Black Feminist Practitioner Research Alongside Black Girls: Generating Knowledge Together About Love Through Our Literacies as a Remedy for Racism

• In Event: How Out-of-School-Time Spaces Are (or Are Not) Serving Marginalized Communities

Abstract

This paper centers the collaborative inquiry and knowledge generation of high-school-aged Black girls in an out of school inquiry group as part of a larger dissertation study about literacies and love. I pose the question, “what happens when we come together to read, write, and talk about self-love?” Using a Black feminist practitioner research framework, I draw from student artifacts and conversations with the girls and other educator-researchers, privileging their epistemologies, to answer the question. Findings include the diverse ways in which familial relationships and power dynamics mediated the girls’ understanding and practice of love. These insights serve as principles in these times when too often schooling and research is often devoid of love.

Author

• Barrett Rosser, Morgan State University