly out to meet and talk to locals)
2. How the countries where people of colour (POC) go to study often are those that colonized their countries and played roles in the devastation of countries of origin, complicating the relationship between these students and their new "homes". For example, the author speaking about the plane that bombed her hometown says
3. The systematic discrimination of non-white, non-male academics even in disciplines which ostensibly set out to challenge existing power.
This can include not giving (enough) credit, not paying enough attention, disrespect, hiring bias, a difference in respect, etc.
I think all of these are really important questions, but unfortunately this book wasn't effective in talking about them because it chooses pretty strange styles to express itself. In the start especially, the author chooses to use sentences which are "artistic" to the point of opacity. Here are three examples that seem to me at least to sacrifice clarity, and hence power, for aesthetic(?)"
"Splace"? Really? I don't see why this is supposed to be a fruitful invention for what she's trying to do here.
In chapter 2, I don't know if it's a printing error or a stylistic choice, but on every page, there are massive continuous repetitions of a single word for whole paragraphs, and while I thought the first time (for "south") it was powerful and innovative, it got gimmicky and annoying fast.
(There are also a massive amount of spelling errors, which really take away from the book's readability and force, but I assume these will get corrected by a copy-editor at some point)
As for the analysis itself, a major issue is that she assumes that all the problems she talks about are linked. While this might certainly be true for her experientially (in the sense that she encounters all of them seamlessly), they are still distinct issues, and it might be valuable to distinguish between them. For example, when she says:
This seems to run together quite different issues because a caste system where tenured professors from top-ranked universities on top isn't necessarily racist, while systematic racism might exist (even if exacerbated by) within this caste system. Not making these distinctions makes the analysis weaker, even if they are more felicitous with regard to how she felt.
But that brings me to my biggest concern, which is that there are actually two different questions here. The first is about surviving academia as a poc, and the second is about how the systematic evils in academia (reflecting society's evils more generally) can be undone, and it isn't at all clear whether the answers to one will be the same as the answers to the other. In principle, anyway, we can see that the strategies for individual survival might not be the same as those that would end systematic bias or rethink research.
So while I have no doubt that the author is an expert on the first, that is, on how poc academics can survive, on the second she doesn't really offer much. Sure, she says things like "Thank you to peasants everywhere for laboring the land as their backs salutes the sun daily. Their printed DNA on the food they encounter is never taken for granted in my table." and "Grandmothers are always right", and about solidarity and listening, but why would this change the situation or methods in any way that's not superficial? In any way that the average white "woke" academic cannot? And what way does she see out of the situation where any work by academics disturbs local culture? How can any institution that aims at generality like the academy not rely on frameworks? These are the hard questions, and as far as I can see instead of even attempting answers at them, we get a lot of navel gazing about how much pain the author feels. I'm sympathetic, but this is an evasion of everything complex here.
But it has to be admitted, there are moments when the author puts aside artifice, and talks straightforwardly about her pain, about how it is to be marginalized in these institutions, and at those moments, the book is breathtaking.
When she talks about how her family back home was and remains so proud and hopeful for her, and she's just a temporary instructor with no real path out, it's so powerful:
And when she writes to other poc considering academia, her advise seem sound and so laced with pain, it's heartbreaking:
And yet, even this is a story of resilience amid the unfairness in an unjust system, and you can't help but respect the struggle, while raging at and mourning its necessity.
This book brings up a lot of really important questions that academics in the West, who conceive of themselves as self-aware about themselves and their place in the world, need to confront rather than hide from. Some of the threads the author tries to bring up include:
1. How academia functions by fitting the diverse voices and cultures into certain theoretical frameworks, and expects its students, even those from those cultures, to speak about their experiences on its terms. There's also very little thought about how the methods of academia might disrupt local traditions and cultures by their very application (ie., through constantly having groups of students fly out to meet and talk to locals)
At what point do scholars [stop] consuming knowledge through readings as if that was their entrance to worlds and ideas that are not meant to be explained but lived and felt? Will there ever be a phrase, a word, a sound, a passage, a dream or a nightmare that will make some people [stop]?
2. How the countries where people of colour (POC) go to study often are those that colonized their countries and played roles in the devastation of countries of origin, complicating the relationship between these students and their new "homes". For example, the author speaking about the plane that bombed her hometown says
The first written text [my grandfather] handed to me came from the belly of a Douglas AC-47 Spooky as it flew over our homes, nicknamed “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” as I learned later on in life, manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica, California.
3. The systematic discrimination of non-white, non-male academics even in disciplines which ostensibly set out to challenge existing power.
