Building on Traditions of Girl of Color Knowing to Imagine and Build Futures

• In Event: Afro-Futurisum: Girls of Color Reenvisioning "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"

Abstract

This presentation will invite an exploration into the ways the authors, an Asian American woman and a Black woman, have worked alongside middle school girls of color to collaboratively imagine futures that center the needs, desires, and ways of knowing of girls and women of color. We will discuss how, for women and girls of color, writing can take form as healing, critical, relational, and transformative (i.e. Anzaldúa, 1983; Christian, 1988; Lorde, 2007) and will look specifically at the ways girls write to engage emancipatory imagination (Smith, 2012) to collaboratively compose futures that break from the material realities of an oppressive world and, instead, provide a vision of worlds built for and by girls of color.
The presentation will center two studies, one completed by Author 1, and one collaborative and ongoing study engaged by both authors, that utilize practitioner research methodologies (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) to inquire into out-of-school writing collaboratives with middle school girls of color. Both of these studies build on conceptualizations of science fiction and future building as social justice work (Imarisha & brown, 2015). Utilizing humanizing (Paris & Winn, 2014) and ethical (Campano, Ghiso, & Welch, 2016) methodologies that conceptualize research as built for and with marginalized communities as an iterative and collective learning process, the knowledge produced through these projects highlighted the importance of woman/girl/femme of color knowledge and ways of knowing in work that forwarded the rights, needs, and desires of women/girls/femmes of color. To make sense of the girls’ compositions of the future, the authors engaged iterative analysis of data including fieldnotes, artifacts of girls writing and art, and interview and focus group transcripts. To “crystalize” (Richardson & St. Pierre, 1994) meaning from these multiple data points, the authors have engaged iterative reflective writing and dialogue amongst the researchers and the girls (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014). In addition, inVivo coding was used to seek salient patterns and anomalies and to organize data in conjunction with these more exploratory analysis methods.
Our findings suggest that through future imagining, girls of color challenge colonial definitions of ingenuity (Smith, 2012) and develop complex critiques and theories of change, often building on their cultural and gendered knowledges, rooted in traditions of women of color writing, art, and activism. These are traditions too often marginalized in mainstream curriculum and yet, they serve great utility in justice oriented collaboration amongst girls of color. Findings suggest that girl of color knowledges are rooted in raced and gendered intellectual lineages (Muhammad, 2015) and are, simultaneously, future gazing, building new visions of worlds. Trusting in the collective efforts of girls of color to imagine and enact freedom can challenge dominant and oppressive structures on which mainstream schools rely and that deny girls of color the learning and teaching opportunities they deserve. These findings suggest the need for curriculum that works to access traditions of women of color learning as well as offers opportunities for girls of color to engage in future imagining that helps them to imagine and enact the construction of more just worlds.

Authors

• Grace D. Player, University of Connecticut - Storrs

• Oluwaseun Animashaun, Teachers College, Columbia University