Reclaiming My Joy: A Black Woman Scholar’s Literature Circle Experience

• In Event: Let the Circle Be Unbroken: A Black Women's Literature Circle as Liberatory Space

Abstract

Introduction
A significant body of scholarship has documented U.S. Black women feminist educators’ rich tradition of racial justice work in our communities and K-20 institutions (Berry & Mizelle, 2023; Dixson, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Skerrett, 2006). Black women teachers and university faculty have challenged white supremacist patriarchal dehumanization, creating more equitable educational experiences for students, colleagues, and ourselves. While racial justice work can be a source of fulfillment, our labor is not without consequence. Lack of representation and mentorship, invisibility/hypervisibility, overt/covert hostility, social isolation, disproportionate labor demands, hyper-scrutiny of job performance, and policing of our bodies and physical appearance (Ahmed, 2009; Patton & Hayes, 2020) are some of the challenges that contribute to weathering or “early health deterioration as a consequence of the cumulative impact of repeated experience with social or economic adversity and political marginalization” (Geronimus, Chicken, Keene, Bound, 2006).

In 2020 as state-sanctioned anti-Black violence and the global health pandemic festered, Black women like myself and my co-panelists experienced extraordinary strains on our mental well-being, further exacerbating raced and gendered health disparities (Javaid & Cole, 2022). However, participating in a Black women’s virtual literature circle served as a respite from negativity that centered our healing and joy through reading and discussing authors like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Venus Evans-Winters.

Purpose
The symposia paper has two purposes: to explore the personal and professional outcomes of sustained engagement in The Circle and theorizing a qualitative methodology that emerged from the Black woman-centered literacies that we engaged. I maintain that spaces like The Circle can serve as protective factors against gendered racism, as well as sites of creative inspiration for Black feminist educators.

Methods & Data
Using critical race feminism (CRF) and Black feminist modes of qualitative inquiry, autoethnographic methods were employed to examine analytic memos based on textual and discussion notes, prompted journal entries, artifacts, and photographs collected for approximately two years of monthly, two-hour meetings. Broadly, CRF “draws upon both critical race theory and feminism in exploring social phenomena from the perspective of people doubly marginalized by both race and gender” (Childer-McKee & Hytten, 2015). As a qualitative method, autoethnography describes and critically analyzes personal experiences to make sense of cultural phenomena (Hughes & Pennington, 2016). Coupling CRF with autoethnographic methods enabled me to draw deeper meanings from my participation in The Circle and glean wider sociopolitical understandings about the relationship between Black women academics and practices that sustain our well-being.

Findings and scholarly significance
Preliminary analysis of the corpus data reveal literacy modalities rooted in Black womanness including politicking, cultural reflections, and motherspeak (Evans-Winters, 2019), as well as insights into resistance against gendered racism among Black women faculty. In addition, analytic memos based on these findings informed the design of a Black feminist literacy and arts-based autoethnographic method for future research on liberatory academic spaces free from gendered racism. These findings contribute to the extension of scholarship on racial justice work among Black women faculty, while simultaneously creating space for the centering of our voices in academia.

Author

• Amber Pabon, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania