The Quiet Girl Collective (QGC) is a space for women of colour to confront and investigate their relationship to quietness. Why are we quiet and what does that mean for ourselves? How is silence related to our identities? QGC seeks to build a community of self-identified quiet girls who wish to explore and navigate the boundaries of quietness.
What does it mean to be quiet in a field that expects you to speak up? For some students, or even professors, the classroom can be an open space where words organically bounce off of each other with ease and assurance. However, for those who are more introverted, speaking in front of a group in itself can be an everyday source of anxiety. To collectively unpack the misconceptions associated with quietness, find creative ways to navigate academic spaces and embrace introvertedness, The Quiet Girl Collective (QGC), a space for women of color, along with the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs (CMEP), hosted their event Quiet Solidarity: Strategies for Navigating Academia last January.
The QGC invited four women of color currently in academia to come speak of their experiences and how they negotiate the demands of these professional spaces. (Pictured above, from left to right): Professor Feng-Mei Heberer who teaches in Tisch’s Department of Cinema Studies, Professor Melissa Phruksachart who also teaches in Tisch’s Department of Cinema Studies, Julissa Soriano who is a graduate student at the Wagner School of Public Service and Professor Proscovia Nabunya who teaches at the Silver School of Social Work.
The moderator of the night, Professor Melissa Phruksachart, opened the evening by sharing how she moved through educational institutions growing up as a quiet girl. From kindergarten to middle school, Professor Phruksachart attended a heavily immigrant-dominated public school in New Jersey, where the teachers were often stern and guarded individuals of Italian or Irish descent.
“If you were quiet and did well, no one bothered you,” Professor Phruksachart said. “No one was thinking about how to nurture you into being a leader or going out of their way to help you. They were just concerned about managing the classroom and getting through the lesson. I was that Asian girl who sat in the back of the class. But because I didn’t participate, I didn’t get A’s. I got A minuses. Yet, no one ever bothered to tell me that I could do better.”
Having experienced the internal weight of the expectations that academic spaces could bring, Professor Phruksachart constantly asks herself today when she teaches: “How do I accommodate for quiet students, particularly quiet women of color, in my classrooms?” Echoing this very commitment to providing all students an equal chance to thrive and demonstrate their capability, Professor Feng-Mei Heberer shared that her students have the option to share their thoughts in online spaces.
“Creating low risk opportunities to speak is crucial,” Professor Heberer said. “I do my best to give students the idea that no answer is wrong, and I also encourage my students to carry discussions online if they do not feel as comfortable sharing in class. We also do a lot of group work in the classroom, where I try to infuse humor to loosen the atmosphere, so that students can get to know each other with ease.”
As a Chinese-German, Professor Heberer would often face the question, ‘Where are you from?’– an inquiry she could never answer given that she was never from one single place; she attended three different elementary schools and high schools and four different universities in four different countries. This constant wrestling and negotiation of her identity was also magnified with her co-existing innate curiosity and shyness.
“I’m shy but also really curious,” Professor Heberer said. “I love to connect to people, so I usually ask a lot of questions. But this combination of being shy but also somewhat outgoing has always been a little awkward even to myself. It sends off being somewhat off or inadequate as I have felt as a mixed race person to. Many may ask of me: ‘So what are you? Are you shy or outgoing?’ The response is I am both. There is not a linear way where we start quiet and talk loudly at the end.”
First-year graduate student Julissa Soriano continued the discussion on the role of identity in her life by delving into the ambiguity she struggled with just a few years ago.
“My parents are from the Dominican Republic, and so for a long time I considered myself to be Latina,” Soriano said. “But it was through a variety of Africana courses I took when I realized that I am a Black Latina. This understanding changed the trajectory of what I began to engage with on campus– from service learning work to activism, all of which required heavy interaction with people.”
These constant interactions would often wear out Soriano, who shared that she found it hard to balance her school and social life. But on the days when she was tempted to just go home, take a nap and call it a day, Soriano said that what was most important for her was consistently advocating for herself and her well-being.
“You can be introverted, but no matter what the situation is, I know I need to value myself and feel worthy,” Soriano said. “And that doesn’t necessarily mean being argumentative or angry. It just means saying, ‘Hey, I want to do this’ or ‘Hey, I can’t do this.’”
Mutually recognizing the necessity of advocating for oneself, Professor Proscovia Nabunya said that she had a particularly strenuous experience of speaking up for herself because of the traditional environment she grew up in Uganda, where being quiet is associated with politeness, and when looking down when a person is speaking to you symbolizes respect.
“When I was working towards my undergraduate degree in Uganda, all the classrooms were very big, with 50 students or more,” Professor Proscovia said. “As a result, it was a challenge when I came to graduate school to the United States where I found myself in classrooms with a mere number of 15 people. I had to adjust to an entirely different education system that is self-motivated.”
Wrapping up the discourse, Professor Proscovia ended with the affirming reminder to embrace one’s quietness.
“You just have to embrace your quietness,” Professor Proscovia said. “Regardless of whatever area you are in, the work you’re doing is unique, and it’s your work. Other people may perceive that when a person doesn’t talk, they don’t know anything. But we know that we are experts in our fields, and we own that. We will say something when we feel comfortable, and we will tell people something when we are comfortable.”
Other noteworthy takeaways and words of advice from guests:
-
Insist on your right to be quiet
-
Share your experiences with people you trust– friends, family, partners, mentors
-
Seek allies in building community
-
Humanize the environment you surround yourself in
-
Continuously validate yourself
-
Develop a routine of self-care
-
Remind yourself that it is okay to say no
-
Challenge yourself to tackle what you are afraid of; part of growing is taking those opportunities
-
Be a part of smaller groups where you can more easily contribute
The Quiet Girl Collective is hosting its next event, “Don’t Co-Opt My Awkward!” this upcoming Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 2PM, where attendees will have the chance to discuss the fetishisation and whitewashing of awkwardness and unrepresentative portrayals of quietness in the media/pop culture A collection of snacks will be served!
Follow The Quiet Girl Collective to stay updated!
Facebook: @quietgirlcollective
Instagram: @quietgirlcollective
Email: quietgirlcollective@gmail.com