Storybooking Migration in Early Learning: Black Families From West Africa, the Caribbean, and South America Share Stories of Climbing Educational Mountains

• In Event: The Impact of Racism and White Supremacy on Children's and Teachers' Agency in the Early Grades

Abstract

Objective: Black children and their families experience educational spaces as fugitive heroines in a predatory environment that positions Black experiences as monolithic and pathological. This paper joins discourses in early childhood, children’s literature and migration to focus on early learning spaces as opportunities to care for Black children and their families. Just beyond the controlling educational systems which produce pain, dismissal, and hyper(in)visibility that challenge Black life, we listen to everyday moments that intersect, conflict, and overlap. In these moments, Black families in migration hold relationships of care for young children which become testimonies of solidarity for early educators. In accepting responsibility to advance care for young children, education scholars have much to learn from Black families who cultivate “alternate nows” (Eliot and Tuck, 2017) for young Black children.

Theoretical Framework: For many Black and Brown children, our racializing educational systems, ignore their humanity in classrooms. They are often “subjected to extreme restriction of movement and opportunities for play” (Adair, Sanchez-Suzuki Colegrove, and McManus 2017; Nxumalo & Ross, 2019). This project nuances the experiences of Black immigrants through the voices of young children with their families. I lean into Black Feminist and Womanist theory (Combahee River Collective, 1982; Crenshaw, 1989; Gumbs, 2016; McClain, 2019), which is grounded in notions of Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) to amplify how families live beyond intersecting oppressions. Black Feminist theories are invaluable in making sense of the modes of resisting deficit thinking and erasure in schooling contexts (Nxumalo, 2019). We hone in on the unconsidered details of resistance within daily family interactions.

Method: Partnering with the brilliance of authors and illustrators of children’s picture books, this paper draws from conversations with families born in West Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. We listened as grandparents, parents and young children read children’s picture storybooks together to learn where migration stories conflicted, intersected, and overlapped. Using narrative and content analyses, we highlight the ways families developed fluid notions of parenting roles, recalled relationships with more-than-human beings, and exposed ancestral liberatory practices.

Findings: As families shared migration stories of separating from and reclaiming home, we heard notions of care for young Black children that overlapped with how educators can revolutionize early childhood spaces as places of care. Children, grandparents and parents developed daily routines that accommodated multiple work schedules, incorporated consistent family time, and prioritized community outdoor spaces. I describe stories of choosing a school in an unfamiliar language, searching for a community of like-minded families with young children, and sustaining ancestral knowledges with land. Each example was a complicated illustration of care that looked “beyond the precarity” (Sharpe, 2016) to uphold nurturing love for young Black children.

Significance: Through this research, we advance the ways that experiences of Black families in migration are ever expansive, conflicting, and intersecting. This calls for the experiences of Black families to be foregrounded in discourses of early childhood, children’s literature and migration leading to stronger practices of care for young Black children in early learning spaces.

Author

• Nnenna Odim, University of Texas at Austin