Decolonizing in action means that if you are a white person claiming to be teaching and researching in decolonizing practices, stop lining up to speak at conferences about injustice and start demanding change so POC can take up the space it has been denied to them. You do not get to speak about our pain, claiming authorship over what we go through and getting away with it.
This can include not giving (enough) credit, not paying enough attention, disrespect, hiring bias, a difference in respect, etc.
1:00pm I get an email from a friend who tells me I should consider applying to a job that seems like the perfect fit: “The Department of Humanities of XYZ prestigious university seeks for an expert in transnational and comparative perspectives of literatures from the Global South. We are particularly interested in scholars who can implement a rigorous research agenda using an intersectional approach to notions of class, race, gender, ethnicity, and why not? Caste. Our department is committed to encouraging minorities to apply, particularly women of colour.”
365 days later “The Department of Humanities of XYZ prestigious welcomes our new heterosexual and Eurocentric professor, from England, whose research specializes in literatures from the Global South. He spent a summer in India, three weeks in Bolivia and participated in a summer study abroad program in Guatemala building a school. We are very privileged that he can join us.”
I think all of these are really important questions, but unfortunately this book wasn't effective in talking about them because it chooses pretty strange styles to express itself. In the start especially, the author chooses to use sentences which are "artistic" to the point of opacity. Here are three examples that seem to me at least to sacrifice clarity, and hence power, for aesthetic(?)"
You want to know about me until your smells poison your senses from the enduring ghosts of centuries of slavery, domestication, subjugation, subordination, dependency, and servitude.
Math is the universal language and so is pain. Trying to find the medium to project the essence of violence is like finding a grain of sugar in the Namib Desert. So when my colonized brown body experiences academic practices under the banner of “decolonizing” I am being colonized once again.
Be UNapologetically political. The dreams of our ancestors are the rays of sun feeding you through the vertebral column. There is no place or space in academia for earthy skin tones. Invent them both: splace.
"Splace"? Really? I don't see why this is supposed to be a fruitful invention for what she's trying to do here.
In chapter 2, I don't know if it's a printing error or a stylistic choice, but on every page, there are massive continuous repetitions of a single word for whole paragraphs, and while I thought the first time (for "south") it was powerful and innovative, it got gimmicky and annoying fast.
(There are also a massive amount of spelling errors, which really take away from the book's readability and force, but I assume these will get corrected by a copy-editor at some point)
As for the analysis itself, a major issue is that she assumes that all the problems she talks about are linked. While this might certainly be true for her experientially (in the sense that she encounters all of them seamlessly), they are still distinct issues, and it might be valuable to distinguish between them. For example, when she says:
At conferences, I was acknowledged if I had a tag with the name of the institution and ignored when I removed it. In class, I was acknowledged if I spoke English properly and rapidly ignored if I brought the accent to the table. In job academic interviews, I was acknowledged if I was accompanied by a popular academic who everyone wanted to network with but dismissed if I was with a non-tenure POC professor.
This seems to run together quite different issues because a caste system where tenured professors from top-ranked universities on top isn't necessarily racist, while systematic racism might exist (even if exacerbated by) within this caste system. Not making these distinctions makes the analysis weaker, even if they are more felicitous with regard to how she felt.
But that brings me to my biggest concern, which is that there are actually two different questions here. The first is about surviving academia as a poc, and the second is about how the systematic evils in academia (reflecting society's evils more generally) can be undone, and it isn't at all clear whether the answers to one will be the same as the answers to the other. In principle, anyway, we can see that the strategies for individual survival might not be the same as those that would end systematic bias or rethink research.
So while I have no doubt that the author is an expert on the first, that is, on how poc academics can survive, on the second she doesn't really offer much. Sure, she says things like "Thank you to peasants everywhere for laboring the land as their backs salutes the sun daily. Their printed DNA on the food they encounter is never taken for granted in my table." and "Grandmothers are always right", and about solidarity and listening, but why would this change the situation or methods in any way that's not superficial? In any way that the average white "woke" academic cannot? And what way does she see out of the situation where any work by academics disturbs local culture? How can any institution that aims at generality like the academy not rely on frameworks? These are the hard questions, and as far as I can see instead of even attempting answers at them, we get a lot of navel gazing about how much pain the author feels. I'm sympathetic, but this is an evasion of everything complex here.
But it has to be admitted, there are moments when the author puts aside artifice, and talks straightforwardly about her pain, about how it is to be marginalized in these institutions, and at those moments, the book is breathtaking.
When she talks about how her family back home was and remains so proud and hopeful for her, and she's just a temporary instructor with no real path out, it's so powerful:
Mujer sin Apellido de la Divina Gracia is the first woman from the village to make it in the U.S.A. She was born in the fabricated dreamy land of Elvis Presley, Madonna, sneakers, jeans, and highways. No one in her family had been where white people go to school. Her teachers always told her parents she was special. Her mother would imagine her daughter wearing an expensive suite, like the ones from catalogues. She was destined to be the family’s salvation.
