These Girls Are on Fire: Explicating Critical Feminist Counterstories in Pre-Collegiate Partnership Programs

• In Event: Women's Way of Leading and Mentoring: Opening Critical Spaces for Future Orientation in Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives

Two women faculty of color from various parts of the U.S. collaborated, developed curriculum, and taught in different pre-collegiate programs. Reflecting on their women’s ways of knowing, the authors of this study engaged in feminist co-mentoring practices to support each other and high school girls of color in their programs. Utilizing a Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework (Yosso, 2005), their collaboration resulted in a social justice approach for leading pre-collegiate programs. Two research questions guiding this study were: (1) how do women of color program leaders mentor each other through two pre-collegiate programs; and (2) how do girls of color in their programs experience intersectional feminist identities while exploring their community cultural wealth?

Perspectives or Theoretical Framing

Through a triadic frame, this research utilized Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), critical race feminism, and intersectionality. First, CCW focuses on six capital assets: aspirational, linguistic, familial, navigational, social, and resistant capitals (Author, 2017; Yosso, 2005). Second, critical race feminism (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010) along with intersectionality allowed for understanding and researching participants’ gender roles, race, ethnicity, language and social class (Crenshaw, 1989; Hills Collins, 1991). Counterstories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001) and feminist co-mentoring (McGuire & Reger, 2003) framed participants’ dialogues. These frameworks provided a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging majoritarian stories of racial privilege that often distort the lives of people of color.

Methodology and Data Sources

Data was gathered from researchers’ counterstory reflections on their Black/Chicana feminist leadership modes and co-mentoring experiences leading a pre-collegiate program. The second data source included 15 high school female students’ writing samples from two pre-collegiate programs located in Northeastern and Western US cities. Both programs promoted a pre-college curriculum for Latinx and African American high school students. Students wrote counterstories connecting their lives to asset capitals from the CCW framework (i.e., resistant, familial, etc.). All counterstories were examined and analyzed through constant comparative analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Constructs were developed to answer the research questions through deductive and inductive thematic processes related to CCW.

Findings & Significance
Women and girls of color face hurdles in education as they confront discrimination, sexism, heterosexism, classism and linguisticism. Through co-mentoring and reflective counterstories, three prominent themes emerged from the data: (1) understanding our roles as women of color mentors and program leaders; (2) tensions and constraints experienced by women and girls of color in their educational experiences; and (3) an informed social and political consciousness that reflects their cultural and educational aspirations. As girls of color, they are “on fire” because their counterstories embody a critical feminist CCW empowerment.

CCW unveils the cultural assets students rely on to help them navigate and resist oppressive educational structures. Opportunities for organizational collaboration opens up spaces for black and brown girls of color to explicate counterstories and foment reflective CCW. Thus, women’s ways of leading and co-mentoring provides a visionary critical feminist approach to supporting girls of color aspirations and quest for liberation in education.

Authors

• Antonette M. Aragon, Colorado State University

• Makini Z. Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology