Tag Archives: Erika Gisela Abad

Lessons from insured underemployment

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In this post, Erika G Abad discusses lessons learned at intersections of race, class, and generation in the course of an interdisciplinary career. Erika G Abad, PhD is a full-time non-tenure track assistant professor in residence in the southwest. She first contributed to Write Where it Hurts reflecting on the contradiction of her income and social status. You can find her work on Latinx (formerly Mujeres) Talk, Centro Voices among other blogs. Her Oscar Lopez Rivera research is trying to make the case to write about him without a prisoner studies lens. Follow her @lionwanderer531. 

A professional mentor tells me to not talk about the call center. He insists because PhDs working two years at a call center right after their degree makes no sense. But I talked about the call center before receiving this advice, and in spite of it, because I wouldn’t want to work anywhere that didn’t understand the call center. A first-generation college student, the first PhD on both sides of my extended family, a queer Latina not ashamed of the struggle, a university would not be worthy of me if underemployment were a value statement.

Why do I care about the call center?

I got that job like I got others. Through social networks. Someone who vouched for me. Overqualified, they were worried that I was not going to last. And this white ally who saw me struggle said I would stay, and he stuck out his neck for me. I was frustrated then, PhD pride, that the moral obligation was placed on me. In hindsight, I needed that job. Car payments. Rent. My online summer class did not have enough students to afford those, let alone a trip back to Chicago. After three months picking up shifts to supplement the income my weekend part-time slot, a second-shift full-time post appeared. Because I needed dental work, because nothing else was biting, because the state of references for academic jobs was stale, I took it.

Within months they let me compost, a 64 oz old coffee can turned into a five-gallon bucket. The custodial worker hooked the car poolers up with free parking. White accomplice and I potlucked with others. In my off time, I spent Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons helping Latina immigrant women raise funds to buy Latino-centric food for the food pantry.  Those two years echoed the interdependent ethic of the Latino community of my childhood. People who took care of each other. People who had to figure it out with others’ help because pride was too expensive to deny need; assets were too plenty to deny support. Social networks built and born into were my Latino Chicago norms.

This is not a story of romanticizing the poor. They were far better than me. This is not a story that seeks to ignore that I left because the call center was being outsourced like most global companies that found less expensive labor abroad. The call center years forced me to think critically about the purpose of academia and the sites of learning, practices our degrees require us to privilege. The few years I embodied economic instability and uncertainty were largely due to my inability to explain how I did Gender and Ethnic Studies with my American Studies degree, given committee members’ disclosure after I graduated. Much like that call center job, I relied on friends and chosen family to take care of me. I wrote extensively on that interdependency for Women in Higher Education thanks to Liana Silva.  That interdependency I learned from the Puerto Rican & other Latina women educator-practitioners who mentored me over the years, and something which they, along with my work dad (the mentor who told me to not talk about the call center) modeled for me to pay forward in whichever way I found possible.

Latino Community Capital

While the job market for the past two years appears to have recovered from the economic recession. It has done so only slightly. With more part-time instructors than full-time instructors, we are competing with colleagues and friends to obtain our positions. Little has changed in interdisciplinary studies that articulates that those of us with those degrees can be as flexibly employed as those within traditionally defined disciplines. The instability of the field and the field’s necessity to rely on the complexity and contradictions of practitioners sparks this meditation. I have wavered on writing this, however, as a first generation college student who spent four years on the market, I worry for the future generation of scholars who need to learn early on how to apply their skills to other markets. Despite the status of the field, the caste system within higher education has marked select alum from specific universities as more likely to evade underemployment, discrimination, respectability politics performance, some of whom have benefited from citizenist, ableist skin color, class, and/or repronormative privilege.

Chicago born, trained by leading scholars in Latino and Puerto Rican Studies since my first year in undergrad, I was groomed for this. Latino intellectual community capital was my norm. The majority of my undergraduate faculty were Latina. As I wrote in my homage to Judith Ortiz Cofer, I’ve met Latino writers, Puerto Rican and Latinx activists as a result of choosing a school based on the wealth of Latino knowledge that my alma mater has. Pursuing that logic didn’t necessarily make social networking sense, but I had yet shaken off ethno-centrism and, more importantly, I knew the struggle I wanted to have was not about centering, gaining or sustaining white validation. I took for granted that having a job meant that the struggle against internalized oppression or imposter syndrome was over; I took for granted that publishing and prospering did not mean leaders in the field knew how to extend, how to do it.

As a mentor once said, not all faculty teaching you know how to write, let alone teach writing.

