1st Edition
Black Girls' Literacies Transforming Lives and Literacy Practices
Bringing together the voices of leading and emerging scholars, this volume highlights the many facets of Black girls’ literacies. As a comprehensive survey of the research, theories, and practices that highlight the literacies of Black girls and women in diverse spaces, the text addresses how sustaining and advancing their literacy achievement in and outside the classroom traverses the multiple dimensions of writing, comprehending literature, digital media, and community engagement. The Black Girls’ Literacies Framework lays a foundation for the understanding of Black girl epistemologies as multi-layered, nuanced, and complex.
The authors in this volume draw on their collective yet individual experiences as Black women scholars and teacher educators to share ways to transform the identity development of Black girls within and beyond official school contexts. Addressing historical and contemporary issues within the broader context of inclusive education, chapters highlight empowering pedagogies and practices. In between chapters, the book features four "Kitchen Table Talk" conversations among contributors and leading Black women scholars, representing the rich history of spaces where Black women come together to share experiences and assert their voices. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, this book offers readers a fuller vision of the roles of literacy and English educators in the work to undo educational wrongs against Black girls and women and to create inclusive spaces that acknowledge the legitimacy and value of Black girls’ literacies.
Series Editor Foreword
Introduction: Centering Black Girls’ Ways of Knowing: Past, Present, and Future by Detra
Price-Dennis and Gholnecsar E. Muhammad
Section 1: Creating Spaces for Black Girl Literacies
1. Explorations of Literacy and Black Girlhood in Out-of-Bound
Spaces by Erica Womack
2. Our Stories are Uniquely Beautiful": Black Girls’ Preamble
Writing in Literacy Collectives by Francheska Starks, Latasha Mosley,
Maya White & Gholdy Muhammad
3. Black Women and Girls Social Activism Tradition: Critical Media Literacy and the Black Girls’ Literacies Framework by Sherell A. McArthur
Kitchen Table Talk Featuring Bettina L. Love
Section 2: Black Girls’ Language and Literacy Practices
4. The Cartography of Storytelling: Black Girl Mapping
Practices by Tamara Butler
5. Black Girl to Black Girl: Gratitude Journaling as an
Emancipatory Practice by Damaris C. Dunn
6. There’s More than One Way to be Black": The Literacy
Experiences of Black African Immigrant Girls in
the United States by Maima Chea Simmons
Kitchen Table Talk Featuring Valerie Kinloch
Section 3: Reading Black Girlhood in Literature
7. Black Girls Living Between: A Critical Examination of Liminality
in The Hate U Give by Melanie A. Kirkwood-Marshall
8. Black Girlhood Entangled: An Exploration of
Nature, Magic and Community in Jewell Parker Rhodes’
Bayou Magic by Dahlia Hamza Constantine
9. Beyond the Problem: Afrofuturism as an Alternative to Realistic Fiction
about Black Girls by Stephanie Toliver
Kitchen Table Talk Featuring Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Section 4: Centering Black Girls’ Digital Literacies
10. Urban Young Adolescent Black Girls’ Digital Media
Practices: Humanizing the Digital Experience by Tonya B. Perry,
Kristie Williams, and Jameka Thomas
11. Black Adolescent Girls’ Digital Literacies in an Out-of-School Urban Secondary Literacy Context by Delicia Tiera Greene
12. Black Adolescent Girls’ Digital Literacies in an Out-of-School Urban Secondary Literacy Context by Autumn A. Griffin
Kitchen Table Talk Featuring Detra Price-Dennis
Afterword Artist, Survivor, Academic, Activist by Elaine Richardson
Postscript Black Girls’ Literacies Collective Statement
Biography
Gholnecsar E. Muhammad is Associate Professor of Middle and Secondary Education at Georgia State University, USA.
Detra Price-Dennis is Associate Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA.