“Mija, we are so proud of your accomplishments. We’re so happy you don’t have to work as hard as we had to. I have been enslaved emotionally worried about your professional freedom. Our impaired lives working like burros pierced our initial dreams when we tried falling asleep on the train coming home every\day. We knew from the moment you got an award in grade one your future in this country will be secured. Every\body in town talks about you, mija linda. You’ve made it. One thousand sacrifices later, you’re a university professor. I bet you have a nice office, corazón, with lots and lots of books. Your boss must know how essential you are to students. We know you can’t help us yet because you’re saving for your pedazo de tierra. You know, we had this plan since you were born. We worked hard so that our hija could excel in the land of opportunities. Ay, mija, at least someone is putting the name of the familia so high. Your aunties can’t stop talking about you during las fiestas. I tell them you’re a very important person. I have faith you will save us from this misery one day.”
And when she writes to other poc considering academia, her advise seem sound and so laced with pain, it's heartbreaking:
Dear poc considering academia:
Even with the awards, grants, accreditations, networks, perfect candidacy, the promise of becoming a rising star, unconditional support of your family, high-ranking affiliations, extra-curricular engagements, book contracts, straight hair, constellation of exemplary community service, letters of references, good intentions to “save the world,” perfected accent You will need: palo alto, fuego, your mama’s prayers, witches by your side, documents, spices, a good pair of running shoes, an eraser, imagination, tequila, patience, your grandmother’s scarf, fighting gloves, cursing words, an onion, a compass, poetry, hoop earrings, a hammock, a cultural map, vitamin B12, to practice reciprocity, nerves of steel, a mirror, black nail polish, monster-like drawings, wings, cartoons, a rainbow, UNcontaminated water, backrubs, UNobstructed ears, crocodile skin, a megaphone, a broom, intuition, unmasking toolkit, a garland made of lavender, a vessel carrying the spirit of every female POC warrior, rocks, a reminder to charge for emotional labour for privileged folks, re-reading glasses and radical love.
And yet, even this is a story of resilience amid the unfairness in an unjust system, and you can't help but respect the struggle, while raging at and mourning its necessity.
November 13, 2018
Positionally: I am white, I am a cis woman, I am an academic, a student, able bodied, I am femme, I am queer, I am from the global north from a white nuclear middle class family.
This novel was recommended through my academic networks.
Obviously, as my position, I have very little critique because it is not our position to; we should be listening, PAYING and supporting Women of Colour writers and artists. I am here to tell other white people, not only academic but those that have a love for learning, poetry and reading, for those that have access to white folks too ignorant to come across this, this is a MUST read.
Dr. Clelia Rodriguez calls out the ivory tower, white supremacy, patriarchy, and YES you, white reader reading this review and me. She speaks in poetry, metaphors and song. She calls in her community. She offers advice for us, but not because she cares about us, because she holds up the mirror to readers to look and question their position in all movements and ways.
I think she, like many great Women of Colour theorist, poets, and writers, has given us: a tool to "unlearn".
This novel was recommended through my academic networks.
Obviously, as my position, I have very little critique because it is not our position to; we should be listening, PAYING and supporting Women of Colour writers and artists. I am here to tell other white people, not only academic but those that have a love for learning, poetry and reading, for those that have access to white folks too ignorant to come across this, this is a MUST read.
Dr. Clelia Rodriguez calls out the ivory tower, white supremacy, patriarchy, and YES you, white reader reading this review and me. She speaks in poetry, metaphors and song. She calls in her community. She offers advice for us, but not because she cares about us, because she holds up the mirror to readers to look and question their position in all movements and ways.
I think she, like many great Women of Colour theorist, poets, and writers, has given us: a tool to "unlearn".
August 23, 2020
I was really excited to get this book, and really wanted to like it. All the ideas are solid, but let's call it what it is: hella gimmicky (HIS/story, we get it already). It was like reading a 200-page rant; and while the writing was able to name the ways in which academic structures are neocolonial (which, at this point, seems pretty uncontested), the book fails to present much content on what could have been a far more unique and thoughtful perspective - namely, what a decolonized academia could look like.
May 31, 2019
I was very disappointed with this book. I had read a few things other people had wrote about it. Sounded intriguing. However, as I read the book it became clear that this was the work of a very bitter person. It is hard to categorize this book. A How-To Manual for mediocre scholars?
