ABSTRACT
In this chapter author seeks to contextualize the experience of a Puerto Rican woman's position within academia, as both a teacher and scholar. As a Puerto Rican woman in academia, author's teaching, research, and very presence become sites of constant negotiation, where battles are fought, and the only alternative is silence. As a first generation, working-class Puerto Rican woman learning to survive the spaces that continue to push her to the margins, authors back is up, the path is filled with rocks and thorns, but learning to clear the terrain, if not for her but for others, is part of the healing. For the Puerto Rican woman, attempting to both simultaneously survive and dismantle the hierarchies within academic spaces, carrying home becomes both healing and tumultuous in the quotidian practices. For the woman of color, the Puerto Rican woman, the bodies are consistently and unjustifiably read under someone else's terms and within particular moments.
