Moving from young adulthood to her experiences as a nontraditional student at Pace University, Rivera chronicles her path to independence in this poignant essay about determination, support, and sacrifice. Evoking powerful images, she introduces the people and forces that served to inspire, recharge, and steady her resolve to succeed in her second…

This article examines the experiences of first-year Latina/o undergraduates at a predominantly white institution. Through a borderlands analysis, the authors explore how these students describe their experiences participating in an ethnic studies course and mentoring Latina/o elementary schoolchildren. The authors find that these experiences…

In this essay, Joe Robert Gonzalez describes the process of his own growth as a Mexican American from Brownsville, Texas, who attended Villanova University. Coming from a majority-minority town, Gonzalez identifies the importance of safe spaces for Mexican American youth, many of whom doubt their own potential to thrive within university settings.…

Situating herself on the cusp between life in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and her new world at Seton Hall University, Mellie Torres describes the painful awareness of a growing distance between herself, as the first to go to college, and her family. In so doing, she reveals the inherent losses of leaving home and the painful contrast…

The story of Latinas/os in higher education in the United States is often one of exclusion and erasure. In this essay, Arelis Hernandez argues that, from grade school to college, there is rarely an occasion for Latinas/os to learn their history and to produce scholarship based on their communities. Instead, they are pressured to subscribe to a…

Undocumented Latino students in higher education represent a resilient, determined, and inspirational group of high achievers who persevere and serve as a model for success. Here, Frances Contreras presents a qualitative case study consisting of twenty semistructured, in-depth interviews with undocumented Latino students in an effort to help…

This article draws on the voices of three Latina and two Latino students who navigated transfer pathways from a community college to four-year colleges. Although all but one of these students was eligible for admission to the selective University of California system, none of them exercised that choice. In fact, only one enrolled in a selective…

In this article, Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja, and Daniel Solorzano expand on their previous work by employing critical race theory to explore and understand incidents of racial microaggressions as experienced by Latina/o students at three selective universities. The authors explore three types of racial microaggressions--interpersonal…

For Marlen Vasquez, attending college was a transformative experience through which she learned to question extant social structures and reconnect with her Latina heritage. In this essay, Vasquez recounts two undergraduate experiences that transformed her worldview, renewed her sense of cultural pride, and allowed her to move beyond previous…

Recent Yale alumnus Jarrad Aguirre relates his experience creating MAS Familias, a campus organization that supports Latino/a undergraduates studying math and science. Alarmed by Latino/a students' academic struggles and the lack of Latino/a role models in the fields of math and science--and increasingly aware of the social benefits of a diverse…

Using the critical race "testimonios" of ten Chicana undergraduate students at a top-tier research university, Lindsay Perez Huber interrogates and challenges the racist nativist framing of undocumented Latina/o immigrants as problematic, burdensome, and "illegal." Specifically, a community cultural wealth framework (Yosso, 2005) is utilized and…

In this narrative, five adult siblings bring their voices together to tell the stories of their interwoven college experiences--how they influenced, supported, and relied on one another and other family members. As the stories unfold, they reveal the strengths of the familial ties that provide meaning and purpose to the college experience, the…

In this essay, Jannell Robles explores and discusses some common themes found in her experiences as a Latina undergraduate student. During the summer of 2008, she conducted fieldwork in a rural town in Mexico. Her experiences as the only Latina student on this trip were similar to her experiences at her university and those discussed by Latina…

The Xicana Sacred Space resulted from an effort to develop a framework that would center the complexities of Chicana ontology and epistemology as they relate to social action projects in our communities. Claiming indigenous roots and ways of knowing, the Xicana Sacred Space functions as a decolonizing tool by displacing androcentric and Western…

In this article, Vicki Jacobs argues that as the nation strives to improve the literacy achievement of U.S. adolescents, educators must reframe the current "crisis" as a critical point on a continuum of historical efforts to address the particular challenges of postprimary-grade reading. Specifically, Jacobs examines the definition of adolescent…