September 14, 2020
Being a white educator for students of color, I was super compelled to read Dr. Rodriguez' book and learn about her perspective on how academia is a racialized structure that diminishes the voices of people of color. One part in particular, "Academic spaces are neither precisely adorned by safety, nor are they where freedom of speech is truly welcome. Not all of us have the luxury to speak freely without getting penalized by being called too radical, too emotional, too angry, or even not scholarly enough." Later she adds, "How can we create a space where a student can freely speak his/her/their mind without fear of receiving a bad grade?" She brings attention to the idea of how homogeneous academic spaces can be and has a call to action to not only bring attention to this, but actually provide space where the ideas and voices of students of color are valued in education. Decolonizing Academia is a necessity for educators and academic researchers who are committed to actively unlearning.
July 2, 2019
"Decolonizing Academia" disrupts the mold of formal academic writing, breaking down through its form and content the rigidity that kept (and continues to keep) my mother and my grandmother from telling and owning their own narratives. Through form and content, "Decolonizing Academia" forces the reader on a journey towards unlearning the systems of oppression academia perpetuates. Its painful and uncomfortable truth telling and rawness points the gaze of the reader inward – encouraging self-reflection. Prof. Rodríguez challenges every notion of what is right and proper in academia, and invites us to ask who gets to determine that. She masterfully highlights the systems of domination and oppression we all thrive and fail in.
As a queer/dark-brown/immigrant/muslim body from "the Global South" engaged in academia -- this work is much needed (and timely) medicine for the soul.
As a queer/dark-brown/immigrant/muslim body from "the Global South" engaged in academia -- this work is much needed (and timely) medicine for the soul.
September 14, 2020
Decolonizing Academia forces us to interrogate one of the most important questions in academia/education; why are we here? Without unpacking our own lived experiences we are not able to express our true intentions behind our research. Consequently, we are merely perpetuating white supremacy when participating in these spaces. Decolonizing Academia is a guide to maintaining such politicized thought and actively embracing the lived experiences we take for granted and take advantage of.
April 15, 2019
This is a powerful book that graduate students in the masters’ level Intro to Latinx Studies course I am teaching said should be required reading for everyone. I agree with my students. Rodríguez writes about trauma: her own, her family’s, her community’s, her students’ and colleagues’, and her natal country’s (she grew up in El Salvador during the US funded counter-insurgency campaign that visited unspeakable violence on the Salvadoran people). She also writes from a place of radical love, proposing a process of “unlearning” so that learning can begin anew. By stripping bare her own experiences, she makes clear that while academia is actively hostile to underrepresented groups, its refusal to meaningfully decolonize is harmful to all.
Powerfully voicing her own experience, she writes in a way that will be familiar to readers of Claudia Rankine, Gloria Anzaldúa, Linda Tuwaihi Smith, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, Jacqueline Jones Royster, bell hooks, Sadiya Hartman, Kiese Laymon, and many more. She pulls no punches. She is not writing for or critiquing those at primarily white institutions who are just beginning to wake up to the importance of making syllabi and faculty hiring more diverse-- intro-level “diversity work"-- but rather reserves her most pointed critique for those, like me, who are white, cis- and hetero, working at diverse public universities who consider ourselves progressive, who already seek to decolonize our syllabi, and believe ourselves to be actively inverting hierarchies in the academy. Her main target are those who consider themselves “allies” to people of color, but have stopped at the intermediate level of Dismantling White Supremacy. To get to the advanced level, to achieve not ally, but accomplice status, we have a lot more work to do— we have to study, work harder and do our homework. Rodríguez warns: "Know this: This ambitious unlearning plan will take a lifetime and that’s exactly what we’re up against — a lifelong battle. The children whose roots are cut are battling wounds that may never heal.”
Last month, an Afrolatina student of Dominican ancestry who asked me to help her prepare for a video interview for a fellowship in Latin America, asked me “Should I straighten my hair for the interview?” I answered, “Of course not! No one should have to alter their appearance to be competitive for a fellowship. You look radiant no matter what style you wear your hair.” She did not get the fellowship, although of course we'll never know why or if hair had anything to do with it. Unlike Rodríguez’s professors, I would never tell a student to avoid hoop earrings or tone down her lipstick, but what am I doing to dismantle the ideologies that student knew might affect whether or not she was perceived as sufficiently “professional”? As a white professor who works in Latinx and Latin American studies and with majority Latinx students, I need to do more than decolonize my syllabus and encourage my students to be themselves. I need to address the structural contexts that communicate to my students they might have to straighten their hair. As powerless as the average college professor might feel in doing this, we have to acknowledge it’s our job to do so. Rodríguez’s book is a powerful and sobering declaration of pain and trauma that continue to be inflicted on people of color in the academy, even—maybe especially— in self-proclaimed “diverse” and “progressive” institutions. Arguably the pain is worse when inflicted by people who should and pretend to know better. While for my students, largely women and people of color, the book resonates with their experiences and gave them the experience of feeling heard in a way more soft-pedal texts never could, the audience that most needs this book are those of us who wield the privilege and the power of considering ourselves to be teachers, and reckoning with the harm we cause even while we fall over ourselves to be allies.
