Abstract

This book is a powerful narrative of how six women experienced their lives alongside their desire to overcome the challenging and empowering nature of the English language. The volume shares who they are as transnational and mobile women living in the midst of linguistic privilege and marginalization. It is one outcome of a research project and the lived experiences which surround and influence (and were influenced by) it. The author documents how she and her research partners began studying what had drawn them to US TESOL programs, and how English was and is a symbol of power and privilege, a symbol of educational access and a pursuit of equity, yet, at times, is also a symbol of linguistic marginalization.

Gloria Park is Professor of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her research interests include teachers' narrative inquiry and language teacher identity. 

Park is masterful at theorizing and documenting the lives of her research partners, and interweaving their stories with her evolving self-understanding of her rich and multifaceted personal and professional identity. This book is essential reading for those involved with the education of multilingual students becoming teachers of EAL.

Through her revealing depiction of five East-Asian women in TESOL along with her own candid autobiographical reflection, Gloria Park opens a window onto the internal landscapes of a prominent group within the field who are often unheard and overlooked. She illuminates how transnational identities are (re)constructed through shifting intersections of privilege and marginalization. This work initiates a long-needed conversation around how uninterrogated practices within the academy can marginalize and silence the voices of many.

Intertwining themes from the story of her own shifting subjectivities with the narratives of her participants, Gloria Park provides thought-provoking support for teachers and teacher educators seeking to challenge static ideas about how privilege and marginalization are constituted and reconstituted within every layer of identity. An unconventional, fresh, stimulating read!