How I Healed After Grad School Convinced Me That I Hated Reading: or, how I re-discovered the love of my life

“My Grad School is a Non-Hazing Organization”

My experience during graduate school (I am referencing my actual doctoral program, as well as my pre-doc fellowship) was a mixed bag. I was lucky to have an advisor, mentors, and later on a dissertation committee, who believed in me, my ideas, and my work. As a result, I had folks who were invested in advocating for me and protecting me in a way that was important then, and is still important now. However, I also had intermittent experiences of severe trauma at the hands of various faculty, that shook me to my core. These trauma[s] took away my greatest joy, reading, at least for a time. Grad school trauma also undermined my sense of self in ways that took years to recover from.

Graduate school can be horrifying. Point blank. There is a reason that I say the exact same thing to all of my mentees; “if you are a person of color and you intend on enrolling in a doctoral program within the United States, you must have a therapist, no exceptions.” There is literally no way of getting around the heart-ache, stress, and mental health challenges of a doctoral program without therapeutic support. Even in the best of circumstances, working on your doctorate will push you in ways that you are unprepared to handle. After all, there is a reason why the doctoral program attrition rate in the United States is 50%. However too many doctoral programs embrace a hazing-adjacent culture that causes students to “experience symptoms of psychological distress” [to put it mildly]. Thankfully, more academics are coming forward about their experiences with the hope of improving the doctoral program environment for students to come.

In order to fully articulate my grad school experience and how that experience led to the loss of my love of reading [for a time], I need to briefly explain who I was prior to graduate school.

A Day-One Reader

Growing up I was a voracious reader. I was a extremely shy introvert (your classic INFJ), and found safety in books. My grandaddy, mommy and I would spend hours together in silence, reading, having the time of our lives. During the summer I would walk to the library every week with my sister, dragging our little red wagon. I would fill it with 10+ books, read them all, and then return the next week for more. By the time I was in high school our library trips were replaced with trips to Borders Books with my mom. It was precious one-on-one time with my mom that I cherished. My sister hated reading back then, so it was a rare opportunity for my mom and I to go out together. Every couple of weeks we would spend 2-3hrs wandering through the bookstore. She would buy me a stack of books, and we would happily rush home to dive right in to our new discoveries.

In undergrad I firmly cemented my identity as a writer. I was that student who would raise my hand constantly in class and blow past the page limits for assigned papers. It was in undergrad when I discovered black feminism, and from there I knew I was destined to be a academic. Full of intellectual bravado, I arrived at my doctoral program sure that I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

… humility and trauma quickly brought me to knees.

The Crime Scene[s]: or senior professors who believe inflicting trauma is their most effective pedagogical tool[s]

While I absolutely needed to learn intellectual humility–and faculty who later become my mentors made that clear–other faculty relished in cruelly and publicly, shaming and humiliating me.

In non-chronological order: I had faculty tell me that I could barely read, that I could barely write, that I was only in the doctoral program because of affirmative action, that I was incapable of writing about race objectively because I am a black woman and perhaps I should choose another area of study. I had a faculty member [in front of 30+ people] tell me that my writing was awful, and that my committee was only allowing me to defend my dissertation so that “they could check me off of their list.” She said that it was clear that my dissertation committee hadn’t read my work because there was no way anyone could read my work and find it worthwhile. This same faculty member then went on to tell me that I only got my [6] job interview[s] by luck, it was clear none of the committees’ read my work, and instead that I obviously filled a identity quota for them [this was all said by a black woman].

Needless to say–despite being awarded multiple national fellowships, having multiple on-campus interviews during my job search, successfully defending my dissertation [with a rare, no revisions requested by my committed], and then being nominated by my department for the American Political Science Association “Best Dissertation in Race and Politics Award”–by the time I graduated my self-esteem was dust.

But perhaps most devastatingly, I couldn’t bring myself to read anything. I was convinced that not only was I stupid, but that I couldn’t write, and I could barely read. As a result, I didn’t trust myself to even look at fiction. But even worse, it became this dark shameful secret that I carried around. I was terrified that if I told any of my mentors, or even my friends, they would hear what’d been said to me and think to themselves… “you know what, I always thought she was an idiot, wow, they are right!” It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time the trauma felt so fresh and so real that it terrified me relentlessly.

A Turning Point: friendship is essential to the soul [and my bookshelf]

A year into my tenure track position, I desperately wanted to start reading again. But every time I picked up a book (any book, even comics or graphic novels), the anxiety I felt caused immediate paralysis. Moferefun Egun. One day I was talking to my friend, and mentor, Yasmin Nair, and a small voice inside told me that I should tell her my story. So impulsively, out of nowhere, I told her my sorry sordid tale. But then, as I’m sitting there on the phone sobbing my little heart out, Yasmin bursts out laughing! Of course I’m horrified, has she realized I’m a talentless hack as well? Has this suddenly brought my lack of ability into focus for her? Haltingly I asked her why she was laughing. Yasmin chuckled as she said: “you know that, that whole story is ridiculous right?” Incredulous I assured her that it was not! Then very directly Yasmin said to me: “look, this story is incredibly racist. You know this is about your race and your age right?” Confused [I truly felt that my experience was simply about my unique stupidity], I asked her to explain. She went on to tell me that as a South Asian immigrant with a accent, no one would ever say something like that to her. Her intelligence is assumed because of her particular intersection of identities and the mythos around Asian intelligence in the United States. But as a 22 [at the time] yr old  black American woman, I experienced the exact opposite, my idiocy was assumed, even by some black folks and people of color.

In that moment it was like I’d been stumbling around in pitch black darkness and then the sun finally rose. Hearing someone else affirm something that I’d been to afraid to tell myself was not only deeply edifying, but freeing.

