“We wrote through the storm”: Latinx doctoral student survivance and resistance during COVID-19

This narrative analysis draws on oral histories to examine how seven Latinx doctoral students navigated doctoral education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grounded in Academic Praxis as Survivance and Community Cultural Wealth frameworks, we analyze how students responded to overlapping academic, familial, and community crises. Findings are presented through three themes: (1) the increased misalignment between doctoral education and Latinx survivance; (2) the centrality of family and community in shaping persistence; and (3) resistance as central to doctoral student identity, expressed through community engagement, advocacy, and refusals to separate scholarly labor from care and justice. Participants drew on culturally grounded navigational, familial, and resistance capital to reconfigure timelines, support their communities, and persist within institutions not designed for them. Their narratives demonstrate how Latinx doctoral students enacted survivance by aligning academic participation with cultural values and collective well-being. These findings underscore the need to reimagine doctoral education to recognize and honor caregiving, community engagement, and resistance as central to scholarly development and institutional equity.