Imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. ‘Imposters’ suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence. It disproportionately affects BIPOC individuals who are consistently othered and excluded. Graduate students of color do not experience feelings of belonging which is intensified by bias or microaggressions. Creating space for oneself rarely includes identifying oneself as a scholar and writer, despite that being the biggest part of graduate education.
“The minority writer, according to the language in which we are trapped for the moment, is presumably, by definition, a writer whose concerns are more or less tangential to the concerns of what we call the mainstream. For an American life and for a Western life there is mainstream and you better get into it.” James Baldwin, Social Change and the Writer’s Responsibility Speech
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