Pursuing that meant coming to terms with the stories that needed to be told and the way I needed to tell them. Once I regained my voice, as a result of letting customer service turn off the pomp and circumstance and self-righteousness, I learned in my white-collar identity-based politics struggles, then came to consider where to embody what the intellectual shoulders I stood on had modeled for me. Not because they asked, no, more because I knew what it meant to have faculty who looked like me tell me I could be like them, they who were running departments and bringing award-winning Latinx writers into my life. I needed to write from that place of fulfilled yet growing hunger for greater voices. That also meant coming to terms with the “race for theory” and where I wanted to run (Christian 1987). Also meant gauging how fast I was willing to run so that I could use white scholarly voices to more critically bring to light the black, Caribbean, Latin American ones with whom I find home and decolonial reason.

And talking Foucault, composting and food sharing with the fellow customer service associates echoed the exchanges that inform all the reasons I wanted to write and teach. The debates about which books to save from displaced cultural centers; the joking exchanged during the late nights of protest sign making, and the questions answered during my childhood afternoons talking with priests about scripture, women priests, and the call to serve the poor. Following the advice of former Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera provided in his letters to me, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work during those call center years (2008). While brief, and some would argue, minimal in comparison to the time I spent in the ivory tower, their relation to those years make them more profound.

The American Dream I embodied till graduation failed. It only resurrected because my sister insisted on bringing my exhausted heartbroken and proud behind home. It only resurrected because undocumented immigrant women gave me more to fight for in letting me partake in the work they were leading. It resurrected because activist leaders I critiqued allowed me to work through our disagreements when I returned to work with them in Chicago. Willingness to swallow my pride, work and serve across difference and work towards reconciliation continue to shape how I write, how I teach and continued efforts to sustain meaningful intellectual dialog beyond my own scholarly training.

The call center years remind me that intersectional, interdisciplinary professional communities have the potential to disrupt neoliberalism by being an exercising practicality in its intergenerational dialog. As contradictory, as distanced as we are—the we between disciplines, the we between junior and senior scholars—when we are willing and able to name where our intellectual and political forebears are, in spite of where we aim to be, we can create the opportunity to break bread together. The Catholic imagery I evoke functions analogously to intellectual ideas leading to traditional, creative works and or, if applicable, policy reform. Whether the border crossed us, our families, or they/we cross borders, we can still be a bridge for who’s and what’s to come.

Works Cited

Lopez Rivera, Oscar. Letters to author. 2008

Christian, Barbara. “A Race for Theory.” Cultural Critique: The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse. 6 (1987) 51-63.

 

Limits of Doctoral Education – Hunting for Public Aid

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Erika G Abad, PhD, received her American Studies PhD at Washington State University in 2012. Since then, she has worked as a customer service associate, a scheduler, Caddy Head Counselor, Field Director for a policy education campaign, Farmers’ Market team member and oral historian–in that order–since completing her degree. She is currently a regular writer for Women in Higher Education and will be starting teaching full-time this fall. 

Writing this as a PhD is hilarious, in the midst of so many narratives regarding PhD poverty. Unlike those, however, I approach the conversation cognizant of my choice, my white collar poverty’s flexibility of time and of the systemic issues at play.

When applying for affordable care act (ACA) mandated insurance last April, a friend walked me through process, as he was employed by a grant specified to educate new participants. I picked my insurance, made the consistent monthly payments. From April 2015 to January 2016, income has changed, creating the possibility to qualify for public aid. This is the amusement of millennial scholars, and the heartbreak of parents and families who hoped a quality education would keep their progeny from the ‘shame,’ and stigma of relying on ‘government handouts.’

Chasing Eligibility

The millennial scholar amusement, that despite being a generation removed from limited education, two generations removed from the ability to read and write, those skills and assets do not secure a better income. And, the varied jobs I have had outside of (higher) education, reinforce the freedom to choose to live this way. It’s a commitment to the dream issue, which I have often questioned, much like I struggled with believing in the democratic necessity of a liberal arts education. The experience both with ACA and most recently, public aid eligibility paperwork, has brought that to light.

I begin writing this reflection in the midst of trying to assess where my paperwork is. It’s January, nearing the deadline, and the last thing I need is to be penalized for something that I can’t control and something that I did. In other words, I have submitted the paperwork, waiting for a response could cost me eligibility and any assistance, so I stop working to primarily address this issue. I stop working to call the series of north side offices where I would presume my file could be. During the first call, I connect with an immigrant woman who, assuming I work for the office, begins to explain her case. In the middle of her narrative, I say, “I don’t work for the office, it seems they connected us.”

“I must have pressed the wrong number,” she says. I smile to myself and say, “it may just be a glitch, try calling again.” Here, my educational-based privilege starts to sink in and I say, ‘shit,’ if they connected two clients together, what’s it like in the office?

