Black Women Ain't a Monolith: Looking Back to Move Forward

• In Event: You're Invited: Black Women Educators (Re)Membering Ghana and the Complex Realities of Building Community

Abstract

We immediately realized that our virtual experiences would be vastly different than our in-person experiences in Ghana after finally meeting in person after two years of meeting via Zoom. Some of us talked loudly and publicly in Ghana, while others journaled loudly to ourselves. Some of us asked questions openly, while others listened quietly and wrote down questions that we would think about for years. Some of us are queer, others are straight, some are Christian, and others were and continue to grapple with spirit and what it means in our lives. All of us were Black women educators (re)membering. None of us were wrong in our difference in difference, and at times we missed the opportunity to engage in those differences deeply. As we went individually and collectively through Ghana, we became our own salve and, at times, a salve to one another in an effort to humanize ourselves. In this portion of the symposium, I (re)member Ghana and the missed opportunities to engage Black women educators' interior selves (Alexander, 2004) as a means for grounding and creating a communal space for accountability.

Author

• Damaris C. Dunn, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author