Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Berry.
I have always believed in the power of fiction as a way to unpack current events and understand social issues. Which is why I was excited when Professor Andrea Lanoux, Slavic Studies Professor and Director of the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies & the Liberal Arts (CISLA), announced that we would be reading Connecticut College class of 2001 alum Jennifer De Leon’s debut novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From as part of our IS 401 course this semester.
The book tells the story of 15-year-old Liliana Cruz, a first-generation student whose parents are from Guatemala and El Salvador. She is selected to transfer from her high school in Boston to a predominantly white high school in a fictional suburban town in Massachusetts through the Boston-based desegregation program Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO). Liliana wakes up early every day to take the bus from Jamaica Plains to Westberg High where she navigates code-switching and microaggressions BIPOC students often experience at a Predominately White Institution (PWI), while also managing the news that her father has been deported to Guatemala. In a little over 300 pages, De Leon discusses the political backdrop of Trump’s efforts to build a wall to thwart immigration, while also telling a moving coming of age story of a Latina girl who finds her voice.
De Leon grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts with her parents who are immigrants from Guatemala. She graduated from Conn with a major in International Relations and is the editor of the book Wise Latinas, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University, and a Grubstreet instructor and board member. De Leon visited Conn on Tuesday, Sept. 29 for a virtual discussion via Zoom put on by CISLA, Hispanic Studies Professor Jennifer Rudolph, Professor Hubert Cook of the English department, and students Lorena De Leon ‘22, Kairis Aridai ‘21, and Alex Rodriguez ‘22.
De Leon began the discussion by listing questions she was asked while studying at Conn including: are you Hispanic? Can you help me with my Spanish homework? What tribe are you from? Where are you from? The last question is central to the novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From and set the tone for the excerpt which De Leon read from her book. The selected scene takes place in Liliana’s history class when her teacher, Mr. Phelps, asks students about their opinions on a multilingual world. Up to this point, Liliana has been silent in the class as she knows that if she shares her perspective she will become the sole representative for the entire Hispanic community. However, the statements made by her classmates prompt her to explain that U.S. states including Florida and Colorado take their names from words in Spanish, exemplifying how Spanish was spoken before English in what would become America.
This dialogue opened a Q + A session coordinated by students De Leon, Airdai, and Rodriguez. Aridai asked De Leon how a young adult novel may romanticize the experience of a BIPOC student attending a PWI. In response, De Leon explained her goal was to write the story of one Latina girl, but she is aware that there will be readers who will think Liliana’s story is the sole experience of Latinx students. Professor Rudolph, who hopes to teach De Leon’s book in a future course, added in an email: “there is a rich history of Latinx authors using the coming of age narrative format to write on Latinx identity” as this genre allows for identity exploration, however, there is danger in pigeon-holing a work.
Rodriguez began a discussion on how BIPOC students navigate white spaces. De Leon expressed that she did want to suggest that BIPOC students must leave their communities and go to a white space in order to succeed. Although Liliana attends a PWI, she also finds her voice in a local writing center: 826 Boston.
Similar to Liliana, De Leon also navigated different racial spaces while at Conn, finding herself code-switching between identities to assimilate: “I was too white for [my] Latinx friends, but did not fit in with [my] white friends.” De Leon felt she had to be “white Jenn” to survive, relying on trips to the AC and journaling like Liliana to unpack these emotions. De Leon expressed how it is easier to navigate a PWI and other white spaces when you are white-passing, but there are not enough spaces on campus for BIPOC students to navigate these experiences. While De Leon was at Conn, the student body “was white, white,” but the reality is that this is still true today. In fact, the average Black student enrollment is 17 out of 459 in the classes of 21 to 24 according to a post on @blackvoicesconncoll2 from July 14.
On a similar note, Professor Cook asked De Leon about her drive for discussing education institutionalism through the eyes of a young Latina woman. De Leon believes education can be a place where we reinvent ourselves and discover confidence and empowerment. Professor Cook agreed and wrote in an email: “a student’s life can represent the locus of so many investments from loved ones and negotiations with competing systems of power. I valued that De Leon’s novel was thoughtful about how a student can find her own voice through it all.” Although an educational institute is the setting of the novel, the selective school program is not the only place Liliana finds her voice.
The conversation shifted to CISLA, one of the academic centers at Conn which has been called out on @blackvoicesconncoll as catering to the white student experience. A space to explore a culture and language is what CISLA is supposed to be for students, but aspects of elitism and being another predominantly white space on campus hinders many students from applying. De Leon, who was a CISLA scholar and conducted her internship in Lagos, Nigeria, expressed during her visit to our IS 401 class on Wednesday how she felt intimidated by CISLA but also found her people in the competitive program.
Both the event open to the entire student body as well as the conversation among the graduating class of CISLA scholars this year revealed the shortcomings of pedagogy at a PWI such as Conn. De Leon’s novel is a way to begin to understand what it means to walk down a hallway in a PWI as a BIPOC student. I encourage you to read Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From and reflect on your own and with others the revelations you may uncover. •