That day I decided that no matter how long it took, I was going to reclaim my original joy practice. I was going to find my love of reading, come hell or high water.

Starting Over: rediscovering reading for the first time

I started with fiction novels.I figured that if I 1) started with a genre that was/is 100% low-stakes as far as my career/intellect goes, I would be more likely to overcome the anxiety hurdle. 2) I also thought that if I genuinely enjoyed what I was reading, I would eventually get swept up in the story and [at least for a moment] lose track of my worry/fear/anxiety/shame.

Initially I listened to audiobooks. I needed to remind/convince myself that I could understand plot devices [I’m telling ya’ll, the level of trauma these folks inflicted on me was deep]. It was at this point that I discovered Nnedi Okorafor‘s work. I listened to Who Fears Death on audible, and I was completely hooked. After listening to every book Okorafor had on audible, I discovered another black science fiction author, Nalo Hopkinson. After I listened to everything Hopkinson had on audible, I was absolutely addicted to black women science fiction writers. I was supremely lucky to have discovered both of these authors right off the bat. My desire to read all of their work took [some of] the edge off of my reading anxiety. By year two of my self-guided healing practice I was reading a novel a month.

How I Did It: what it took to face my reading paralysis

At this point I should note that I had two other major sources of help as I began this process: 1) I’ve had non-stop therapeutic support since 2008. Every time I move to a city, one of the first things I do is go to the Psychology Today Therapist Directory and I begin the work of finding a therapist. 2) The primary tool I used in getting over the shame component of all of this was talking openly about what I went through as a graduate student. I told mentors, friends, family… pretty much anyone who seemed remotely interested. Not only was this experience deeply healing for me [hearing folks adamantly insist that you are brilliant and getting pissed as hell on your behalf is great for self-esteem building, lol]… but it turned out that most of the Ph.D’s and graduate students I spoke to had gone through similar experiences and hearing my story helped their healing process as well. Being helpful, and decreasing the sense of isolation I felt in regards to my experience, was an important component of becoming whole again.

Falling Back in Love with Reading Fiction

Science fiction and magical realism became deeply healing for me. Nnedi Okorafor, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemison, Octavia Butler, Mia McKenzie, and Ayana Mathis, just to name a few, woke up something deep inside me that I thought I’d lost forever. Over time, I developed a couple of rules that helped me to keep going: 1) I gave myself permission to stop reading whenever I disliked a book. It didn’t matter if I was on page one, or one-hundred pages in, the minute I realized I disliked a text, I could drop it. When it comes to books I’m reading for pleasure I refuse to suffer [even a little bit]. 2) I stopped buying books just because all of the smart black people I knew were reading them. Intellectual peer-pressure is real and I refuse to put myself through it anymore. I only pick up books I want to read. 3) With that in mind I only buy books from Amazon after reading the kindle sample. If I am still interested in the book after those first ten pages or so, I can purchase/borrow it. But in general I find that I am much more likely to finish a book if I’m able to go to the bookstore and read the first chapter in the store. 4) No shame allowed!

The Academic Struggle

As embarrassing as it is to admit, it took four years post graduation for me to begin to feel slightly confident about reading academic work again. As a result it was four years post graduation before I could read academic work because I wanted to, and not because I had to for teaching or research. But, ultimately how long it took doesn’t matter. What matters is that it happened.

Learning to Love, or at Least Liking Non-Fiction

Non-fiction was and continues to be a bit trickier. Pre-grad school and during my early years in Chicago I adored self-help books. But eventually I stopped reading self-help when the rest of my recreational reading habits came to a standstill. It’s a challenge for me because non-fiction tends to trigger my anxiety in ways that are similar to academic books and articles. To manage this I use the strategies I’ve outlined above. If I’m bored/disinterested/aggravated by a book I’m reading for fun I stop reading it, and either return it or donate it to one of my favorite charities: Chicago Books to Women in Prison. It is important to note though that because I tend to feel more anxious about non-fiction than fiction, I try to give non-fiction a longer “trial period” than fiction. Because I can’t get swept up in the plot/narrative, I maintain an awareness that I need more time to breathe past the emotions that come up while I am trying to settle into the text.

Although I’ve never been one for autobiographies [for the most part], I have always loved a well written memoir [especially funny ones written by black women]. But generally speaking, I am just now getting back into reading some non-fiction for pleasure. I’m currently reading Alexis Deveaux’s Warrior Poet and I absolutely adore it. I would’ve never picked it out for myself, but I’ve been reading it for the Audre Lorde reading group I am a part of, and it’s been fantastic. I am completely in love with, and am also learning a lot from Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Lastly I am excited to start reading Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir, Charlene Carruthers’ Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, and Barbara Ransby’s Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimaging Freedom in the Twenty-First Century. Ironically, as I’ve written out this list, I am realizing that perhaps I’ve begun to enjoy non-fiction more than I realized! Who knew?!

Story-Telling as a Tool for Healing Justice

It was not, and is not easy for me to [finally] tell this story publicly. Mentors have been encouraging me to write about this experience for years, but my fear of being “discovered” as an intellectual “imposter” run deep and wide. It wasn’t until I talked to my dissertation co-chair/mentor Cathy Cohen recently, that I began to gather my courage. Not only did she remind me of her faith in me, my work, and my ideas, but more importantly she told me about the pervasiveness of imposter syndrome and it’s disproportionate impact on black women in the academy. Her reminder[s] galvanized me. If this post can help one person, someone who is hiding their brilliance from the world because they’ve been told they aren’t good enough, than what I’ve gone through will have been worth it.

Just remember: there is not a marginalized person on this planet who got where they are because of charity. People with power and privilege will [always] try to tell you otherwise in order to dim your light. But just remember, nobody can dim your light but you. You’ve got this my love!

peace.

a

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