POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE IN THEWRITING CENTER

As a first-generation South Asian American student,1 I have gradually become aware that my identity deviates from what many students would expect to find in a writing center consultant. When I joined the writing center as a consultant,2 I had expected that my job would entail ample reading and ample listening. I had not realized that I might be doing some of the talking, nor did I expect my ethnic background to play a role in consultation conversations. During my first weeks as a consultant, some students seemed to be sizing me up quickly in order to determine whether I would truly be able to offer them help with their papers, while others exhibited a genuine interest in hearing about their fellow student’s background. I soon found that after my shifts in the writing center, I had little recollection of what the papers I had read were about (since during a busy two-hour shift, I might read and discuss as many as five papers). I did, however, remember the individuals and the unexpected (and sometimes uncomfortable) questions they asked about my background. Those who knew me from my involvement with the campus newspaper rarely asked me these questions, and were instead often deferential to my suggestions about their drafts since they would interpret my comments as those of an editor rather than a peer. Sometimes, a student’s curiosity and deference merged, as demonstrated when students seemed palpably surprised and even impressed that someone who looks so visibly different (and foreign) would have the verbal acuity to be an editor and a writing consultant. Specifically, some students have explicitly presumed that I am a non-native English-speaker and articulated this presumption through the backhanded compliment of “Your English is really good. When did you learn to speak it?” Loaded moments like these during writing center consultations call attention to politics of difference that, as they unfold, may both enhance and constrain conversation. While the writing center as a locus of interactions about politics of difference may seem surprising—since perhaps one would expect a multicultural center to be the primary space on college campuses for discussions of difference—the writing center is uniquely situated for discourse on difference because it explicitly fosters an interaction between students’ academic identities and their social backgrounds (Geller et al.). Given that the writing center is often both a social and an academic hub on a college campus, the intersections with students of various backgrounds and identities that occur during consultations offer a unique opportunity for writing centers to continually reconsider their burgeoning roles. One might ask, understandably, why the race or ethnicity of a consultant would matter to a client, and why I am arguing that writing center consultants should carefully accommodate such questions during consultations. One might even ask: if the mission of a writing center strays from being solely about writing and veers into developing ways to fruitfully navigate politics of difference, what practical service can it provide for the campus? Certainly, the foundational and functional purpose of the writing center is to provide help with the writing process. Writing centers should be maintained as places for writers to develop and grow, and consultations should not wholly morph into discussions of identity that are unrelated to the paper draft at hand. Nevertheless, the potential for writing centers transcends exclusively learning about topic sentences and paragraph order. Writing centers are poised