Special Report: Nuestra Comunidad: Themes and Shared Experiences in a Latinx Librarian Cohort, Part II
by Aidy Weeks, Ruby Nugent, & Mayra Corn
Photo by Unsplash
Themes
Tackling the Imposter Syndrome
We have all earned our spot at the table...finally, right? And yet, we doubt that seat. We fear that we will be “found out,” and to an extent, our own minds create streams that lessen our value. We experience the impostor syndrome, also known as the impostor phenomenon. The impostor syndrome (IS) may manifest itself in the form of anxiety, self-doubt, low self-esteem, or perfectionism. It is a wave of fear that we will be exposed as pretenders undeserving of our achievements. Our accomplishments will be stripped and we will be left with the shell of an exposed career fraud. It can be these moments that keep us from speaking up in a meeting, ones that prevent us from sending that email that has been edited and combed through hundreds of times, or from promoting our latest achievement publicly. Experiences of IS place our bodies and minds through stress, overworking, and tiresome bouts of anxiety.
There is a Spanish idiom that comes to mind, aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda; directly translated into, “even if the monkey dresses in silk, a monkey it remains,” similar to the English language idiom “you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.” In the moments where the impostor syndrome is at our front door, this idiom rings true in our ears. We find ourselves questioning if all we are is a mona dressed in seda. The anxiety sets in as we wonder if all we are doing is dressing a white-collar over our blue one. In our lowest points of defeat we ask, is that all I’ll ever be: a blue-collar emperor in new clothes?
The reality is that we have checked the same boxes to be in this role as other librarian counterparts. We receive the graduate degree, we go through the same interview process and panels, and we equally succeed in our daily work. We know that it is unhealthy to remain in this mindset and allow it to consume our thoughts. Yet inexplicably, we draw comparisons, question our competency, and at times are consumed by the feeling that we will be “outed” at any moment.
As a support group, our shared moments of the IS present an opportunity to tackle the syndrome head-on. We remind one another of our worth and encourage each other to cease unhealthy comparison, “as they are acts of violence against ourselves.” It is a support network that validates the impostor experience, but does not allow us to live in that mindset as we know our value is greater than the doubts we append to our worth.
Work Hard Mentality
The “Work Hard Mentality” to labor in the work we do and then when that’s not enough, work even more is a common mindset for people of color. Historically, this has been true for African-Americans whose ancestors endured slavery for 400 years, Asian-Americans whose ancestors labored in the construction of the transcontinental railroads, and Latinx communities who have fed us in agricultural fields, meat processing plants and cleaned after us in hotel rooms.
The root cause is the same: we’ve been trained in labor-intensive work and witnessed this through the eyes of our childhood, heard the stories, and experienced it ourselves. So when we transition from “blue-collar,” low-wage, high manual labor work into “white collar,” higher wage, less “perceived” manual work, this mentality is tucked securely into our new professional job along with our resume and cover letter. It stays and manifests itself into other forms.
We take on extra work, we work late, we extend our work week into the weekend, we lead multiple projects, we don’t take time off so that others can, we keep our plates full and keep our to-do list long. We work until we can’t work anymore. And there’s credence to this behavior. As persons of color, we balance two imposing realities: the need to prove yourself to others (“I belong here”, Imposter Syndrome) and the societal conditioning that we must always work hard to achieve our dreams.
Dismissing this notion, by stating to Latinx librarians that one does not need to work as hard to prove their worth, stops short of fully understanding why we do what we do and the Catch-22 reality that if we don’t work as hard, we are subject to the societal stereotype of laziness such as the ironic Sleeping Mexican trope and/or getting a pass for meeting the diversity hire checkbox.
We know better. Nosotros sabemos mejor.
Do we need to come to terms with the origins of this mentality? Yes. Do we need to better protect ourselves from the self-abuse that comes from the need to overwork or the outward abuse from being overworked by others? Yes. Do others need to dismiss this and tell us to not work as hard? No, like many issues in WOC spaces, it’s more complicated than that.
Together, we have a shared understanding of this mindset. It is not questioned, it is acknowledged and discussed without being dismissed. We exchange stories, and similar instances with common responses like, “Oh yeah, that was me too,” or “That happened last week.” We cope through shared experiences and acknowledgement. We know that an extreme degree is not healthy, but that we face a reality where not working hard puts us further away from the finish line.
Deauthentication/Code Switching
Within our professional library circles, which are predominantly white, Latinx librarians have to exert the energy to deauthenticate and code switch. Noted in their paper, “Low Morale in Ethnic and Racial Minority Academic Librarians: An Experiential Study” by Kendrick & Damasco (2019), deauthentication is defined as “...a cognitive process to prepare for or navigate predominantly White workplace environments,” (p.194). Code switching is a linguistic exercise in using more than one language simultaneously while communicating with others. More recently, code switching has become an act of exchanging colloquial speech with formal speech in professional settings.
Code switching in Latinx spaces could be moving between English, formal Spanish, Spanglish (which in itself is a form of code-switching) or colloquial Spanish depending on the familial region/country of origin and dialect of the individual. Code switching also can be moving from colloquial forms of English to more complex higher-level terminology which in the health sciences can be a mix of medical and librarian-centric terms in order to exchange thoughts and communicate ideas with other librarians, library staff and clinical faculty.
Instances of speaking Spanish at work for Latinx health sciences librarians sometimes occur in a translational capacity when encountering support staff, Spanish-speaking visitors, patients and their families. There is an endearing sense of pride and service when encountering those in need in this setting. You are helping a lost visitor find there way, a support staff member on a computer or helping a family member better understand how to locate consumer health resources, and these are all good things. However, there is also the reality that such a skill may not always be compensated, but rather considered “other duties as assigned” or if you are the only one fluent, an expectation that no one else but you is responsible for providing support to Spanish-speakers.
Instances of deauthentication can occur when we consciously remove any identifiers from our appearance, speech, and mannerisms that might clue others into our cultural identities. Latinx and in particular Latinas, are often stereotyped as being loud, boisterous, and dramatic, waving our hands wildly in order to emphasize a point. Not all Latinx librarians are the same, but collectively we’re aware of this stereotype and so we may choose to minimize accents, speak in a measured tone and physically restrain our hand gestures. We may also excuse mispronunciations of our name to avoid confusion or misunderstandings. We often use all or some of these tactics to fit in.