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Visual Studies
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rvst20
Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving
Academia as a Woman of Color
by Lorgia Garcia Peña Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2022, 120 pages ISBN:
9781642597196 (ebook) Price: $9.99
Marita Ibañez Sandoval
To cite this article: Marita Ibañez Sandoval (2023): Community as Rebellion:
A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, Visual Studies, DOI:
10.1080/1472586X.2023.2210534
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2023.2210534
Published online: 19 May 2023.
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Review
Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving
Academia as a Woman of Color
by Lorgia Garcia Peña
Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2022, 120 pages
ISBN: 9781642597196 (ebook) Price: $9.99
Reviewed by Marita Ibañez Sandoval,University of
Tsukuba
Community as Rebellion presents academia from an
Afro-Latina professor’s point of view while
quoting works from academics in similar positions,
bringing us closer to those who wrote, lived, and rebelled
before her.
Community as Rebellion is a brutally honest, sometimes
personal book. Through four chapters, García Peña
shares different initiatives and experiences of
communities for generating inclusive spaces for, in her
terms, women, BIPOC, and LGTBQ + communities,
including herself in the first two. The author discusses
the power of community in fostering unity, rebellion,
and strength through personal stories of her
relationships and alliances: ‘It was their community that
made my rebellion possible’(p. XIV).
Garcia Peña’s experiences resonate closely with others
like me, women from the Global South navigating
academia. Although the author is based in the United
States; still, it is possible to observe similarities with
other spaces, such as the Japanese academy, from
where this review is written, where women are still a
minority.
The introduction recounts Garcia Peña’s childhood
experiences of being called a ‘rebel’for resisting
authority and defying established norms. As a kid and
despite societal pressure to straighten her hair, she
embraced her natural hair, or as her supportive
grandmother called it, ‘her weapon and crown’(p. XI-
XIII). That rebelliousness evolved into a community
vision seeking to generate change in non-inclusive
structures.
While the book is presented as a syllabus, urging a plan
to observe, teach and act, it would have been interesting
to see an ‘assignment list’accompanying the syllabus,
where readers can apply what they learn as end-of-
course exercises. Visually wise, black and white
photographs help to get an idea of the dimension of
these communities and document events related to
them, such as the ‘Protect Undocumented Students at
Harvard’political stand (p. 72), Garcia Peña students
protesting the denial of her tenure (p. 26), or students’
interventions in public spaces such as the Altar to Saint
J.Lo (p. 65), among others.
The opening chapter critiques the tenure track
system and problematic similarities between
academia and colonial structures (p.3). García Peña
describes ‘the one’asthesoleBIPOCinan
institution or department, simultaneously upholding
the status quo while professing non-racism and
inclusivity. ‘—Usually professors who teach the
literature of colonized countries—to serve the largest
number of students also have the lowest salaries, are
less likely to be tenured, and experience daily
microaggressions from colleagues, administrators,
and students’(p.4).Still,shemakesthecaseofhow
being ‘the one’could still be a place for rebellion and
how sometimes, is the only way to ensure that there
wouldbemore(p.19).
In the second chapter, she differentiates the
‘accomplices’roles, those who feed the system and those
who rebel, stating: ‘The biggest challenge to those of us
leading the fight to decolonize the university is that its
accomplices are many, and they are often unwilling to
see their own complicity’(p. 33–34). The author
recognises academia’s challenges for underrepresented
groups and the extra burden they carry as ‘the one.’
However, there is a need to address the potential
negative impact of a culture of distrust on community
building.
Chapter 3 begins with a defense of the balance between
activism and academic work (p.57–58) and how the
classroom can be grounds for rebellion (p.60). García
Peña cites Bell Hooks’s‘Teaching Community: A
Pedagogy of Hope’(2003), a work that calls for change in
the educational system while advocating collective
learning and how communities contradict the academic
culture of individuality (p.80). As a teacher, I have
witnessed how a new way of understanding the world
can be initiated in a class discussion when students feel
the classroom is a safe space to debate, think and grow
together.
Finally, in the last chapter, Garcia Peña argues for
ethnic studies to fight against Eurocentric Western
education that has been passed off as ‘objective.’She
Visual Studies, 2023
distinguishes between ethnic studies and specificlines
of study that respond to a particular community, such
as African and Latino studies, and their importance in
challenging the narrative and filling the gaps that such
education and studies have left. Garcia Peña finishes
this chapter by imagining an ideal university and
states: ‘Scholars of all races and ethnicities centering
the work, histories, and artistic production of
marginalized, minoritized, and colonized Black,
Latinx,Asian,Indigenous,immigrant,disabled,and
queer people rather than viewing them as objects of
study’(p.98). Lastly, the author calls academics for
action to engage in social justice and the importance of
community, starting in the classroom.
ORCID
Marita Ibañez Sandoval http://orcid.org/0000-0002-
6341-7757
© 2023 Marita Ibañez Sandoval
https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2023.2210534
2Book Review
© 2023 Marita Ibañez Sandoval