Lecturer Lisa Wright explores racism and sexism in writing centers

Lisa Wright

Lecturer Lisa E. Wright along with Dr. Anna Sicari and Claire Tower recently published “ Renewing Our Feminist Efforts through Love and Care: What Can Happen at the Center” in the January 2023 issue of College English. This article explores how a white feminist administrator came to recognize her own participation in racist practices and policies when she stopped to listen to Black women working in her writing center. After listening, she then used the data she collected on women WPAs to recognize herself in the stories. Building on the author’s other work on the hyperfeminization of writing centers and drawing from hooks’s work on solidarity and building communities of resistance through love, this article takes on the difficulties of coalition-building that both feminists and those of us in writing studies experience due to the racism and sexism that continues to inform our work. While it is easy to find fault in white feminist practices and policies, it is much harder to see yourself as the problem, and to think creatively with others, especially feminists of color, to create communities of resistance.