Introduction

It was a balmy Indian summer day, typical of Midwestern Septembers, during the first week of my first year in graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was invited to a cocktail reception that evening with the faculty of the Program in Comparative Literature, its returning students and my cohort of seven new additions to the program.  I recall both my excitement and nervousness at the prospect of being among those who were to be my peers and mentors for the next few years to come.  After my first few days of signing up for classes, learning my way around the campus, waiting in line to buy books and course packs, and looking around town for a part time job or two, I was filled with anticipation at this evening’s activity. I felt very much like the filmic debutante awaiting her coming of age ball.  I couldn’t wait to meet the cast of characters that would play lead and supporting roles in this new act of my life’s story, one which would require of me the demanding role of playing a scholar convincingly for seasons and seasons of episodes.
My journey to grad school had been neither swift nor sure, and I had tremendous fear of what this new experience would entail, how it would change me, and whether I had the mettle to do and be what would be required in this new place.  I was—at that point—an interesting hybrid of hippie beliefs, urban dreams, and overachiever work ethic, rolled into a charismatic if confused ball that might fall under the heading of “seeker.”  I was searching for language that my undergraduate years had not afforded me, a level of dialectic and discursive acumen that would help me articulate my thoughts, most particularly around issues of race, class and culture.  I was also searching for meaning in my own life, which, after finishing college, had become more and more mundane.  Life, I was finding, was not an endless exploration of ideas, a constant unraveling of mysteries and weaving of tales, it was something far less passionate and vital. 
Perhaps most importantly, I was a spiritual seeker of sorts, searching out a philosophical and metaphysical framework upon which I could base my life, my goals and my orientation from which I could view the world.   From an early age, I had been interested in the deeper metaphysics of the world around me.  I remember voluntarily going to church with friends of my family, though for what reason I’m not really sure, though I think it had something to do with wanting to make sense of the world around me.  I chose to be baptized at 18, behind which again I cannot recall my logic.  I knew, perhaps, that there was more going on than what I had been taught to see.
So off I went, down tree-lined Michigan streets in late afternoon, to my welcoming reception for this new adventure that would surely change my life. As the canopy of verdant leaves cast its shadows across my excited form, I realized that I too was green, fresh-cut and unripened. I don’t think I will ever have another moment like that in life, where I am so aware of my own ignorance, so excited by the infinite possibilities ahead of me, so observant of myself and my surroundings, so mindful of my own words and actions, so blown away by the words and actions of others as my first year in graduate school.  I know now that I embodied what is known in Zen Buddhism as “beginner’s mind.”  In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki affirms that “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”   I will explore beginner’s mind more later, particularly as a potential liminal theoretical space from which to read critically.  But for now, suffice to say I began my journey of many miles with unsure, un-calloused feet wending their wobbly way in party shoes.
I mingled with my peers, met my professors, had a glass or three of wine, then rolled up my sleeves and began the nebulous and unexpected process of defining myself (through conversation with the afore mentioned parties): as a scholar, as a woman of color, as a Black scholar, as a colorless and genderless being, as a soul, as a sexual being, as a sexual scholar, as a middle class sexual soul of color, as a practicing heterosexual (for the most part), as an American, as a Caribbean-American, as an African-American, as a Black American, as a cosmopolitan, as a world-dweller.  Most of this was constructed unwittingly and off the cuff, for I became these things more in response to assumptions, questions, projections and derisions posed to me by my peers and teachers than of my own volition. With each passing moment I became less and less sure of who and what I actually was.
I had attended predominantly white schools my entire life, from Hunter Elementary and High School to Amherst College.  During much of this, I lived in Harlem, a predominantly African-American neighborhood.  I grew up holding what I perceived as an insider/outsider position in both locations.  While I was a precocious and happy child, I began to notice race in elementary school and how it effected my interactions with my peers and teachers.  In high school, I became more keenly attuned to both the social elements of race as they played out in my own life, and the subtle but firmly institutionalized racism of both the curriculum and the way in which we were taught.  In the style of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, and the style and spirit of Gloria Anzaldua’s autohistoria/autoteoria, I plan to bring my own educational experiences—both as a student and as a teacher—to bear on some of the educative themes I will be exploring.