Powerfully voicing her own experience, she writes in a way that will be familiar to readers of Claudia Rankine, Gloria Anzaldúa, Linda Tuwaihi Smith, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, Jacqueline Jones Royster, bell hooks, Sadiya Hartman, Kiese Laymon, and many more. She pulls no punches. She is not writing for or critiquing those at primarily white institutions who are just beginning to wake up to the importance of making syllabi and faculty hiring more diverse-- intro-level “diversity work"-- but rather reserves her most pointed critique for those, like me, who are white, cis- and hetero, working at diverse public universities who consider ourselves progressive, who already seek to decolonize our syllabi, and believe ourselves to be actively inverting hierarchies in the academy. Her main target are those who consider themselves “allies” to people of color, but have stopped at the intermediate level of Dismantling White Supremacy. To get to the advanced level, to achieve not ally, but accomplice status, we have a lot more work to do— we have to study, work harder and do our homework. Rodríguez warns: "Know this: This ambitious unlearning plan will take a lifetime and that’s exactly what we’re up against — a lifelong battle. The children whose roots are cut are battling wounds that may never heal.”
Last month, an Afrolatina student of Dominican ancestry who asked me to help her prepare for a video interview for a fellowship in Latin America, asked me “Should I straighten my hair for the interview?” I answered, “Of course not! No one should have to alter their appearance to be competitive for a fellowship. You look radiant no matter what style you wear your hair.” She did not get the fellowship, although of course we'll never know why or if hair had anything to do with it. Unlike Rodríguez’s professors, I would never tell a student to avoid hoop earrings or tone down her lipstick, but what am I doing to dismantle the ideologies that student knew might affect whether or not she was perceived as sufficiently “professional”? As a white professor who works in Latinx and Latin American studies and with majority Latinx students, I need to do more than decolonize my syllabus and encourage my students to be themselves. I need to address the structural contexts that communicate to my students they might have to straighten their hair. As powerless as the average college professor might feel in doing this, we have to acknowledge it’s our job to do so. Rodríguez’s book is a powerful and sobering declaration of pain and trauma that continue to be inflicted on people of color in the academy, even—maybe especially— in self-proclaimed “diverse” and “progressive” institutions. Arguably the pain is worse when inflicted by people who should and pretend to know better. While for my students, largely women and people of color, the book resonates with their experiences and gave them the experience of feeling heard in a way more soft-pedal texts never could, the audience that most needs this book are those of us who wield the privilege and the power of considering ourselves to be teachers, and reckoning with the harm we cause even while we fall over ourselves to be allies.
January 24, 2019
I am a sociologist who focuses on poverty and higher education. I could not wait for the book to come out. Finally, I would have proof I was on the right track with my work. I have a lot to "unlearn," as Rodriguez writes. "Decolonizing Academia" is not an easy read; it is profoundly sociological. Rodriguez makes visible the structural reasons why universities continue to perpetuate privilege—and, in particular, the privilege of white people who have never had to experience the pain and oppression of poverty, exclusion, and Othering. She makes visible the injustice and violence that academia (and academics/administrators) perpetuates: on those in the margins; the outsider-students/profs who attempt to veer/question/bump up against the established/establishment; those who do not want to assimilate and go to their parties; those who care about more than themselves; those who do more than pay lip service to decolonization.
This is not a collection of rants against academia. If you think this book is an autobiography of a dissatisfied POC academic neoliberal "customer," think again. Threaded throughout this narrative is a critique of colonial higher education based on all the (dead) white, male theorists that one expects of "good" rigorous scholarship (Bourdieu, Foucault, Goffman, [insert limitless names]). Rodriguez, like others who I have studied/read who do the decolonizing labour, teaches us where the "higher" in higher education needs to come from; that is, the critical importance of ancestral knowledge and lived experiences. Yes, knowledge from the margins. Learning not found in 101 textbooks. Those costly books that ensure the foundation for standardized multiple-choice testing of colonial definitions. Rodriguez demonstrates the cost of colonial pedagogy.
Rodriguez offers a meta-analysis of the incessant need of academia to mould and shape lives into learned lemmings that work tirelessly to jack up their CVs and chase the tenure-track fallacy or go into the “real” world and buy into the exclusive/exclusionary gated “communities.” Assimilate.
