Tabitha Espina: Writing the Invitation

In writing instruction and curriculum, Tabitha Espina wants to decolonialize the student experience. “I have no desire to impose on or control anyone,” she says. “I also don’t want to be imposed on or controlled.”

What does she know about colonialism and language? Quite a lot.

“I’m a third-generation Filipina, born and raised in Guam, who moved to the States for graduate school,” she says. “I’m an American, but the terms by which my family understands that are different.”

To explain some of the complexity, she describes renting an apartment in Washington state. As she filled out the lease, putting her mom in Guam as her emergency contact, the property manager asked if she was a U.S. citizen. She is, but as she explained her origins, confusion lingered.

Who we are matters

Although state-side grade schoolers memorize the 50 states, they don’t typically learn that the U.S. captured Guam from its Spanish colonizers in 1898. Two years later, Guam’s people asked for a civil government rather than a military one, but the island remained under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy, ruled by a series of military governors, until 1950.

The military rule included mandatory education in English and the banning of Native languages in government buildings and schools. That’s why Espina laughs about people saying, “Your English is so good.” “That’s because of linguistic imperialism,” she said, referring to the unilateral imposition of English on the island’s population.

Having this complex background gives Espina a multi-dimensional perspective. “I have always been both an American and not an American, an English speaker and professor, but also understanding linguistic imperialism,” she said.

Espina also understands the many ways oppression divides people. As a child pop star in Guam, her designation as an “island girl” was called into question by some of the island’s indigenous CHamorus people because of her Filipino heritage. Trying to understand these distinctions from an early age ultimately led to her graduate dissertation focused on identity politics, “Unsettling the rhetorics of the politics of Filipinos on Guåhan.”

Language matters

What does all that have to do with writing instruction and curriculum? Everything.

Although she has a Ph.D. in English, Espina particularly loves teaching entry-level composition courses. “Composition is the part of the world that makes sense to me,” she said. “It’s the life-giving part.” For her, it’s about supporting students in the discovery process and how to use language for their own purposes. She is also passionate about the power of language to improve the human condition and teaches classes in the ”rhetoric, writing, and social change” track within the writing studies major.

In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Espina serves as the UW Tacoma Director of Writing. This is an academic leadership position that helps implement university-wide standards for writing instruction and assessment on the UW Tacoma campus.

To further develop the writing curriculum at UW Tacoma, Espina plans to engage in a collaborative process, building on the strengths of the UW Tacoma community in all its complexity. “Being one of the smaller UW campuses, we have a specific context that needs to be addressed in a specific way,” she said. “I would love to learn more about what the community determines their needs to be and work together toward those goals.”

She’s particularly excited about UW Tacoma’s status as a federally-designated Minority Serving Institution and funding to support the campus’s Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. She notes how students appreciate seeing someone of her background in the role of professor.

“People assume that I came to the States because I’m deficient and incapable of getting the knowledge I need in my island home,” she said. “But the longer I’m here, the more I realize that we have a lot to offer, and the real detriment is that so many people don’t know more about the stuff happening in the islands and the Pacific.”

Being part of the “academy” and in a “director” role, with her life experience and trained as an expert in formal rhetoric, she also thinks about and understands the traditional exclusionary and hierarchical meanings embedded in such words or in writing instruction plans. “Historically, people were not invited to the table, and writing instruction was designed to keep people out,” she said. “They were told, ‘Your language is bad’ or ‘Yours is good.’ I would subvert that and say writing instruction should be an invitation for you to join the academic community and not to keep you out.”

As she looks forward to building an inviting, custom-made writing framework that celebrates students in all their strengths, she adds, “I never forget that educational institutions weren’t built for people like me, who came from places like where I come from. It means something to be here in this community and asked about our goals.” With the dedicated work of people like Tabitha Espina, UW Tacoma aims to show just how powerful the rebuilding of higher education can be.