High Literacy and Ethnic Identity

High Literacy and Ethnic Identity describes the experiences of fifteen men and women who arrived with the first and second wave of immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States and who, despite the odds, succeeded in completing the highest level of formal education-a doctorate-and are now educators in US colleges and universities. Examining these cultural narratives reveals much about the complex symbiosis between becoming highly literate and (re)constructing an ethnic identity; it elucidates the realities of an increasingly visible group who are using formal education to step out of the margins of society; it sorts out what it means to be a literate 'other' American. These insights can be useful to scholars of Dominican/Latino/a Studies, all teachers of Composition and Literacy, and the general reader, particularly those interested in understanding the conditions that help new immigrants to thrive, and those invested in reshaping institutions of learning.

High Literacy and Ethnic Identity describes the experiences of fifteen men and women who arrived with the first and second wave of immigrants from the Dominican Republic to the United States and who, despite the odds, succeeded in completing the highest level of formal education—a doctorate—and are now educators in U.S. colleges and universities.

Dulce M. Gray has been teaching cultural studies, writing and Latina/o literature for fifteen years at universities in the Mid West, East Coast and Mid Atlantic regions. She is now working on a collection of essays on the relationship between travel and the making of a diasporic self-identity.