From Spirit Murdered to Spirit Re-Sisters - An Episolary Offering/Love Letter for Adjunct Professors

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dabgoudw

Epistolary offering addressing adjunct professors and university power structures, framed through the metaphor of “Spirit Murder” from Audre Lorde and developed via scholarship on racism, settler colonialism, and institutional violence. The author, a Chicana and Indigenous educator, explains how systemic oppression, labor insecurity, and lack of transparency intensify chronic harm and spiritual wounding. The letter expresses gratitude, names the apparatuses that inflict harm, and argues for resistance and collective triumphs among adjunct faculty.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Letter Overview

Dedication to Dr. Garcia and Dr. Davila

The Metaphor of "Spirit Murder" in Academia

Conditions and Exclusion of Adjunct Professors

Gratitude and Theoretical Framing

Purpose: From Spirit Murder to Spirit Re-Sisters

From Spirit Murdered to Spirit Re-Sisters An Episolary Offering/Love Letter for Adjunct Professors Nora Alba Cisneros The Journal of Educational Foundations Vol. 34, No. 1 2021, pp. 85-94 Copyright 2021 by Caddo Gap Press October 1, 2020 Even when they are dangerous examine the heart of those machines you hate before you discard them and never mourn the lack of their power lest you be condemned to relive them. —Audre Lorde,“For Each of You”(1997) Dearest Dr. Garcia and Dr. Davila, I hope this letter finds you and your loved ones well. As a mother, daughter, and educator in Compton, California, I acknowledge and honor the Gabrielino and Tongva peoples as the traditional caretakers ofthe land where my family and I reside. It is from these Indigenous lands that I write to you today. This is not the manuscript I planned to write and that you expected to receive. A letter like this would be purged by most academic editors. For a myriad of reasons—my severe lupus, white supremacy, isolation, settler colonialism, unemployment, \#45, anti-Blackness, knee-deep patriarchy, Covid19 closures, the criminalization of Critical Race Theory, and lack of child-care—I was unable to craft the manuscript I planned foryour special issue on Spirit Murder. I am not asking that you include this letter in your special issue. Yet, I dare ask that you receive these words and include them as part of a larger tapestry of narratives that denounce the taxing labor conditions and vibrant collective triumphs among adjunct professors in academia. When the fever subsides, I Nora Alba Cisneros is a lecturer in the Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. E-mail address: [ncisner9@calstatela.edu](ncisner9@calstatela.edu) 85 will be healthy enough to weave, theorize, and analyze the tapestry of narratives and testimonios entrusted to me by Indigenous and WoC (Women of Color) adjunct professors. Spirit Murder. I am in a Spirit Murder moment right now. It is Spirit Murder moment in the Machine \#900 or \#1000 . I have lost count and some of the wounds have not healed enough for me to distinguish if the machine’s assault on my spirit is over. The mostrecent manifestation of Spirit Murder was brought on by the months of uncertainty over adjunct faculty layoffs across the university system and the lack of transparency from the highest administrative offices. The epigraph that opens this letter, excerpted from Audre Lorde’s poem “For Each of You ‘’ (1997), imparts the exigency for audacious reflection and action against the systemic oppressions experienced by Black women across U.S. society. Historically, universities (referred to as the machine in the remainder of letter), have officialized the capitalist practices of land displacement and extraction, religious doctrines, and white supremacy’s projects of enslavement and genocide (Grande, 2018). As a Chicanaand Indigenous mother-scholar, I identify with the poem’s rendering of racism and settler colonial aggressions against the spirit, as well as with Lorde’s reminder of our pride and greater power over the machine. Dr. Garcia and Dr. Davila, I offer these brief words as an act of gratitude to you for believing in me, as an act of daily survival, and asan act of abundant defiance against the elimination of WoC adjunct professors, writers, and mother-scholars such as myself. Alongside these words, I offer a bundle of sunflowers and sage in gratitude to Critical Race legal scholar Dr. Patricia Williams’(1987) conceptualization of spirit-murdering as a crime of racism and as an“offense so deeply painful and assaultive…victims of racism must prove that they did not distort the circumstances…” (p. 129) underscores the need for naming the apparatuses that do the wounding. Williams described how the policing of Black bodies and the devaluing of Black death has created a society that is synthesized to racism. Similarly, Black, Indigenous, and

FAQs

What is the core purpose of the letter to Dr. Garcia and Dr. Davila?

To offer words of gratitude and survival while naming the harmful conditions that adjunct professors endure, and to invite the recipients to include the letter as part of a broader narrative against exclusion and exploitation.

How does the letter define “Spirit Murder” within higher education?

“Spirit Murder” refers to the spiritual and slow-wounding effects of stolen, appropriated, or erased work and of systemic oppression that damages Black, Indigenous, and women of color in academic labor.

Why does the author focus on adjunct professors’ employment conditions?

The letter links spirit-wounding to specific structural realities such as layoffs, restrictive teaching evaluations, lack of tenure-line access, unequal pay and benefits, and recurring short-term contracts.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dabgoudw