“Finally, I told my professor I was pregnant.” Becoming new mothers as international graduate students

Abstract

As international students seek degrees in U.S. higher education, their role as students is fore-fronted and recognizable by faculty and peers. What often remains invisible are their social and personal experiences. While there is substantive literature on academic identity and motherhood, very few studies address international graduate student mothers’ experiences. Informed by a Bakhtinian stance of dialogism, this ethnographic study focuses on the lived experience and discourses that surround motherhood among eleven Chinese international graduate student mothers (CIGSMs) on and off university campuses, especially how CIGSMs negotiate their new identities as mothers and acquire their “language” of motherhood. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of international graduate student mothers’ experiences as a social, cultural, and educational phenomenon, exploring the power dynamics and complex dialogic intercultural interactions, and addressing the social justice issues through the lens of motherhood in both linguistic and educational fields.