Truth and Multimodal Family Narratives: U.S. Notions of Family Challenged by a Global Society

• In Event: 81.032 - MTCC Roundtable Session 37
  In Roundtable Session: 81.032-12 - Professional Development, Educational Entrepreneurs, and Equity

Abstract

This proposed study is concerned with the stories and “place-making” practices (Haymes, 1995) transmitted and enacted within African American families as part of the ongoing individual and collective struggle for Black liberation and survival within the deeply historical anti-Black context of U.S. society (Haymes, 1995; Hughes, 2006, 2005). Family stories carry knowledge and strategies for resisting and overcoming White supremacy (hooks, 1990). Providing perspectives of decolonization and patterns of thinking alternative to the deficiency-based understandings of U.S. society’s dominant White mainstream, these stories also reflect “specific examples of local resistance” (Baker, 1997) and analyses of the myths and images associated with Black families, urban life, and processes of gentrification (Jayanandhan, 2009).

Author

• Paulette T. Cross, Georgia College & State University