That Friday’s phone call was preceded by conversations on Wednesday, and, on Thursdays, finally learning how to log on to get my pay stubs. Working class income, not wages, nor time limitations as a result of being a community-based researcher. The catch-22, the irony of PhD’s trying to find a way to stay relevant and competitive in an incredibly tight market. Changing is not that easy, by the way, because those other jobs where we could easily transfer our skill sets, see the PhD doesn’t have to stay. Cynical, yes, and a reminder education-based privilege has its limits.

So, that Friday, I am reviewing the list of numbers to call. The one on the mailer, the one I was told to call because that office did not, supposedly, have my paper work. So who else has my paper. The woman at the second office said she would call me back. I cannot get an operator on the third number I call. This is a major deadline day, so I try the office. The crowded waiting room confirms what I expect from a public service office at the last minute of paper work. Research grant funding works in funny ways, which means I cannot afford to wait. My collard shirt, unfaded jeans, and comfortable shoes remind me that my frustration will be temporary. Middle class privilege rings again and yet, my paycheck is the reason I still search for an answer.

Why do I choose to write about this? And, while I am writing, I’m scared about it. Scared about airing dirty laundry like most folks in this circuit are, because, what established PhD’s with full-time jobs, are thinking about the next generation scrambling to make ends meet, produce quality work and stay relevant enough to get a full-time job? For those that are, what can they do about it with strained free speech, confused and disgruntled students, and the working class, undocumented youth who deserve a chance to be more than underfunded educational institutions and the state say they can or could be.

So, I talk about it because my white-collar poverty and my intellectual training gives me the tools to complicate the difficulty. Because, as I am praying to be eligible for public aid to have more income at my disposal, to live more than from paycheck to paycheck, I am reminded of the threats to layoffs and the continued cutting of funds from public offices in my city/state. What else is a city with a debt like Chicago’s, what else can a state unwilling to tax specific populations like Illinois do? So, despite how frustrated I am by being connected to another client, not being able to find an operator to answer the phone and crowded waiting rooms, I know I am not the only one stressed. Each office which I have dealt with this week is struggling because none of their jobs are secure. Their stress, their inability to answer last minute questions coupled with my own stress clearly articulate both the need for Affordable Care Act but also the financial and institutional hoops created to assure the best access to health care possible.

The ‘limits’ of education-based privilege

Dividing my time between doing my job as a researcher and looking for long-term positions, explain why I didn’t immediately address the needed documentation to complete my application for public aid. In other words, because my PhD entitlement thought I did everything I needed to do but didn’t, I am working at the last minute to solve a problem I could have addressed had I paid more attention.

And yet, I still have time and flexibility to solve the problem. I did solve the problem and, what’s more, had the question answered by the first office—the one that said they didn’t have my paperwork. I knew to call them back because, when I finally reached the final office, they gave me all the information I needed to speak to the rep assigned my case. The organizational mess this was speaks volumes to the effects of cut funding, strained/stressed employees and the greater work ACA supporters need to do in order to make sure those in more dire positions than I get their needs met.

At this point, it is important to clearly define how, despite how little I knew about the system, my entitlement informed a lack of action, what are the forms of privilege I exercised that allowed me to solve my problem by the end of the business day.

  • rearrange my schedule at a day’s notice—a day off did not affect pay
  • call each office and speak to someone to whom I can readily explain what courses of actions I took and ask what else needs to be done.
  • Fax required information to multiple numbers
  • drive to offices when phone calls don’t address my questions
  • work, if needed—revise a paper, read a book, review ethnography notes— while I wait in line to address office needs (I didn’t have to but it was a plan B I had lined up)
  • be patient with the person on the other end because I was not losing a day of work
  • document all courses of action and speak with a discourse, dress in attire that may inform how others will take me more seriously
  • prepare to argue with the office because of the institutional limitations regarding meeting deadlines because of documented calls, detailed articulation of systemic issues in calling each office and awareness of the letter

The dance of affordability

The affordable care act is not yet affordable not only because of the hoops of today, but, more specifically, because state, city and federal offices in charge of making sure we are all insured vary in institutional and professional stability. Their instability parallels and conflicts with the uncertainty that those of us applying for public aid or any insurance may have. That’s a research question I hope someone is tackling in economics or political science, or even law.

I know this is just a hiccup along the way to a prolific career that can still promise white collar 9-5 middle class, insured stability. I know I have greater possibility to choose that anytime I want, comparable to others in the room and on the phone that Friday. Knowing that, however, does not change the weighted responsibility of the errors this system still needs to address. How does the education of life translate—and, right now, it’s all about talking about this question of access and productivity.