I grew up a person who had the color but not the lifestyle of most people from Harlem at that point in history.  My mother and I were not rich, in fact we might have even been poor.  But you would have never known it from our whimsical jaunts around the globe to enjoy the gastronomical pleasures, the material spoils and the breathtaking sights that were to be had.  We had no savings, did not own our own home, but we had let our passion and curiosity lead our explorations of the planet.  This was, incidentally, perhaps the most important education I could have ever received, learning from early on that there is no one “right” was to be and do in the world.  Rather, the choices one comprehends stem from the allowances and disavowals of one’s culture and are almost arbitrary.  A woman could work construction in a Sari in India, an entire family could dig into a bowl of food with their fingers in Africa, and one could live without inhibitions for weeks in the carnivals of Brazil and the Caribbean.  Knowing this was wildly freeing in many ways, and has shaped me, my thinking and my beliefs to this day.
I had been exposed to racism at various times, but it had not been debilitating… and yet that’s not true.  It was.  Though I never had anyone call me “nigger” or deny me because of my race, I was exceedingly debilitated by the institutional racism of my secondary education.  From the slapdash, semester long class on both the continent of Africa and the continent of Asia, where we were taught that Africans lived in huts and wore grass skirts and drank the blood of animals in ceremonies (whereas Asians created elaborate Kanji, beautiful paintings, Confucianism and Buddhism), to the English courses that would cover only one token book by an African-American author (usually lamenting the pain and heartache of being black, a la Black Boy, The Invisible Man, The Bluest Eye, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, A Raisin In The Sun, and The Color Purple) among the lavish scenes laid out in The Great Gatsby, The Bostonians, Pride and Prejudice and the like, I got a distinct sense that—by the book—there were some people who counted and some that didn’t.  As a black girl descendent of primitive, blood-drinking savages, I didn’t.
I was also wounded by the painful alienation I felt directed toward be from both Black and White people.  I moved easily among various social cliques at school, but never felt an integral member of any group.   I was someone who had existed in the margins, often rendered “inauthentic” by others based on my unique conflation of race and class.
It wasn’t until graduate school that I discovered what I was.  I found a community among the Latina scholars, among the lesbian scholars of color, among the visionary feminist tricksters, poets, activists and sorceresses, and was finally able to affix a label to myself comfortably. I was mestiza, a border dweller, a neplantera Reading Maria Lugones, I realized that to be mestiza did not necessitate a Latina heritage, but rather that it was an applicable name “If something or someone is neither/nor, but kind of both, not quite either, if something is in the middle of either/or, if it is ambiguous, given the available classification of things, if it is mestiza, if it threatens by its very ambiguity the orderliness of the system, of schematized reality, if given its ambiguity in the univocal ordering it is anomalous, deviant.    
Concepts of mestizaje enabled me to put language to feelings of alienation and marginalization I had felt for years.  It also helped me locate a place of agency within which I could start to renegotiate the terms of my existence, to play with assumptions, to negotiate the borderlands in the ways Gloria Anzaldúa does in her work, to be, as she says, a crossroads.  This new neplanta vantage point opened up a world for me as a scholar and as a critical reader, and the possibilities it enables will be examined in depth in this work. [creolite?]
But the party progressed.  The chair of my department began introducing us, one by one, to the merry band of scholars.  So and so is a specialist in Ketchuan language and literature with a Masters from such and such…  Mr. so and so comes to us with a Masters in blah blah from such and such school…  So and so hopes to study postcolonial lah-di-dahs and blah-zi-blahs…
I noticed a twinge of anxiety welling up in me.  I had no real credentials just yet, wasn’t that what I was there to get?  I didn’t know what Ketchuan was, and I wasn’t sure I really knew what some of those other things were.  I wasn’t even sure what I knew or didn’t know anymore.   Oh Jeez, I thought for the first of many times in my graduate career, maybe I’m not like these people!
