Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 Overview of the Book -- 2 Conclusion -- 1 Home and Early Literacy Memories -- 1 Recollect My Childhood and Adolescence Memories -- 2 Early Literacy -- 3 Attending School in the Countryside -- 4 Gender Inequities -- 2 Questioning My Black Male and Heterosexual Privileges -- 1 Teenage and Young Adult Life Remembrances -- 2 Critical Reflection -- 3 Growing up Poor, Black, and Being [Mis]educated -- 1 My Mis-Education -- 2 Conclusion -- 4 Belonging Neither Here nor There -- 1 I Am My Identities -- 2 Recollecting Precious Memories -- 3 Coping with Bitter and Sweet Feelings Living in the United States -- 4 Awareness as Liberation -- 5 Conclusion -- 5 To Be Non-Whites in America Is to Be in Danger -- 1 How Does Feel Like a Burden in a Self-proclaimed Democratic Country Like the United States? -- 2 Experiencing Inequities in the Main Land -- 6 Succeeding as Black in an Uneven Western World -- 1 Challenges -- 2 Confronting Linguistic and Racial Discrimination -- 3 Teaching Minority Students -- 4 Lessons Learned from My Personal Journey -- 7 What It Means Being Black in the Ivy Halls of WhiteAmerica -- 1 Longing for a Paradigm Shift: Will That Ever Occur? -- 2 Teaching While Black: Confronting Whiteness in the Classroom -- 3 The Inner Fear of Losing Myself -- 4 Conclusion -- 8 The Cost of Being Black and Brown Laboring in Predominantly White Institutions -- 1 Going through the Hoops of the Tenure and Promotion Process -- 2 Post-Tenure and Promotion Critical Self-Reflection -- 3 Looking Forward -- References.

Using auto-ethnography as a methodological framework, this book captures two diametrical poles of the author's experiences growing up poor and being educated in a colonial school system in a developing country and currently working as a university professor in the United States. The author begins by recollecting his mixed childhood and adolescence experiences, including being subjected to abject poverty, escaping a sexual predator as a teenager, witnessing class, gender, and sexual inequities, while at the same time being supported by family, neighbours, and friends in his community. Next, the author talks about the social class privileges that he has enjoyed as a result of becoming a university professor while juxtaposing such privileges to micro-aggression, systemic racism, xenophobia, linguicism, and elitism that he has been facing in society, including in the Ivy Halls of White America.

Description based on print version record.