Returning Home: Unlocking Our Black Girlhood Stories Through Movement as Freedom

• In Event: The Language of Black Girls' Love Lessons: Black Girls’ Teachings on Love Through Literacy

Abstract

As two Black women education scholars, we draw inspiration from hooks' (2000) profound understanding that love starts with self-love, allowing us to extend love to others more deeply. Through our role in supporting, coaching, and teaching Black girl gymnasts and dancers, we confront our own childhood experiences in these sports, and how they shape our commitment towards liberatory pedagogy both inside and outside the classroom. To pay homage to our inner Black girls, we draw from hooks' words to write a love letter to our youthful, joyous, and determined selves. To grapple with contested spaces, we weave vignettes that illuminate the pervasive presence of anti-Blackness in our sporting experiences. We offer counter-narratives that showcase our resistance against harmful norms, including Eurocentric standards for feminine beauty and athleticism, emphasizing freedom and liberation as guiding principles in our pedagogy today. We return home (Sankofa), or back to Blackness, by threading together themes from our childhood stories – hair, body, and music – as forms of resistance, resilience, and expression of love for ourselves and the Black girls we learn with. To conclude, we engage in a movement activity that encourages freedom in the body, followed by reflective questions to further process liberatory movement as a practice of love.

Authors

• Tamara Moten, University of Georgia

• Cierra Kaler-Jones, Rethinking Schools