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Solo Navigation: Career Advancement as a First-Generation Attorney
What do you do when you’re the first to enter a space? When no one in your family or close friends have been in those spaces, how do you figure out how to act and advance to the next stage? I recently saw a TikTok of a guy mentioning how he is in spaces where now has to figure things out alone because he didn’t come from a family who had professional jobs and sometimes it didn’t make sense to follow their advice. This resonated with me and reminded me of the advice many first-gens get about keeping our head down at work. Thinking that eventually our good work will…
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Lawtina Book Club: Make Your Home Among Strangers
ok a teensy bit delayed with our bookclub I know, but I think the chaos we’re in gives me a bit of an excuse. #mybad For (last month’s) pick, we selected Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet. It is her first novel (though she recently had a second published). And unfortunately, she made the news because at recent lecture at a college, some students couldn’t handle discussing racism and took to burning her book (!) as protest. I mean, wtf. It was appalling and immediately I wanted to support this author by lifting up her work. Doing so, though, is not difficult because wow wow wow–what a…
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The Danger in Being the First
Wow, so I didn’t think I would write anything substantial about the American Dirt publishing industry scandal but like always Latino USA came through and inspired me. To bring ppl up to speed, American Dirt was written by a White woman and given a seven figure (!) advance by a publishing industry that then turned around and spent even more money to promote it. They landed promos with Latina influencers, a spot on Oprah’s book club, and blurb by the Chicana literary icon, Sandra Cisneros. The book, while fiction, seemed to be steeped in stereotypes and an obvious lack of knowledge of what it means to be Mexican. When a…
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What Law School is Not
Recently someone interested in pursuing a more academic career asked me about the nature of law school and the ability to discuss ideas and social issues along with cases. It reminded me of my own experience when I first started law school and how incorrect I was when it came to the purpose and focus of law school. The summer before my 1L year I was really lucky to participate in a program for low income students to prep them for law school; like a mini-boot camp. I was stationed at Notre Dame and was bright eyed and ready to go on my first day. The program had three courses,…