(W)rites of Passage: Black Girls’ Journaling and Podcast Script Writing as Counter-Narratives

• In Event: Black Girls and Women Recalling, Resisting, and Reclaiming Self Through Multimodal Composing

Abstract

Situated in an out-of-school writing program, this inquiry centers on Black girls’ lived experiences as digital users and content creators. It is grounded in understanding how Black girls’ intersecting gendered and raced identities position them at the margins of society. This inquiry is two-pronged, highlighting how digital platforms (1) are steeped in anti-Blackness, including colorism, texturism, and featurism toward Black girls (rites of passage), and (2) serve as emancipatory spaces for Black girls to counter dominant narratives of Black girlhood (w)rites of passage). In this study, the author illustrates two Black girls enacting their writes of passage using journal writing and script writing to develop a collaborative podcast, Hair Me!: Black Girls’ Chronicles that counters dominant narratives and centers their experiences. Black Girls’ Digital Literacies was employed to center Black girls' racialized and gendered identities to engage them in multimodal, equity-based pedagogies (Greene, 2016; Muhammad & Haddix, 2016; Muhammad & Womack, 2015; Price-Dennis, 2016; Turner & Griffin, 2020). Employing Black Girls’ Digital Literacies framing, the author facilitates critical conversations prompting Black girls to reflect on their individual experiences and the broader collective Black girl experiences in developing their podcast. Through facilitation, the author provides multimodal pedagogies for literacy teachers in urban secondary contexts. In keeping with the conference theme, this paper illustrates the racial injustice Black girls experience in digital spaces and the critical conversations literacy teachers can facilitate to empower them to speak back through journaling, podcast scriptwriting, and podcasting.

Author

• Delicia Tiera Greene, University at Albany - SUNY