Listening to the Lavender Girls: Making Abolition a Sustainable, Lifelong Endeavor

• In Event: Petals of Blood, Fruits of Freedom: Sustaining Educational Lifeways for Abolition

Abstract

OBJECTIVES

This paper is a reflexive analysis using narratives, diagramming activities, field notes, and a completed (unpublished) draft of a dissertation chapter in which I explore how Girls of Color—Asian, Black/African American, and Latina/Chicana—discuss their aspirations for liberated futures while offering abolitionist critiques of the carceral state of their schooling.

FRAMEWORK

I draw from Critical Race Feminism (Wing, 2003) to provide a framework for the Lavender Girls’ (my study participants) critiques of their educational experiences. I also use intersectional feminist ways of knowing (Combahee River Collective, 1977; Isasi-Diaz, 2009; Walker, 1974; Yee, 2009; Zinn & Dill, 1996) as a lens to understand my participation in the Lavender Girls Project (LGP) and how my ontological and epistemological foundations shaped this study, the ways that I engaged with the Lavender Girls, and the lessons they taught me.

METHODS & DATA

With reflexivity as the primary method of analysis (Pillow, 2003), I examine the ways that the Lavender Girls and I collectively processed their critiques of the carceral aspects of their education, their approaches to resisting/fighting oppression, and their dreams of freedom. Data for this paper come from the LGP, a national study that I created about and with Girls of Color who experienced school punishment and academic exclusion. LGP is situated in five Title I high schools and data collection took place through focus group interviews with 5-8 girls participating in five sessions at each school during 2015 to 2018.

ANALYSIS

I analyze interview transcripts along with LGP participants’ diagramming activities that pertain to discussions of punishment, surveillance, policing, and their ideas related to abolition. Using intersectional feminisms, I triangulate these data with corresponding field notes, reflexive memos, and the completed draft of my dissertation chapter. Through this process I highlight the collective learning that took place through LGP as well as the ways in which the Lavender Girls elevated my perspectives and theorizations around abolition, solidarity, and systemic racist sexism.

CONCLUSIONS

The Lavender Girls taught me about the ways that abolition is (and must be) rooted in family and community if it is to be a sustainable, lifelong endeavor. As they discussed how their roles as daughters, sisters/cousins, aunts, and mothers—not individual ambition—are what motivate them to fight injustice, I reflect on an analytic memo I wrote about my niece, Nadine, who taught me how to care for and protect another person. Like the Lavender Girls, every punishment that I experienced in school made me think of it happening to Nadine and my younger family members. The Lavender Girls illuminated for me how my work as an abolitionist and my role as an auntie are inextricably tied, and how the colonial and carceral state weakens and destroys families/communities because this is where abolition is sustained.

SIGNIFICANCE

This paper demonstrates the depth with which Girls of Color think about liberation. It provides a methodological framework for researchers to engage reflexively with the lessons that participants impart long after the conclusion of our studies.

Author

• Shena Sanchez, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author