“Decolonizing Academia” is a painful read. One should not be surprised by the anger. It is in the subtitle. Rodriguez also offers a way forward, different ways of being, thinking, learning, and coming alongside others without Othering.
Although I struggle with the white—POC divide in her work (in large part because I come from generational poverty and am white and all that this entails), it means I have much more to unlearn. If one is uncomfortable with her meta-critique of academia, it means they have much more to unlearn. If one was expecting a traditional, colonial-style dissertation, they have much to learn. She eloquently dispels any romantic notions that higher education was ever for the public good. Rodriguez’s book should be included on every syllabus that truly is designed to decolonize academia in order to stop the poverty, pain and oppression of individuals, communities, and societies.
This is not a collection of rants against academia. If you think this book is an autobiography of a dissatisfied POC academic neoliberal "customer," think again. Threaded throughout this narrative is a critique of colonial higher education based on all the (dead) white, male theorists that one expects of "good" rigorous scholarship (Bourdieu, Foucault, Goffman, [insert limitless names]). Rodriguez, like others who I have studied/read who do the decolonizing labour, teaches us where the "higher" in higher education needs to come from; that is, the critical importance of ancestral knowledge and lived experiences. Yes, knowledge from the margins. Learning not found in 101 textbooks. Those costly books that ensure the foundation for standardized multiple-choice testing of colonial definitions. Rodriguez demonstrates the cost of colonial pedagogy.
Rodriguez offers a meta-analysis of the incessant need of academia to mould and shape lives into learned lemmings that work tirelessly to jack up their CVs and chase the tenure-track fallacy or go into the “real” world and buy into the exclusive/exclusionary gated “communities.” Assimilate.
“Decolonizing Academia” is a painful read. One should not be surprised by the anger. It is in the subtitle. Rodriguez also offers a way forward, different ways of being, thinking, learning, and coming alongside others without Othering.
Although I struggle with the white—POC divide in her work (in large part because I come from generational poverty and am white and all that this entails), it means I have much more to unlearn. If one is uncomfortable with her meta-critique of academia, it means they have much more to unlearn. If one was expecting a traditional, colonial-style dissertation, they have much to learn. She eloquently dispels any romantic notions that higher education was ever for the public good. Rodriguez’s book should be included on every syllabus that truly is designed to decolonize academia in order to stop the poverty, pain and oppression of individuals, communities, and societies.
September 9, 2020
The personal is political, and in her book Decolonizing Academia, Dr. Clelia Rodríguez does a formidable job of weaving together deeply reflective, personal experiences with an analysis of the problematic structures that scaffold academia. She does not make excuses or shy away from aptly critiquing the systemic “isms” that embed academic institutions – rather, she leans into the subject. Her words force us to consider the very active and intentional oppression that undergirds and highlights the very ivory tower we seem to implicitly regard so highly - and challenges us to reflect on our own culpability in keeping it standing.
As a white woman finishing up a Master degree, I found Rodríguez’s book both relevant and crucial to my education of decolonization and unlearning. She offers an intimate glimpse into the injustice and hypocrisy of higher education today. Reading her book – in contrast to dense academic journal articles on the subject – was a breath of fresh air, and a stark reminder of how insidious – yet persistent – systemic inequity can be. It was a valuable addition to my readings, and contributed to my own critical analysis of my own privilege and the epistemologies I have mistakenly understood to be the penultimate point of reference throughout my education. This book is an excellent resource for students at any point in their educational career, though it may be more palpable to those in higher education.
Rodríguez’s content and form is highly accessible and reads well, which is – perhaps – its biggest selling point for me. Her writing style pulls you right in, and at times, I felt as if I was listening to her speaking directly to me; an homage to oral tradition perhaps? Either way, I was enraptured and highly engaged throughout the book. Mixing metaphor and reality, poetry and prose, you can read one chapter at random without feeling lost or disoriented – though you inevitably lose the bigger picture and miss out on the highly emotive effect of her words as the book progresses. Her words are scathing, her critiques unrelenting, but this is exactly what academia needs, and exactly what academia ignores. However, Rodríguez offers hope and a call to action for its readers! I hope it is taken as such.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone on their journey of unlearning but especially to anyone who is in contact with academic structures. Beautifully written and fervently intimate, highly poignant and radically critical – Decolonizing Academia will be a book I recommend to friends and colleagues for years to come.