We all need to be healthy to effectively contribute to the market; we need access to health care stabilized and, in the midst of this, we need to work to make sure that happens. The ‘we’s’ here vary because of where the power lies, because of what choice, opportunity and support inform about that power. As a PhD with options and opportunities that have arisen since that January, praying for public aid, that’s what has me scratching my head. How do we work in specific career paths completely codependent on the government for its existence, completely codependent on society’s imposed value on our work?

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

On not Writing

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Erika Gisela Abad has a Ph.D. in American Studies, and works at Center for Puerto Rican Studies investigating intersectionality, cultural experience, and oral history among Puerto Rican communities and families.  In this post, Erika reflects on how her research in Puerto Rican Chicago sparks tension and memory in dialogues and debates with her mother.  

I struggle with not writing. Sitting with my mom after a long day’s work watching ridiculous TV shows on streaming media. I do this in the midst of professional uncertainty when my conscious tells me it is important to, well, send out applications. A woman struggling with the invisibility of her work, of her motherhood, closing the computer allows me to make her visible in the mundanity of the everyday to which we’ve arrived.

A mixed class Latina the second to finish college, the first PhD, I got this degree because making a living as a writer a mentor once told me, was going to be difficult. In the place many predicted the MFA would land me, I sit with my mom because of the reasons I write:

To heal, to release anger, to get to truths neither speaking nor working reveal. Drafting and talking through to forgive what moments trauma doesn’t want to let go. As I once wrote a mentor, it’s about getting to the table and trying to write what the other person coming to the table could or would look like. It’s about practicing with characters and metaphors how to listen through the trauma, whether the trauma be colonial, patriarchal or material – whether the trauma be that which has been named or that which must be kept invisible. Sometimes the struggle to survive demands struggles be kept silent. Human suffering, as inevitable as it is, often gets lost in the pursuit of fantasy as well as forgetting. Coming to the table is also about assessing whether the wheel turning revolution can be rebuilt or if the pieces of memory missing – memory missing because of what can’t yet be named – requires so many of us to rebuild it.

And sitting with my mom is about waiting, waiting for memory to reappear. And her memories awaken in the memories of others I record as an oral historian. Memories of parking lots turned into playgrounds, memories of late buses to colleges she never imagined. Memories of drinking Dr. Pepper for the first time, her comfort food, the comfort of being able to know more, taste more than poverty and patriarchy permitted to a young woman growing up where Puerto Ricans were trying to make place. These memories give her life beyond the college she never finished for no other reason than being by herself. Her stories lifting up from computer screens in a voice still weary of helping and reaching, come to life beyond the place of making meaning of leaving that requires returning, overwhelmed by isolation.

And I sit with that, when our skin color differences do not write away the sameness of racism we experience. A paleness that encourages forgetting that my brownness writes on the page, for the stage in ways that have her admit—not to me—that the fight continues. Responses to racism are coded in the traumas we share. Retorts and resistance colored by the adverse childhood experiences that divide us. Sitting is all she wants at the end of the day, at the end of days running, at the end of years climbing to find stable ground in which to root, in which to lift me, among her other children higher. My hands race and wring, legs twitch because work, all the kinds, exige movement.

And I struggle to not write in those moments: moments where the cogs in my head turn too fast for her to keep up; when the questions she asks receive huffs and stomps out looking for roads bigger than the rooms we occupy. In those moments where the grumbles she makes about the car driver who works when she doesn’t, because the car that is freedom to her and is more work to me in ways that put her back on the bus, on the train to move because her fixed time challenges the time that, for me, remains in constant question. The need for work fuels us in speeds and codes the other doesn’t understand.

It takes seconds to remember a woman speaking of a girl ashamed and strained by the laundry she carries on the bus. And I see my mom there, then, aching and taking days off to not have to, again cross the street with bags and baskets. She bought to own to never again walk or rent or borrow. She works to have the luxury, luxuries she couldn’t have back then, then when Puerto Ricans were beginning to make meaning, Puerto Ricans who form the history I collect. Her life fills up in the margins of those stories, of those whose mark on Puerto Rican Chicago get printed in newspapers, shine in their awards, appear on screens to see. Those Puerto Ricans now, in between arguments and questions, spark her to remember her story. Histories she lived differently, differently for reasons the more I learn from others, the more she reveals.

So I stretch and listen and sit still, waiting, waiting till she’s asleep to pull out the books, to open the pc, to take out the pen and paper to write. Because writing is still needed to heal, to move, to forgive, to let go, to uncover, to remember. But not writing—not writing in those moments I steal from reason, from economy—allows me to say thank you, thank you the only way a struggling writer knows how. By counting the wrinkles in her face, the sighs in her stories, knowing that, in between them, remain moments and movements to keep me writing.