| As university enrollments for first-generation college students continue to rise, the issues of race and class are becoming more important. Women of color from low-income backgrounds bear the triple burden of gender, racial, and economic stereotypes. Employing narrative inquiry, this dissertation explored the difficulties and experiences faced by women of color who are the first in their families to pursue their higher education. The participants, eight former students of the researcher, shared their personal narratives through a series of open-ended interviews in which they constructed histories of personal development through stories they selected as formative. These women's stories were then woven together in such a way as to generate thematic links and to make comparisons to existing theories on women's development. The narratives and their interwoven analyses are intended to enable not only these women, but also readers of the study to better understand the women's lived realities. This was accomplished through the participants' reflection on their interviews following Randall's (1995) notion “that storytelling is intrinsically empowering: that through the sharing of personal and corporate stories consciousness is raised, knowledge is generated, community is created, and a vision is stimulated that has transformative powers” (p. 5). Additionally, the interpretive reporting uses Magolda's (1999) mystories, “a hybrid genre that…juxtaposes strands or fragments of personal narratives with scholarly discourse and popular culture…a popular culture…a narrative of the discovery process…[that] encourages the writer and reader to self-explore…[It is] deliberately self-conscious, participatory, and provocative” (pp. 211–212). The results of this qualitative study extend understanding about the nature and characteristics of women's narratives and the experiences of a particular group of under-represented undergraduates' learning and knowing. This knowledge can help teachers, scholars, researchers, and students approach the challenges of contemporary higher education for under-represented students with greater insight and empathy. |
