Black Girl Resistance as a Literary Movement

• In Event: Go Off Sis: Journeying Through (Re)Searching With Black Girls Through Space and Place

Abstract

Objectives: This paper aims to add to conversations about Black girls by making space for Black girls to speak for themselves through their writings and art. It simultaneously intervenes in Black adolescent and African American Feminist writings by adding dimensions to the Black girl characters in fiction texts to help bring these characters to life. My scholarship calls for educators, librarians, scholars, and prizing institutions to manage their expectations of Black girl characters. Analyzing Black girl writings submitted to a magazine supports the identification and explication of Black girl characters. By centering their voices, scholars can ask: what does it mean for Black girls to perform their identity in a country that adamantly denies their personhood, and how do they build a strong self-identity when their Blackness is constantly under attack? This paper seeks to explore Black girls’ desires and emotional responses to anti-Blackness through their writing and art.

Perspectives: During the Harlem Renaissance, W. E. B. DuBois founded The Brownies Book, a monthly magazine that featured writings by Black children along with writings by well-known Harlem Renaissance authors. Seeing poetry and art as a pathway to resistance evidences the political power that writing, especially writing by marginalized groups, has on the direction of political activism (Artivism). Therefore, this magazine is a literary movement that showcases its contributors’ resistance to anti-Blackness. In doing so, it becomes an archive for scholars who study Black girlhood, whether in education, sociology, or literature.

Methods/Data: By providing a space for Black girls to publish their work, and by providing Black girlhood scholars with an archive dedicated to a wide range of Black girl voices on any number of topics, this literary magazine serves as an enactment of Black girl literacies in resistance to racism and oppression and therefore humanizes the characters that are often flattened in classroom discussions. My paper presents data from the first and second issue of the magazine centered on honoring Black girls in all capacities that demonstrate ways that Black girl writing and art contributes to human rights discourse. Each of the issues under examination in these works will cover one year. The theme for the 2021 issue was Dear Black Girl. And the 2022 theme was When I Speak. I ask: how do Black girls’ work articulate resistance in their creative work? What is the dominant emotion expressed through their work? And if their work evidences rage, what do they aim to create or destroy through their rage?

Results/Significance: Ultimately, the findings in this work will extend the historical archive of Black girl authorship and add dimensions to Black girl characters that challenge the continued misrepresentations of them, especially in literature preferred by predominantly white institutions. Furthermore, the findings will center their contributions to American literature.

Author

• Kiedra B. Taylor, University of Connecticut