Dear Boise,
I wonder if you ever meant it. It's not your fault you can’t provide everything I ask for. You can’t make the environment I live in perfect. It's not even about me wanting to live in a place with palm trees or an ocean that's an hour's drive away, or how about tall trees that make me feel small. No. It's the feeling you give me when I am not in your beautiful landscapes, but when I am in tight spaces where I can look at the people around me and realize I look nothing like them. The feeling I get when I introduce myself, when I have to explain where I come from, extends far beyond the room I’m standing in, not of my ancestors but the generation before mine. My parents' ethnicity and where I would’ve been born make me stand out. My skin color and everything that comes with it is what makes me stand out to you, Boise. You’ve made me aware of my difference sometimes in ways that taught me pride, and other times in ways that made me feel like I had to be small. I know the difference is not always visible. People may look the same, but that does not mean they share the same experiences. Differences go beyond appearance. They exist in how I see the world, how I move through your spaces, and how I’ve learned to understand myself within them.
Do you remember when I was a senior in high school, I went on a Boise State campus tour? They used many words to describe you to out-of-state students in order to convince them to study on your land. The words were welcoming and safe; you tried to sell them. They believed you. I did too. Campus is a commonplace. The people who attend this university agree on what the space serves as and understand who belongs within it. David Harvey argues that space is not just a physical container, it is something produced through social relationships, shaped by power, history, and meaning. Space becomes a place when we attach identity and memory to it. In that sense, your classrooms are not just classrooms. They are places where identity is formed, where difference is noticed, and where silence can speak just as loudly as words.
I’ve learned a thing or two about spaces. I’d like to bring in this idea; maybe it’ll help you understand where I’m coming from. I read a work by Jamaica Kincaid where she talks about pressing your nose against a glass window. This is a metaphor she created to show how people of color wait for an invitation inside spaces and while it is so close to reach they will never be inside the room. It's almost like they have to fight for a way in rather than just using the door. When I read this, it felt childlike, but when we talk about spaces, maybe she just wanted an invitation inside. Maybe by pressing up against it, she could finally belong. I think that’s how I’ve felt all along. These spaces remind us that identity is performed in every room we enter. I think it changes based on how alike we want to be to like everyone else, and sometimes how different we are allowed to stay. There is a constant awareness of our voices, our bodies, our presence, and whether it blends in or stands out too much. And in that awareness, we begin to adjust, not always because we want to, but because we’ve learned that belonging in certain spaces often comes at the cost of becoming smaller. In some spaces, your voice will blend right in, and you won’t need to translate. But in others, your voice will echo in the empty room; it will be loud yet stripped of meaning.
In your classrooms, I have felt unheard. It exists in the moments when I hesitate before sharing something about my culture, knowing it might require explanation. It exists in the way I adjust my language, making sure I say things in which people outside of my culture can understand. What should I say? How do I say it? What parts of myself do I leave unsaid? This is exactly how space works. It does not force you to change; it makes you negotiate the parts of yourself others get to see. And in you, Boise, normal often looks like whiteness, not always intentionally, but consistently. It shapes the examples used in class, the stories that are told, the heroes in history that are remembered, and the conquered that are forgotten.
Kenneth Burke explains how people come to identify with one another, how they form a shared sense of “we.” In you, Boise, that “we” is built through shared experiences: growing up in the same neighborhoods, attending the same public schools, participating in the same potato drop on New Years. But what happens when your experiences don’t fully align with that narrative? For first-generation girls, the idea of “we” can feel incomplete. We are included, but not fully reflected. Present, but not always recognized. We exist within your spaces, but we are not always part of the story those spaces tell. So we adapt. We learn how to code-switch between home and school, between languages and expectations. We learn how to simplify our stories so they are easier to understand. We learn, in other words, how to belong without taking up too much space. But belonging should not require reduction. Harvey’s ideas about space remind us that places are constantly being shaped by the people within them. This means that you, Boise, are not a static identity.
So I write to you to ask, for the girls that look like me, the first-generation students who find it hard to identify themselves within your commonplaces, to not just let them in but to transform the space so they don’t have to change themselves to stay. Question your commonplaces instead of repeating them. Recognize differences instead of ignoring them. Expand your definition of “we” so that it does not require assimilation. You are already changing Boise. The question is whether you are willing to recognize that change and grow with it.