Dear Saints, Dear Stella: Letters Examining the Messy Lines of Expectations, Stereotypes, and Identity in Higher Education

Abstract

The article focuses on Latino students' difficulties with higher education because of double construction of identity from and toward the Anglo mainstream in the U.S. It addresses other perception, the potential problems Latino students, Mexican American, encounter in higher education based on how others perceive their individual and group identity. It also addresses self-perception, the contradictory expectations that Mexican Americans have of the mainstream in higher education. It presents the discussion in a letter format that primarily speaks to audiences outside the mainstream.