Professor & Reference and Instruction Librarian Coordinator
Diane Duesterhoeft
she/her
Contact:
Louis J. Blume Library, Room 201
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
USA
dduesterhoeft@stmarytx.edu
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
USA
dduesterhoeft@stmarytx.edu
210-436-3346
Books For First Gen College Students
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The Chicana/O/X Dream: Hope, Resistance, and Educational Success
by
Based on interview data, life testimonios, and Chicana feminist theories, The Chicana/o/x Dream profiles first-generation, Mexican-descent college students who have overcome adversity by utilizing various forms of cultural capital to power their academic success.
2021 Senior Scholar Book of the Year, American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE)
Call Number: LC2683.6 .C65 2020 (3rd Floor)ISBN: 9781682535110Publication Date: 2020 -
Connections Are Everything: A College Student's Guide to Relationship-Rich Education
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A practical guide to building the connections students need to thrive in and after college from the authors of the best-selling Relationship-Rich Education. Decades of research demonstrate how important the relationships with peers and professors are for students academically, personally, and professionally. Yet many students lack the strategies to develop educationally purposeful relationships in college. Connections Are Everything shows students the simple steps they can take to make their own college experience meaningful and transformational. In short, practical chapters, this guide helps readers learn how to build relationships through various strategies, including using "relationship accelerators" like internships and mentorships, undergraduate research, and campus employment. Undergraduate demographics have changed dramatically as students of color and first-generation students become the new majority at colleges and universities across the United States. Connections are particularly significant for these students; the positive--and negative--impacts of peer, faculty, and staff relationships are magnified. Higher education cannot meet students' needs or achieve equity, justice, and inclusion without relationship-rich education. This book empowers students to seek out relationships by demystifying the varied ways they can cultivate significant connections.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781421443126Publication Date: 2023 -
Crack the Code: A Guide to College Success for First Gens
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Start college with your own wise mentor-in-a-book. Be prepared for challenges and opportunities by learning from the experiences of dozens of First Generation students who speak to you in this Guide about what they wished they had known and now, want you to know.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781735460505Publication Date: 2020 -
Educated: A Memoir
by
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Call Number: CT3262.I2 W47 2018 (3rd Floor)ISBN: 9780399590504Publication Date: 2018 -
Every Student Has a Story
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This book is a compilation of essays about what it's like being the first person in your family to go to college. TRIO Students at Indiana University -Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana offer compelling narratives of personal experiences stemming from being a first-generation student in college. While no two situations are alike, many students report struggling with social and cultural adjustments; insecurities about information or processes; personal family situations and dynamics; and physical or mental health issues. Some of the struggles students chose to write about in this book include cultural differences, family tragedies, unrealistic expectations of college, family health issues, and insecurities about choosing a major. It is our hope that these personal narratives resonate with other first-generation college students and help affirm that they are not alone-but a part of a much larger community of first-generation students. It is also our hope that these essays increase dialogue on campuses regarding struggles outside of the classroom that many first-generation students face in their journeys toward graduation.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781537570327Publication Date: 2016 -
Every Student Has a Story: Personal Narratives from First-Generation College Students. Volume 2.
"This book is a compilation of essays about what it's like being the first person in your family to go to college. TRIO Students at Indiana University Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana offer compelling narratives of personal experiences stemming from being a first-generation student in college. While no two situations are alike, many students report struggling with social and cultural adjustments; insecurities about information or processes; personal family situations and dynamics; and physical or mental health issues. Some of the struggles students chose to write about in this book include cultural differences, family tragedies, unrealistic expectations of college, and financial insecurities. It is our hope that these personal narratives resonate with other first-generation college students and help affirm that they are not alone -- but a part of a much larger community of first-generation students. It is also our hope that these essays increase dialogue on campuses regarding struggles outside of the classroom that many first-generation students face in their journeys toward graduation." (back cover)
Call Number: ebookPublication Date: 2017 -
Finding Me
by
This is Viola Davis' story, in her own words, and spans her incredible, inspiring life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her present day. Hers is a story of overcoming, a true hero's journey.
Call Number: PN2287.D3225 A3 2022 (3rd Floor)ISBN: 9780063037328Publication Date: 2022 -
First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service
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First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service is the first book to examine the experiences of racially minoritized faculty who were also the first in their families to graduate college in the United States. From contingent to tenured faculty who teach at community colleges, comprehensive, and research institutions, the book is a collection of critical narratives that collectively show the diversity of faculty of color, attentive to and beyond race. The book is organized into three major parts comprised of chapters in which faculty of color depict how first-generation college student identities continue to inform how minoritized people navigate academe well into their professional careers, and encourage them to reconceptualize research, teaching, and service responsibilities to better consider the families and communities that shaped their lives well before college.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781978823464Publication Date: 2022 -
The Glass Castle: A Memoir
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The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
Call Number: HV5132 .W35 2006 (3rd Floor)ISBN: 9780743247542Publication Date: 2006 -
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
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An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country. Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. A beautifully written memoir that combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland examines the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.
