Toward Loving and Legibility: Understanding Black LGBTQ Girls' School Experiences and Navigational Strategies in Educational Research

• In Event: Creating Spaces of Belonging and Care for Queer, Trans Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Communities

Abstract

The focus on Black girls' schooling experiences recently has broadened (Field & Simmons, 2019); however, less has been said about Black LGBTQ girls. Scholars must begin centering the complexity of Black girl genders and sexualities beyond cisheteronormativity. Black LGBTQ girls are not solely victimized (Tuck, 2009); they exercise agency by being themselves, cultivating joy, forging friendships, and building homeplaces (hooks, 1990). Expanding researchers’ gaze is essential to comprehending the intersectional effects race, gender, and sexuality have on Black LGBTQ girls’ everyday lives in schools. In doing so, scholars can better understand and celebrate how Black LGBTQ girls experience and disrupt the expectations of schooling, positioning all Black girls as worthy of love and providing a foundation for schools to follow.

Authors

• Mara D Johnson, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• monét cooper, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author