Black Girl Love in the Time of Isolation

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

Abstract

In her book All About Love (2000), bell hooks offers up a strategy for mitigating isolation: love. hooks views love as an antidote to disconnection, loneliness, and invisibility, which is often overlooked, dismissed, or villainized in school spaces. In this paper we explore how adolescent Black girls engage in expressions of love through words and actions in peak times of physical, social, and emotional isolation in their schools. One context we analyze is the public education experiences of middle school Black girls living in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States in the time of COVID-19. Another context we analyze is the daily isolation experienced by high school Black girls who attend predominantly white independent schools. Using hooks’ description of genuine love, which is “a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, and respect” (p. 7-8), we highlight how adolescent Black girls in these two different school settings demonstrate genuine love through: 1) their care for one another, 2) their commitment to supporting each other, and 3) the knowledge they create together stemming from their shared experiences. Through this qualitative analysis, we invite educators, practitioners, scholars, and researchers to reimagine the function of love in schools and call them to action in cultivating spaces that prioritize loving Black girls.

Authors

• Charlotte E Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania

• Heather Hairston, American Univeristy