In this article, the author discusses her successes and struggles as a junior faculty member, in building critical community with and among a diverse group of graduate students. Drawing from and expanding upon the current literature, she presents a definition of critical communities and then makes an argument for why teachers need to promote critical communities in the classroom amid the uncertainty of social justice pedagogy that often brings students to what Kevin Kumashiro (2004) calls "crisis." She then provides examples of community building, within and beyond the graduate classroom. These examples include community building among the diverse graduate student population with whom she works and between herself, a mixed race assistant professor of color, and her students, who are a mixture of white students and students of color. The author concludes by describing some strategies for building critical communities and sharing examples of the impact that they can have. (Contains 4 notes.)