Holy by Our Own: Theorizing Black Girl Divine Love

• In Event: Divine Love in Me: Black Girl Love as Resistance Against Oppressive Schooling

Abstract

In this presentation, we come together as three Black women researchers and educators to amplify hooks’ (2000) reflections on love and the Divine. Guided by hooks’ publications on the intimacy between Spirit and writing in her own works, Dominique C. Hill’s (2021) charge to revere the Black girl, and Jamila Woods’ sonic and visual invitation to imagine Black girls as holy, we engaged in a process that we call collective spiritual writing, where we met spirit-to-spirit, to reflect on, interrogate, and “see” Black girls and their relationship to their own souls. What we offer, then, is a mediation and theorization of Black Girl Divine Love, which accounts for the varied ways Black girls recognize, nurture, and love the Divine within them. By manifesting Black Girl Divine Love and acknowledging the internal worlds of Black girls as sources of deep spiritual knowings, we generate implications for the ways those in community with Black girls - including school and community educators - can protect, nurture, and care for Black Girl Divine Love alongside ways to remind Black girls of all faiths and shapes to love the way sacredness abides in them.

Authors

• Amber Chevaughn Johnson, University of Maryland

• Alexis Morgan Young, Michigan State University

• Jennifer Danridge Turner, University of Maryland