A poetic excursion into the past and a critical engagement with the quotidian and the bodily is the most visible theme of this issue of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (DCQR). We are delighted to open with “Sophisticated Prayer,” a poem by Robin Brandehoff that takes us into the life of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, an African American woman who was denied admission in the law program at the University of Oklahoma. Brandehoff discovered Fisher's story in an essay she read. Finding herself emotionally struck and inspired by the story, she accesses the poetic to engage the subject. In poetically imagining Fisher's travails, Brandehoff confers dignity not only to Fisher's life, but also to the lives of women of color who enter the walls of academe, walls that were built to exclude and marginalize, not accommodate and welcome, their selfhood.

In the essay that follows, Shanna K. Kattari...

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