crushed little stars

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-28
Author(s):  
Jordan Ealey
Keyword(s):  
Black Girls ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies ◽  
A Site

This is a performative engagement with the theory and practice of Black girlhood. I begin with an excerpt from my play-in-process, crushed little stars, which is itself a meditation on the sad Black girl. I share this process of play not only to present play making as a powerful epistemological tool, but also to blur the boundaries between what constitutes theory as opposed to practice. I (re)imagine Black girl sociality as a site of restoration and healing against the racist, sexist, and ageist world with which Black girls are forced to contend. Accordingly, this project contributes to the diversification of girlhood studies, challenging the disciplinarity of the field by extending ethnographic and sociological perspectives to include the vantage point of performance and creative practice.

Black Girl Cartography: Black Girlhood and Place-Making in Education Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara T. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies ◽  
Research In Education

Drawing on research in education, Black Girlhood studies, and conversations connected to girlhood and cartography, this chapter calls for transdisciplinary analyses of Black girls’ sociocultural and geopolitical locations in education research. In reviewing education research documenting the practices and interrogating the experiences of Black girls, I propose the framework of Black Girl Cartography. In addition to an analysis of education research, I offer a series of theoretical and methodological openings for transformative and liberatory work grounded in Black Girl knowledge and practices.

Towards an Interdisciplinary Field of Black Girlhood Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy C. Owens ◽  
Durell M. Callier ◽  
Jessica L. Robinson ◽  
Porshé R. Garner
Keyword(s):  
Black Girls ◽  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies

Scholarly interest in the experiences of Black girls has grown significantly. Although many scholars, activists, and artists have completed substantial scholarship and creative works that constitute the foundation of Black girlhood studies, their body of work and names are oftentimes omitted from recent scholarship on Black girlhood. In this collectively authored essay, scholars, artists, and activists present an annotated bibliography of historical and contemporary texts, as well as cultural works, that center the voices and experiences of Black girls. This annotated bibliography serves as a resource for activists and scholars alike who are interested in Black girlhood.

Black Girl Refusals and Reimaginings

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-145
Author(s):  
Desirée de Jesus
Keyword(s):  
Black Girl ◽  
Women's Press ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies

Aria S. Halliday (ed.). 2019. The Black Girlhood Studies Collection. Toronto: Women’s Press.

Black Girl Thought in the Work of Ntozake Shange

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Naila Keleta-Mae
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ntozake Shange ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Black Girlhood

In this article I examine the performances of black girlhood in two texts by Ntozake Shange—the choreopoem “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” (1977) and the novel Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo (1982). The black girls whom Shange portrays navigate anti-black racism in their communities, domestic violence in their homes, and explore their connections with spirit worlds. In both these works, Shange stages black girls who make decisions based on their understanding of the spheres of influence that their race, gender, and age afford them in an anti-black patriarchal world dominated by adults. I draw, too, from Patricia Hill Collins’s work on feminist standpoint theory and black feminist thought to introduce the term black girl thought as a theoretical framework to offer insights into the complex lives of black girls who live in the post-civil rights era in the United States.

Envisioning Black Girl Futures

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aria S. Halliday
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Fertile Ground

Black girlhood exists in a world that is constantly trying to negate it. Black vernacular traditions, too, allow girls to be considered “fast” or “womanish” based on their perceived desire or sexuality. However, Black girlhood studies presents a space where Black girls can claim their own experiences and futures. This essay engages how Nicki Minaj's “Anaconda” is fertile ground to help demystify Black girls’ possibilities for finding sexual pleasure and self-determination. Using hip-hop feminism, I argue that “Anaconda” presents a Black feminist sexual politics that encourages agency for Black girls, providing a “pinkprint” for finding pleasure in their bodies.

More than Sass or Silence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Nicole Brown
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girls Studies

This chapter presents a soundtrack of Black girls' expressive culture as ethnographically documented in SOLHOT in the form of original music. To think through the more dominant categorizations of how Black girls are heard, as both sassy and silent, this chapter samples Andrea Smith's (2006) “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing” to offer a new frame called “The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood.” Music made from conversations in SOLHOT is used to emphasize how three logics of the creative potential framework, including volume/oppression, swagg/surveillance, and booty/capitalism, amplifies Black girls' critical thought to document the often overlooked creative process of Black girl music making, demonstrate how hip-hop feminist sensibilities inform girls' studies, and, most importantly, move those who do Black girl organizing toward a wider repertoire of actions and conversations that affirm differences among Black girls and differently sounding Black girl knowledge.

Blackgirl, One Word: Necessary Transgressions in the Name of Imagining Black Girlhood

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique C. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Girlhood Studies ◽  
A Site ◽  
Education Discourse

Blackgirls are an oft-disappeared population. Frequently, race or gender in popular and education discourse are foregrounded, leaving the Blackgirls fragmented. By contrast, one word, Blackgirl, rejects compartmentalizing Blackgirls’ lives, stories, and bodies and serves as a symbolic transgression to see them/us as complex and whole. Interlaced with the symbolic is the material needed to value the Black female body. To provide redress for the disregard of Blackgirl experience and posit the Black female body as a site of cultural memory and possibility, this article offers my body as a vessel through which transgression is incited. In particular, it discusses insights from an intergenerational project on Black girlhood and the vital impromptu transgressions/grooves I made during the reflexivity process of my performance. By sharing a Blackgirl’s truths and praxis that arose from yearnings, beauty, genius, and struggles of Black girlhood and being a Blackgirl advocate, this article expands the work of Black Girlhood Studies, interjects Blackgirls into the landscape of girlhood, and contributes to its reterritorialization.

Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That: Anti-Black Girl Violence in the Era of #SayHerName

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Treva B. Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site

In the era of #BlackLivesMatter, anti-Black state violence is a primary focus. From police brutality to the Flint Water Crisis, organizers within the Movement for Black Lives draw important connections between various sites of racial injustice as experienced by people of African descent in the United States. One of the many sites where anti-Black violence and victimization occurs is in our classrooms. This article explores the classroom as a site of racial–gender terror for Black girls. The classroom is far too often an anti-Black girl space.

And Who Will Revere the Black Girl

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124322110293
Author(s):  
Dominique C. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Black Feminist Theory ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Dress Code ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Black Girlhood

While the mainstream media continues to narrowly define justice and reduce the site of its presence or absence to murder scenes and court cases, justice is often foreclosed long before someone is murdered and we must #SayHerName. To expand the project of Black mattering beyond race and physical death, this essay animates how body policing through school dress code policy sanctions racial-sexual violence and provide girls with an ultimatum: either abandon body sovereignty and self-expression, or accept the consequences of being read as a distraction, a problem. (Re)membering classic Black feminist theory and the 2013 case of Vanessa Van Dyke, this essay locates these underrecognized facets of state violence as an extension of the #SayHerName project. Through a Black girlhood studies framework, the author underscores embodiment as an essential measure of justice and reframes mattering through the importance of Black girls’ crowns.

Black Girls Swim

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Samantha White
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Beauty Ideals ◽  
Sports And Physical Activity

During the early part of the twentieth century, Black girls in the United States attended Young Women’s Christian Associations (YWCAs) where they received instruction in sports and physical activity. Using archival research, in this article I examine the role of swimming in Black girls’ sports and physical activity practices in Northern YWCAs. With a focus on the construction of Black girlhood, health, and embodiment, I trace how girls navigated spatial segregation, beauty ideals, and athleticism. I highlight the experiences of Black girl swimmers—subjects who have often been rendered invisible in the historical and contemporary sporting landscape.

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