When he finally got to me, I mustered a discomfited smile.  Nicole comes to us from Amherst College, though she has spent the past two years in the workforce in New York (this was already an egregiously generous depiction.  My time in New York had been spent floundering about, working as an administrative assistant, teaching briefly at a school for troubled teens, ditching that to become a 1940’s style cigarette girl in the nightclubs, and eventually taking a job as a sales rep for a beer company.  I put the “irk” in “work” and turned it to “shirk,” so to speak.). 
Her bachelors is in English and French and she expressed an interest in studying, “non-normative literature.”  A light chuckle moved through the crowd at the “non-normative” part, and I wasn’t sure why.  Now I realize that the language simply fell outside of comparatists’ usual jargon and perhaps sounded naïve and underscored my un-indoctrinated rawness.  Had he said that I was interested in employing Eastern metaphysical precepts and feminist methodologies to explore strategies for pragmatic critical reading of texts that tell stories of marginalized peoples, I’m sure the response would have been different.  But I didn’t know how to say that yet.
Regardless of the reason why, I was crestfallen after these giggles and guffaws.  I felt like the butt of an inside joke, where everyone was on the inside pointing and laughing at me on the outside.  Go figure, the girl interested in studying marginalized people felt marginalized herself yet again. 
This seemed to be a recurring theme in my education. This one moment really did set a tone for my graduate experience.  At first this was to my detriment, where I felt I did not measure up and perhaps I had no place at the university.  Half way into first semester, I had what felt like a nervous breakdown, but I realize now was more of a spiritual one.  My spirit was broken.  I had no faith in myself and my ability, no faith that the Universe had brought me to this place on purpose, no will to push on.  The workload was insurmountable, and I was certain that no other graduate student on the planet (let alone in my classes) felt the same way.  I was left only with my fears, my stress, my loneliness, and my painful certainty of inadequacy.
And then three strange things happened to me.  I’m not completely sure of the order of them, but they all conspired to teach me a wonderful lesson, without which I may not have made it through even that first year, let alone my second, third, fourth, fifth…
One was I fell in love.  What a wonderful gift to have happen to me at that moment.  How delicious and sedating is love’s elixir!  How amazing is the way in which love’s drunken stupor mandates a complete reconfiguring of one’s priorities!  Whereas first semester I would literally sit in the company of others and think “This is not so much fun that I should be here instead of reading,” second semester was spent truly basking in the company of others, staying up until all hours of the night talking, playing cards, watching movies, and most importantly, remembering that I was alive and human and connected and caring by being completely head over heels for someone.  I learned to skim books, articles and essays, to continue to do my best, but without the guilt and self-doubt previously associated with what my best was.  School became the thing that filled the hours between when I would drink him in again, which was a lot better than it being the crushing blow to my spirit that it had been.
Another thing happened to me- I began to read “new age” books.  I had begun to feel in graduate school that I no longer took much pleasure from reading.  It was “institution food,” given at steady intervals and “good” for its consumer, but completely devoid of the colors, textures and flavors that made its consumption exciting.  But I started to find time to sneak in books by Thich Nhat Hanh and Wayne Dyer, to explore the philosophy behind yoga and to wrap my mind around Buddhist concepts.  My exploration of the precepts guiding these different belief systems might seem too far off the beaten path of scholarship to merit discussion in an academic forum.  But it is my belief that they actually enable different relationships to texts, and new ways reading and deciphering multiple oppressions.  This too will be explored in this work.

Quickly, however, this turned to an advantage—at least in my eyes—that I knew that I was different from my peers in learning style, interests, expectations, and goals and, hence, that I would have to “do” grad school on my own terms and in my own unique way.
It has been an amazing exploration.  I have gotten to study languages, literatures, cultures and philosophies of Latin American, African, and Caribbean peoples.  I was able to complete a certificate in Women’s Studies, which exposed me to invaluable methodological and epistemological foundations for my work.