Mentoring from the Margins

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using a critical and de/colonial focus, in this article, I trace the unfolding of my experiences, as a Desi woman, mentoring two Black women pursuing doctoral degrees in education. Using personal narratives, I explore the intersections of anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and colonizing structures of higher education that create and maintain power differences. I map the individual and entangled trauma minoritized people experience in academia, arguing for a radical interconnectivity that creates pathways for understanding resistance and illuminates possibilities for freedom. I argue that Black women’s knowledge needs to be valued, taken seriously, and engaged with thoughtfulness and care for legitimizing and normalizing Black ontoepistemologies. Mentoring in this terrain requires space-making that centers minoritized perspectives, in this case knowledge construction by Black women.