Promoting Resilience and Inspiration: An Autoethnographic Study of Dominican-American Students

Focusing on how these three individuals developed resilience to these pressures however, the volume moves beyond a deficit understanding of the immigrant experience to highlight how individuals have drawn on personal, cultural, and social strengths to build resilience and achieve academic success. This book details a study conducted at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. The text combines insights from semi-structured interviews with Dominican-American students enrolled at the college, with autoethnographic reflection by the author, also a Dominican-American scholar. By investigating the stories of six individuals, who arrived in the US without any English proficiency, the book captures many of the financial, social, linguistic, environmental and cultural challenges faced by immigrants in the US. Focusing on how these three individuals developed resilience to these pressures however, the volume moves beyond a deficit understanding of the immigrant experience to highlight how individuals have drawn on personal, cultural, and social strengths to build resilience and achieve academic success. The stories provide a model of resilience for helping other community college students and in particular, students with an immigrant background to achieve academic success despite overwhelming odds.