Four Reasons This Book Matters:

1. The Voices:

Twelve college students, all marginalized in different ways. The Voices represent public university students throughout the nation who have been increasingly marginalized by the widening gap between elite private higher education and state-funded public education. They are the voices of young people rarely heard, whose experiences are not often considered. This book sought to provide a platform for those that are often silenced and invisible.

2. The Wasteland:

The “Wasteland” refers to the public higher education system in the United States, as well as to the American “outback” – away from the northeast corridor or the west coast. A preponderance of funding and stature goes to a small handful of elite private universities; most of the other institutions exist in a “wasteland” of underfunded public higher education.

3. Social Construction: The myth and reality of identity

Throughout the process of this book, the Voices, as well as the authors, grappled with the complexities of our identities. Race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability are all factors that shape and characterize our experiences for better or for worse. However, these identities are used to fit us into rigid categories that seek to homogenize our experiences. Through story-telling, this book disrupts and complicates these preconceptions that we all hold about different identities.

4. The University of Nevada as a case study

The University of Nevada, Reno serves as a microcosm of public higher education. Like other schools, it faces an upsurge in racism in the present era and retains remnants of a deeply racist past. The spectre of racism has always haunted us, but it violently remerged in 2016—on college campuses, and in the country at large. These 12 students discuss what they’ve seen and experienced, how they deal with racism, and what they believe needs to change.