Call Number: CT275.S52373 A3 2018 (3rd Floor)ISBN: 9781501133091Publication Date: 2018 -
A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
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The inspiring true story of a ferociously determined young man who, armed only with his intellect and his willpower, fights his way out of despair. At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Among the mere handful of students with a B average or better, some plead to have their names left off the "Wall of Honor" bulletin board; others hide during awards ceremonies; only a few dare to raise their hands in class. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings, the lanky son of a jailed drug dealer, will not swallow his pride, though each day he struggles to decide who he wants to be. With unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it does. The summer after his junior year, at a program for minorities at MIT, he gets a fleeting glimpse of life outside Ballou--an image that burns in his mind afterward and fills him with a longing to live in such a world. In his senior year, walking a gauntlet of sneers and threats, he achieves a 4.02 grade-point average and then the impossible: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school. At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen in his academic training and his knowledge of broader culture, Cedric must manage a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges. Cedric had hoped that at college he would finally find a place to fit in, but he discovers he has little in common with the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds and party hard while acing tests. Even the middle-class blacks have trouble understanding Cedric, a straight-arrow church kid from the ghetto who seems like an obvious product of affirmative action. As he struggles to master classwork and think like a scholar, he realizes that faith alone can take him only so far. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on his intelligence and his determination to keep alive his hope in the unseen--a future of acceptance and reward that he struggles, each day, to envision. Ron Suskind first wrote about Cedric Jennings in a pair of articles for the Wall Street Journal, which later won the Pulitzer Prize. Now, having spent three years at Cedric's side, Suskind delivers a triumphant coming-of-age odyssey that includes us all. Eye-opening, sometimes humorous, and often deeply moving, A Hope in the Unseen weaves a crucial new thread into the rich and ongoing narrative of the American experience.
Call Number: LC2803.W3 S87 1998 (3rd Floor)ISBN: 0767901258Publication Date: 1998 -
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
by
Also available as an ebook.
When the sister who delighted their parents by her faithful embrace of Mexican culture dies in a tragic accident, Julia, who longs to go to college and move into a home of her own, discovers from mutual friends that her sister may not have been as perfect as believed. Lincoln Award: Illinois Teen Readers' Choice Nominee, 2020; National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature, 2017; School Library Journal Best Books, 2017; Tomas Rivera Book Award Winner for Older Readers/Young Adult, 2018.
Call Number: PZ7.1.S257 Iam 2017 (2nd Floor Juv Lit)ISBN: 9781524700485Publication Date: 2017 -
The Journey Before Us: First-Generation Pathways from Middle School to College
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More students are enrolling in college than ever before in U.S. history. Yet, many never graduate. In The Journey Before Us, Laura Nichols examines why this is by sharing the experiences of aspiring first-generation college students as they move from middle-school to young adulthood. By following the educational trajectories and transitions of Latinx, mainly second-generation immigrant students and analyzing national data, Nichols explores the different paths that students take and the factors that make a difference. The interconnected role of schools, neighborhoods, policy, employment, advocates, identity, social class, and family reveal what must change to address the "college completion crisis." Appropriate for anyone wanting to understand their own educational journey as well as students, teachers, counselors, school administrators, scholars, and policymakers, The Journey Before Us outlines what is needed so that education can once again be a means of social mobility for those who would be the first in their families to graduate from college.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781978805668Publication Date: 2020 -
The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students
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The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors--and their coffers--to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students' struggles continue long after they've settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780674239647Publication Date: 2019 -
Undocumented: A Domincan Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
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Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he came here legally with his family. Together they left Santo Domingo behind, but life in New York City was harder than they imagined. Their visas lapsed, and Dan-el's father returned home. But Dan-el's courageous mother was determined to make a better life for her bright sons. Without papers, she faced tremendous obstacles. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city's homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el's only refuge was the meager library. There he met Jeff, a young volunteer from a wealthy family. Jeff was immediately struck by Dan-el's passion for books and learning. With Jeff's help, Dan-el was accepted on scholarship to Collegiate, the oldest private school in the country. There, Dan-el thrived. Throughout his youth, Dan-el navigated these two worlds: the rough streets of East Harlem, where he lived with his brother and his mother and tried to make friends, and the ultra-elite halls of a Manhattan private school, where he could immerse himself in a world of books and where he soon rose to the top of his class. From Collegiate, Dan-el went to Princeton, where he thrived, and where he made the momentous decision to come out as an undocumented student in a Wall Street Journal profile a few months before he gave the salutatorian's traditional address in Latin at his commencement. Undocumented is a classic story of the triumph of the human spirit. It also is the perfect cri de coeur for the debate on comprehensive immigration reform.
Call Number: JV6456.P33 2015b (3rd Floor)ISBN: 9781594206528Publication Date: 2015
Video For First Gen College Students
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The Glass Castle
Call Number: DVD - Shelved by title (2nd Floor)Publication Date: 2017Chronicling the adventures of an eccentric, resilient and tight-knit family. A remarkable story of unconditional love. A young woman who, influenced by the joyfully wild nature of her deeply dysfunctional father, found the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.