Editor’s Note

Volume I, Issue 1

Welcome to the inaugural issue of The People’s Stories, an online journal that highlights the writing, lived experiences, and brilliance of community college students. It is that final noun – brilliance – that TPS is most concerned with. Unfortunately, there exists pernicious and tragic overgeneralizations, or what critical race theorist Richard Delgado calls “majoritarian narratives,” about the intellect and abilities of community college students. The fact is that our society sees these students as lazy, dumb, and unmotivated while they are, in fact, highly motivated, extremely bright, and some of the hardest working people some of us will ever meet. Their brilliance is the rule, not the exception.  

The stories in this issue are testaments to their intellect and creativity, and they embody the “counterstory” to the noxious majoritarian narratives of community college students. Indeed, these stories exemplify the lived reality of a large segment of our population. The People’s Stories is, in many ways, an homage to Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking tome, The People’s History, which includes the story of America as experienced by “the people,” specifically those who have been relegated to the margins of our society. Zinn’s book, then, is a counterstory to the American ideologies of rugged individualism, meritocracy, and colonialism. In the same way, the mission of TPS is to highlight the experiences – the counterstories – of those who have been marginalized and disempowered by our American ethos. 

For this first issue, our writers explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on community colleges. In March 2020, the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, effectively shut down the world, including its educational institutions. Millions of students from preschool to higher education had to transition to fully online learning environments while also contending with job losses, children of their own, illness, mental health issues, and basic needs insecurities. Living and learning in the age of COVID was and continues to be a truly heroic act. This issue, more specifically, will tackle one of the most dramatic issues facing community colleges students during the pandemic – mental and physical health. You will read stories of quarantine-induced feelings of isolation, tensions with family members, and loved ones falling ill with COVID-19. But you will see that despite the odds, these students persisted in their studies, and they found ways to flourish. These are their (counter)stories.

Jeramy Wallace

Editor, The People’s Stories