I’m not actually talking about that space….

It’s 9:15 am and I’m at the Literacy Research Association (#LRA19) annual conference. My roommate is out at breakfast, I’ve finished some grading I chose to do instead of rushing to an 8:30 session and now I have a moment to think…about space.

First, I think about this space. This is the space to write, the space to breathe, the space to reflect.  Somehow this space seems stolen from the hectic bustle of the conference just a few floors below me, from the hectic end of the semester bustle that I know will come toward the end of the day as students scramble to get assignments in, from my life back home as my husband takes my daughter for oral surgery today and took my son to the district spelling bee yesterday.

Then, I think about the space of this conference, a literacy conference which triggers all the imposter syndrome within me.  I am trained in this field.  I have a PhD in education with an emphasis on literacy, language and culture, but I wonder what that means since my work has always been focused on teacher education, on teacher identity, on the ways that who we are shapes the choices we make.  Yes, there is literacy in all the things.  Yes, I teach secondary literacy courses that expand the boundaries of meaning making and communicating our ideas. But, do I really think that I belong in this space? A space where I have always felt on the margins?

This thinking leads me to the idea of reclaiming space.  I was talking about this with a good friend and colleague last night over dinner after Dr. Marcelle Haddix gave her presidential speech at the conference.  Marcelle talked about the need for disrupting the status quo in spaces that have not traditionally belonged to people of color and claiming our right to occupy literacy spaces, about how critical conversations about race and the systems that perpetuate inequities should be central to literacy research if our literacy research is to matter. She drew from the power of Audre Lorde, Black Feminism and current scholars of color. Her words came at a moment when I felt profoundly isolated in this space, after coming from a poorly attended but critically important session that I was presenting, ironically on the “unnatural invisibility” (Yamada, 1979) of Asian Americans.

After Marcelle’s talk, when my friend and I were going to dinner, she asked me what I thought about the conference and I told her that I wasn’t coming back after this year.  I told her that while Marcelle’s speech had profoundly touched and shifted my thinking, the words coming into my head as I was walking down the hall after the address, towards my room, were, “Not every space.” I told her that I was tired of feeling like the outsider in this space, that my time is precious, that I am finally coming to know what I’m worth, that I didn’t need this space to take that value and time from me.

As we kept talking over dinner, my friend listened, she empathized, then she reminded me of the importance of holding space for people to show up, about time to create a movement or even to create a small change.  She told me her story. I was there to listen and empathize and hold space.

Maybe I will return to this conference space.

I don’t yet know.

So…space…taking up space, reclaiming space, holding space, giving myself space, healing spaces.

I’m still thinking about space.