My Sisters’ Keeper: Blurring the Boundaries Between Teaching, Research, and Sisterhood

• In Event: A Space of Our Own: Transforming Education, Innovating Pedagogy, and Upgrading Literacy With Black and Brown Girls in Mind

Abstract

In this paper, the author discusses the family, community, and school experiences of a group of African American young women from a large metropolitan area, attending a predominately white institution of higher education located in a majority white suburban city. The participants of the study were randomly selected to participate in the study from a registered student organization titled My Sisters Keeper. The proposed presentation will cover the researchers interactions with two of the participants of the study. These two participants’ stories were selected as case examples due to the long-term and on-going relationship between the participants and the researcher. Also, these two cases are highlighted, due to the young women’s overall engagement and leadership in the study. The objective of the study is to raise the question, “How might research with young Black female students transform research methodologies and teaching practices?”
Using a Black feminism/womanism and hip-hop feminism the researcher demonstrates that research with young Black women is both a creative project and an educational endeavor for the research subjects and the researcher alike. Meaning, the researcher and research participants begin to teach and learn from each other as student-teacher/teacher-student. For data collection, story-telling, mentoring, and face-to-face interviewing were used alongside video diaries and online blogging.
Finally, it is argued that Black girls and women in the post-civil rights era are deserving of a teaching and learning experience that is culturally and gender-relevant; one that is grounded in a (1) postwomanist perspective, (2) transformative research, and (3) intersectional pedagogical experience. Based on researcher’s reflexivity and the tenets of critical Black feminist thought, the researcher ponders what would it mean for Black women to have a room of our own in educational contexts and scholarly research traditions?

Author

• Venus E. Evans-Winters, Illinois State University