As a white woman finishing up a Master degree, I found Rodríguez’s book both relevant and crucial to my education of decolonization and unlearning. She offers an intimate glimpse into the injustice and hypocrisy of higher education today. Reading her book – in contrast to dense academic journal articles on the subject – was a breath of fresh air, and a stark reminder of how insidious – yet persistent – systemic inequity can be. It was a valuable addition to my readings, and contributed to my own critical analysis of my own privilege and the epistemologies I have mistakenly understood to be the penultimate point of reference throughout my education. This book is an excellent resource for students at any point in their educational career, though it may be more palpable to those in higher education.
Rodríguez’s content and form is highly accessible and reads well, which is – perhaps – its biggest selling point for me. Her writing style pulls you right in, and at times, I felt as if I was listening to her speaking directly to me; an homage to oral tradition perhaps? Either way, I was enraptured and highly engaged throughout the book. Mixing metaphor and reality, poetry and prose, you can read one chapter at random without feeling lost or disoriented – though you inevitably lose the bigger picture and miss out on the highly emotive effect of her words as the book progresses. Her words are scathing, her critiques unrelenting, but this is exactly what academia needs, and exactly what academia ignores. However, Rodríguez offers hope and a call to action for its readers! I hope it is taken as such.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone on their journey of unlearning but especially to anyone who is in contact with academic structures. Beautifully written and fervently intimate, highly poignant and radically critical – Decolonizing Academia will be a book I recommend to friends and colleagues for years to come.
September 7, 2020
In her book "Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression, and Pain," Dr. Clelia O. Rodríguez calls out the inherently neocolonial and neoliberal nature of the academy in its quest for “knowledge” of the “other” for “research.” She draws on critical questions from an Indigenous Mapuche leader, Ñana Raquel, to both invoke and challenge the idea of de-colonization within academic spaces, which in itself, has become yet another mode of academic accumulation; who profits from the pain of people, often reduced to objects, in the name of research?
She is not concerned with "good intentions," the common refrain evoked by those who reign in the white academy, the ivory tower. Rather, she names the violent inconsistencies within academic institutions: researching people of color but not hiring them as faculty, financially benefitting from the social capital of "critical" academic conferences while staying in a hotel that exploits undocumented workers…
Dr. Rodríguez writes with loose pieces of colorful yarn, intertwining and knitting them around the reader as they experience the text. The reader becomes entangled in her words but not trapped, almost as if being inside of a kaleidoscope— a place where any turn of the head will present a different perspective and a different question. Decolonizing Academia is written in a way that ruptures literary conventions, contains multiple “curse” words, is full of “uncited” feelings, and ends with letters to every person who may be/might become involved in the academy. She cites women of color and her grandfather and her mother.
She peels an onion in her book, and somehow plants a seed for a new one to grow.
She is not concerned with "good intentions," the common refrain evoked by those who reign in the white academy, the ivory tower. Rather, she names the violent inconsistencies within academic institutions: researching people of color but not hiring them as faculty, financially benefitting from the social capital of "critical" academic conferences while staying in a hotel that exploits undocumented workers…
Dr. Rodríguez writes with loose pieces of colorful yarn, intertwining and knitting them around the reader as they experience the text. The reader becomes entangled in her words but not trapped, almost as if being inside of a kaleidoscope— a place where any turn of the head will present a different perspective and a different question. Decolonizing Academia is written in a way that ruptures literary conventions, contains multiple “curse” words, is full of “uncited” feelings, and ends with letters to every person who may be/might become involved in the academy. She cites women of color and her grandfather and her mother.
She peels an onion in her book, and somehow plants a seed for a new one to grow.
September 2, 2019
This is a deeply compelling and thoughtful book that explores in persuasive detail the ways in which academia sustains a racist, sexist, and classist agenda that marginalizes and alienates those who do not fit the white, privileged, cisgendered model of scholarship that still pervades universities in Canada and the US. Clelia Rodriguez demands action from her readers by sharing in elegant prose and poetry the experiences that she and others have had and calling out the ways in which academic structures continue to exclude individuals and communities that don't fit certain dominant norms. The result, she rightly argues, is a series of experiences that demonstrate how academia relies on specific cliches to ensure its 'exclusivity' but at its own peril. The prose poems of the section called "UNapologetic letters" are particularly apt at demonstrating how visible ethnic and racial minorities in academia exploit these communities to their own ends in often brutal and unethical ways. This should be required reading for all Canadian and US academics--it is a necessary and important text that demands that ALL of us become accountable for our (even well-intentioned but often hypocritical) behaviour.
