La’Tonya Rease Miles, M.A. '99, Ph.D. '04

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"Smart Girl," by La’Tonya Rease Miles, M.A. '99, Ph.D. '04, a memoir redefining first-gen and Black student narratives, highlighting mass media, pop culture, and sports as key to shaping identity, resilience, and community, has just been released.

A first-gen graduate, she designed groundbreaking programs at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University to support first-gen students. A co-founder of the Black First Gen Collective and My Tribe Media, Miles advocates for non-traditional learners and elevates first-gen narratives through scholarly work and digital communities. An avid fan of NBA basketball, college football, and pop culture, she earned her graduate degrees in English and explores the intersections of first-gen identity and cultural representation in her writing.

Miles was featured in a recent article on UCLA Newsroom, where she discusses her educational journey, how she wound up at UCLA, and the support she received here.

“So many faculty members and colleagues from my doctoral program embraced my study of popular culture, which was huge for me,” she said in the Newsroom piece. “Even if people didn’t know what I was talking about or weren’t as familiar with the rules of basketball or the landscape of hip hop as I was, their support was palpable, and I’m thankful for that to this day.

“Thanks to the community of professors that made up my program, I really got to experiment and be playful with my academics. Here I was, this working-class East Coast kid who loves the Celtics, writing a whole dissertation on things that defined my upbringing. It was transformative.”