E pluribus unum (Out of many, one)

Written to initiate a dialogue about race in the academy, this narrative focuses on the experience of Black Ph.D. students in predominantly White academic institutions. Experimental in method and representation, this article poses important questions about race in academia. The author utilizes several qualitative opportunities, writing as autoethnography, poetry, and narrative. As a participant and researcher of the experience, the author is given the unique position of telling and listening, observing and explaining, strategizing and editing. The author takes your story (a construction developed to create a bridge between your world and mine) and combines it with her story, (the author's motivations for writing about this experience), and folds it into their story (compiling the findings of the research based on an interview), to create our story (a collective narrative of the Black Ph.D. experience). Hence, the title, "E Pluribus Unum," which translates "out of many, one."