August 19, 2019
I’m a recent law school graduate who felt isolated, exploited, and continually shut out in law school classrooms as a first generation radical Xicana. I survived because I found others like me and was prepared to survive by others who came before me. If it wasn’t for other students and academics of color who became my community, I would have dropped out. I haven’t read another book that can prepare students of color in academia like this one. Professor Rodriguez is doing something radical and brave by even writing about her experiences. I have met other Professors of color who are drowning in academia and I will refer them to this book as much as I will refer students to this book. Professor Rodriguez is opening up a new lane for radical students of color by speaking on the ways we are continually marginalized, attacked and shun from the academic community. I hope many more follow the paths she has laid and begin to SPEAK!
June 7, 2020
The letters section is brilliant and calls out the racism in academia that so many of us have experienced. I was literally scribbling the names of white people I worked with in the margins that did the things she writes about. Too many of us know this pain first hand. It hurts to read this book and re-live and feel all she’s had to endure, but it’s also a gift to tell others coming up behind us what academia is really like, especially for Latinas considering this profession and life. This book is really for them to be equipped and prepared for what is to come. This book is full of truths and shows us what it’s really like to be a minority woman in academia, and how our research and labor are devalued and erased. It reads like a memoir and poem, and there are some really beautiful memories of her ancestors woven into the text.
September 5, 2020
In “Decolonizing Academia,” Dr. Clelia Rodríguez both shares her experiences and forces the reader to look inward at the systems one is upholding and benefiting from. The style and structure of this book encourages the reader to consider what colonization means with the literal form of the text as well as in Rodríguez’s words. Some questions the book highlights: what does colonization look like within academia? what is empathy? how do we value diversity in our institutions? what space are you taking up?
This book is an incredible work by an incredible Woman of Color which is a gift to be used to continue to unlearn and understand the systems of oppression within academia.
This book is an incredible work by an incredible Woman of Color which is a gift to be used to continue to unlearn and understand the systems of oppression within academia.
December 16, 2020
This book is short, but packs a punch. Much of it is written in an unconventional style, so it is an entirely different reading experience.
I am not in academia, but this I appreciate so much the perspective that this book offers. Rather than laying out and methodically stating thesis-and-argument, Clelia takes you inside the lived moments of her experience in (and out of) academia. Part catharsis of a Brown woman in academia, part love letter to other POC going through it, and part call-out/call-in to white people in academia, this book is a personal and visceral account.
I am not in academia, but this I appreciate so much the perspective that this book offers. Rather than laying out and methodically stating thesis-and-argument, Clelia takes you inside the lived moments of her experience in (and out of) academia. Part catharsis of a Brown woman in academia, part love letter to other POC going through it, and part call-out/call-in to white people in academia, this book is a personal and visceral account.
September 17, 2021
I mean according to the logic of this book, I shouldn't be critiquing it (especially not from an academic perspective) so it becomes a bit beside the point to write what I think about the book.
But I will say that this is a book in dire need of an editor, and the all-Caps-lock rants and full pages of a single word being repeated aren't innovative. I agree with the author that racism and Eurocentrism are built into the structures of academia, but an all caps rant isn't a decolonizing challenge to those institutions, its just bad writing.
But I will say that this is a book in dire need of an editor, and the all-Caps-lock rants and full pages of a single word being repeated aren't innovative. I agree with the author that racism and Eurocentrism are built into the structures of academia, but an all caps rant isn't a decolonizing challenge to those institutions, its just bad writing.
November 26, 2020
This book helped me made sense of my own experience in grad school in the most beautiful and poetic way. The author challenges the oppressive notions of what is to be an academic in a place not made for racialized peoples. I decided to read it after a friend shared an excerpt from the footnotes about deadlines. I am no longer in academia but I am recommending this gem to friends who are going to appreciate this writing as much as I did.
September 5, 2020
This is incredibly disruptive and thought-provoking work that adds new insight and voice to existing texts on academia. Rodriguez implores readers to “unlearn” and think critically about the academic system, through writing that is both sharp and poetic.
January 25, 2021
This book was amazing - if you are an POC academic, professor, student, or wannabe you must read this book. It lights a fire under you and suddenly you want to change the system, the status quo. I finished it and started to read it again. I hope she writes more as her voice is one we need to hear.
March 8, 2025
This is a favorite of mine and I recommend it to everyone. You look at the cover and think it's going to be some textbook reading....and then you open it up and begin to read.
It
is
poetic.
So masterfully done. Absolutely beautiful.
It
is
poetic.
So masterfully done. Absolutely beautiful.
March 3, 2019
Thank you for writing this book.
June 4, 2019
This author's writing is unique and powerful! I wish I had read this when I was in graduate school. It's deeply felt and some of my students are also loving it.
June 11, 2019
Great book! Wish I had this book when I was a grad student !!!!!
July 1, 2019
So, so important.
September 5, 2020
Clearly a bitter person who was unable to get a tenured position. I was very excited to read this book but found it very dissapointing.
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