Hustle in Higher Education: How Latinx Students with Conviction Histories Move from Surviving to Thriving in Higher Education

The voices and experiences of formerly incarcerated college students are emerging throughout the social science literature. The importance of documenting their narratives is grounded in the reality that more than an estimated 12,000 system-impacted people are enrolled throughout the California postsecondary education system. This paper highlights the knowledge and skills formerly incarcerated students possess and deploy to navigate higher education successfully. Our study adds to the growing body of literature examining the experiences of formerly incarcerated Latinx students from an anti-deficit perspective. We use the theory of funds of knowledge and semi-structured interviews with 16 formerly incarcerated Latinx students at different points of the postsecondary education pipeline to understand their experiences. We find that formerly incarcerated Latinx students tapped into their “hustle” to move from surviving to thriving in higher education. These pre-college skills, acquired through their life experiences, allow students to seek academic and financial resources, create academic networks, and make personal connections with institutional agents to overcome various personal and institutional barriers.

Coming Back Home to Live and Not Die: A Human Geography of a Working-Class Black Gay Male Navigating the Local Higher Education Pipeline

The purpose of this study is to illustrate how in the span of three decades, a working-class Black gay male college student residing in a post-industrial city navigated college. Through a postcolonial geographic epistemology and theories of human geography, we explore his narrative, mapping the terrain of sexual, race and class dialects, which ultimately led to Marcus’s (pseudonym) completion of graduate school and community-based policy research. Marcus’s educational human geography reveals the unique and complex intersections of masculinity, Blackness and class as identities woven into his experiences navigating the built environment.

Latino Educational Leadership

Latino Educational Leadership is a critical book for pre-service and in-service Latino leaders. The book serves as a call to action for Latinx leaders in K-12 and higher education pipeline to advocate, empower, and transform Latinx experiences throughout the P-20 pipeline. The collection of essays in this book draw upon Latino-oriented methodologies and epistemologies to present testimonios, case studies, and theoretical models for building the Latino educational leadership pipeline. My review of this book speaks to its criticality for current and future leaders with respect to the historically marginalized Latino community.