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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals BLACK GIRL TRIES KOREAN MAKEUP: RACE, GENDER, AND TRANSNATIONAL PLATFORM

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dasol Kim
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Cultural Conflicts ◽  
Racial Conflict ◽  
Light Skin ◽  
History Of ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
And Gender

This study aims to theorize how YouTube fundamentally capitalizes the racial and gender identity of women of color and local culture in a way it facilitates inter-racial and inter-cultural conflicts. I specifically focus on so-called K-beauty (Korean beauty), a catchy trend on YouTube which encompasses aesthetics, cosmetic products, and beauty ideals from South Korea, characterized by pursuing glowing, dewy, and light skin tone featuring a variety of skincare products. K-beauty is now being adopted by non-Koreans in North America including Black women influencers on the borderless platform of YouTube, who created the Black Girl Tries Korean Makeup video series. By using a Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis approach, I examined YouTube videos, comments, as well as the module titled “Building a Global Channel” to analyze not only the contents and discourses around that but also the platform that might have shaped this intercultural flow on YouTube. Black women YouTubers actively critiqued the light skin preference, as well as anti-Blackness reflected in K-beauty brands through the Black Girls, Tries Korean Makeup video series. Korean viewers, on the other hand, strongly rejected these accusations of the anti-Black aspect of K-beauty, explaining distinctive Korean racial dynamic as a one-ethnic country where the light skin preference is not translated to the anti-Blackness. I argue that this inter-cultural and inter-racial conflict arguably has been shaped by YouTube’s digital infrastructure that prioritizes short, trendy, how-to-style videos, that do not require a lengthy contextualization of each culture’s beauty practices, and history of oppressions.

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.

Opening Up Space for Global Black Girls

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 11-33
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Civil ◽  
Zetta Elliott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Performance Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Embodied Knowledge ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Opening Up

In this innovative dialogue, Gabrielle Civil and Zetta Elliott consider how their work inside and outside of the academy “opens up space” for Black girls in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. In her performance art and curation, Civil activates the presence and absence of diasporic Black girls and celebrates their creative potential. In her books for young readers, Elliott disrupts literary conventions by centering Black girl protagonists and using the fantasy genre not for escape but empowerment. Linking the critical and creative, this dialogue showcases reflection and embodied knowledge of Black girls and women.

Urban Teaching and Black Girls’ Pedagogies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menah Pratt-Clarke ◽  
Andrea N. Baldwin ◽  
Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Educators ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Urban Teaching ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Gender Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Black Women Educators

To discuss and understand urban teaching and Black girls’ pedagogies, the fundamental premise is that Black girls are not monolithic, but complex and nonhomogenous. Black girlhood studies recognize that, because of their intersectional race, class, and gender status, Black girls have different experiences than Black boys and White girls. Core themes in Black girlhood include self-identity and socialization; beauty and self-expression; popular culture, hip hop, and stereotypes; violence; systemic discipline in schools; and resiliency and survival. Responding to the unique experiences of Black girls, Black women educators developed and adopted a pedagogy that focuses on and centers Black girls and Black girlhood in all their complexity. Using a strengths-based approach, Black girls’ pedagogy is built on a Black feminist and womanist framework that recognizes the need for culturally informed curriculum and classroom experiences, more Black women educators, and a commitment to an ethics of care.

Hear Our Truths

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Nicole Brown
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Creative Performance ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Black Girlhood ◽  
Working Together

This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this creativity informs other realizations about Black girlhood and womanhood. Founded in 2006 and co-organized by the author, SOLHOT is an intergenerational collective organizing effort that celebrates and recognizes Black girls as producers of culture and knowledge. Girls discuss diverse expressions of Black girlhood, critique the issues that are important to them, and create art that keeps their lived experiences at its center. Drawing from experiences in SOLHOT, the book argues that when Black girls reflect on their own lives, they articulate radically unique ideas about their lived experiences. The book documents the creative potential of Black girls and women who are working together to advance original theories, practices, and performances that affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls' lives. In doing so, this book expands on the work of Black feminists and feminists of color and breaks intriguing new ground in Black feminist thought and methodology. Emotionally and intellectually powerful, the book combines theory with creativity to show how the creative helps to theorize, and how theory can be enacted through creativity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document