From the Bricks to the Hall

Situating herself on the cusp between life in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and her new world at Seton Hall University, Mellie Torres describes the painful awareness of a growing distance between herself, as the first to go to college, and her family. In so doing, she reveals the inherent losses of leaving home and the painful contrast between her own life story and that of her brother Isaac, who was denied the opportunity to thrive. In grieving the loss of her brother, Torres asks readers to honor his unrealized promise.

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Mellie Torres is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and a research assistant at the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, both at New York University. Her proposed dissertation will explore the relationship between the multiple and intersecting social identities (race/ethnicity, class, and gender) of Latino male students and their academic identities. Prior to her doctoral studies, Torres was a high school mathematics teacher in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey.