ABSTRACT
This essay shares the wayfinding experience of an African American woman academic working in a white-privileged Australian university, trying to survive systems of oppression unacknowledged by those within the university space. The challenge of facing racial and gender stereotypes is akin to trying to stand straight in a crooked room. This critical autoethnography describes, through the medium of poetry, one black-woman-immigrant’s phases of survival, a journey to express self.
