Book Review: Deborah Gabriel and Shirley Anne Tate, Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in British Academia
| Author | Sinead Marian D’Silva |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929918807976 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(3) NP8 –NP10
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
807976PSW0010.1177/1478929918807976Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2019
Commissioned Book Review
Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of
Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in
British Academia by Deborah Gabriel and
Shirley Anne Tate. Trentham Books, 2017. 164
pp., £24.99 (p/b), ISBN 9781858568485
Inside the Ivory Tower is a collection of auto-
biographical reflections of the intersectional
lived reality of Black women of colour (BWoC)
as they have made their way to and through
universities as academics in the United
Kingdom. It was developed for the Black Sister
Network under the Black British Academics
(http://blackbritishacademics.co.uk) network,
created by Deborah Gabriel, one of the editors.
Each chapter offers 1 of the 10 contributors’
individual experience of ‘surviving and thriv-
ing’ within a university system that privileges
Whiteness and Eurocentric ways of knowing.
Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the stories
are authored as autoethnography, which uses
storying of personal experiences combined
with academic literature to make sense of the
same.
The underlying message is that BWoC aca-
demics unanimously have a combination of
racism and sexism inflicted on them thorough
obstacles that severely hamper their progres-
sion at work. They are routinely subjected to
racist behaviour ranging from microaggres-
sions and excessive scrutiny, to verbal and
physical sexual abuse. On the other hand, these
individuals are presented as trophies of diver-
sity, but the stories reveal that the diversity
agenda in British universities is tokenistic,
merely exoticising academics of colour, and
BWoC in particular.
In the introduction, Deborah Gabriel argues
that the book does not aim to solely encourage
more Black peoples to enter academia, but to
identify and locate racism and sexism in uni-
versities in the United Kingdom. In addition,
the stories highlight strategies developed by
the authors through lived experiences of insti-
tutional racism, which can be of help to other
BWoC as they embark on their journey into the
Ivory Tower. It is therefore at the onset that I
recommend this book as an important piece of
solidarity literature and scholar activism, and
as an academic study on the experiences of rac-
ism in British academia. Here I will elaborate
on this view.
The contributors themselves come from a
range of backgrounds, despite falling in
broader categories. This includes discipline
(Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts
and Humanities), geography (within the
United Kingdom), types of universities
(research intensive and teaching intensive,
old and new), different career trajectories
(direct education path, practitioner to educa-
tion) and ethnic backgrounds within the broad
category of ‘Black British’. Yet, they all expe-
rience racism and sexism in academia. Each
narrative flows into each other, supporting an
interconnected web of experiences, enabling
each story to stand-alone while contributing
to a bigger picture. This makes it evident that
this is not an isolated occurrence, but a sector-
wide problem.
A further strength of this book lies in its
method of storying. As Mirza stresses, ‘we
must tell our stories, or others will tell them for
us … our stories must be told!’ (p.41; emphasis
author’s own). Gabriel goes further to argue
that we must also talk back to power so that
these stories are heard, disrupting the comfort
of ignorance of others (p.28). They are
endorsed by Jackson who reveals the impor-
tance of thinking through her experience and
having her story shared through this book. A
solemn encouragement is also made by Tate,
who expresses the need to voice feeling hurt by
experiences of racism and sexism so as to
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