The Unchosen Me—Race, Gender, and Identity Among Black Women in College (review)
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In the book The Unchosen Me—Race, Gender, and Identity Among Black Women in College, Rachelle Winkle-Wagner takes a sociological perspective that "shifts identity work toward an interaction-based approach whereby race and identity are manifested through interactions between self, others, and society" (p. 13). Her book details her critical ethnographic study of 30 Black women at a large, public institution in the Midwest that investigated to what extent "institutions of higher education impose identity on students differentially by race and gender . . . [and] how . . . this shape[s] the students' experiences and success in college" (p. 12). Her work powerfully illustrates how Black college women have reacted to and maneuvered their social world in efforts to succeed in college. The result is the new concept of the Unchosen Me: an identity that is imposed upon these women to perform in order to gain success in college and achieve a certain level of acceptance and recognition among their peers and faculty. This book contains eight chapters that include her critique of the field of identity research (chapter 1), her theoretical perspective (chapter 2), methodology (chapter 3), findings (chapters 4-7), and implications for higher education policy makers and practitioners (chapter 8).
A Sociological Perspective in Identity Research
In chapter 1, Winkle-Wagner explains how a sociological perspective presents racial identity [End Page 732] differently than social psychology because it shifts the focus from individual meaning making of one's identity (as is generally the perspective found in student development theory) to examining how the social world informs one's identity. A sociological perspective more fully acknowledges the influence that social forces (e.g., racism, privilege, marginalization) play on minoritized populations in how they identify and how they enact their identity by examining the extent to which society constrains and predetermines these choices. Torres, Jones, and Renn (2009) acknowledge the need for student development theory to include the impact that social forces play on identity, and have indicated that a more sociological perspective has begun to emerge through the application of critical theory (e.g., Abes, 2009) and the examination of how racism may affect identity development (e.g., Torres & Hernandez, 2007). However, in arguing for the need of a sociological perspective, the points that each perspective examines different aspects of identity and that both perspectives can be complementary rather than conflicting, are lost.
The Unchosen Me
Chapter 2 offers a detailed explanation of symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934/1967; Stryker, 1980), the theoretical foundation for Winkle-Wagner's sociological perspective. Challenging Stryker's (1980) conclusion that one chooses the identity that best suits her or that is the most advantageous, Winkle-Wagner concluded that the Black women in her study were "coerced, forced, or persuaded to accept identity characteristics . . . [because] choice is constrained to the point where aspects of one's identity are ultimately unchosen" (p. 153). These unwanted components of identity are aspects of the Unchosen Me: a particular identity or its components "that are institutionally bounded, culturally and institutionally imposed, and thus not necessarily freely chosen by people. The Unchosen Me reveals the process of accepting these aspects of identities into one's notion of self " (p. 36).
Unchosen Me is comprised of dualities, or "two-ness," that constrained how these women could identify. They were either "the representative" for the African American community, or they dealt with being unseen in the classroom by their instructors and classmates (chapter 5). Another dichotomy that the women had to negotiate was being either "too White," or "too ghetto" (chapter 6). These chapters provided a rich description of how these women's identities shifted between these dichotomies according to context and environment, and the consequential anger, resistance, and confusion associated with recognizing that their choices were imposed and constrained.
Other chapters of this book further investigated the women's narratives to illustrate other aspects of Unchosen Me, from the effects of marginalization and culture shock (chapter 4), to the intersection...
