Offering 4: Inventing New Worlds: Channeling Black Girl Aesthetic & Imagination

• In Event: Adorning Futures: Embodied Aesthetics as Lived Curricula for Unforgetting and Futuring Education

Abstract

In her conversation with artist Alison Saar, bell hooks (1994) speaks to the radical power of imagination as a site of resistance, memory and renewal: “There is in each of us and in the objects that surround us a place of primal memory. I believe that we have memories that extend beyond what we have consciously experienced. That we carry within us ancestral memory.” This understanding of memory and creation sits at the heart of the process that girls in The Breedlove Readers program engage when making meaning of their experiences and the ways in which they see the world around them.
Over the past four years, The Breedlove Readers literacy initiative has facilitated nine cohorts of young readers, creatives and writers who explore literature as a mirror and a portal. Within this communal space, imagination emerges as a vital practice -- one that allows Black girls to tap into memory and ritual – not only as something inherited but as something they actively shape and extend. Here, imagination becomes a method of survival and dreaming: a way to (re)member fractured stories, see beyond imposed limitations, and envision expansive futures for themselves and their communities. Author 2 (2022) names this ability to perform, interrogate, and make meaning as an embodied literacy and knowledge.
We know that literacy has always been connected to social justice and change for the rights of humanity yet, within dominant educational discourse, literacy is too often reduced to a fixed skillset measured by reading and writing competencies alone (Morrell, 2008). The Breedlove Readers disrupts this narrow framing by cultivating what Rolling (2015) describes as creative literacy -- an arts-based, multiliterate practice where imagination and memory are central to meaning-making. In this framework, Black girls are not simply acquiring literacy skills; they are engaging in cultural production that draws upon ancestral knowledge and Black aesthetic traditions. This paper centers the creative works of participants in Cohort 8 of The Breedlove Readers, highlighting how they use storytelling, visual arts, and collaborative dialogue to engage cultural memory (Assmann, 2011; hooks, 1994) and youth imaginary as acts of resistance and ritual. Through these practices, the girls reimagine themselves and their communities, challenging systems of domination while envisioning more just and liberated futures.
This paper contributes to ongoing conversations in literacy research, Black feminist thought, and arts-based educational practice by centering the imaginative and memory-driven literacies of Black girls. By examining the creative works and collective processes of The Breedlove Readers, I illuminate how literacy and arts-based practice can function as a site of healing, resistance, and future-making rather than a fixed set of competencies. Ultimately, this work urges educators, researchers, and community practitioners to design and sustain learning environments that center the imaginative capacities and memory-rich literacies of Black girls, enabling them to critically engage and reshape the educational and communal spaces they navigate.

Author

• Courtney Mauldin-Jones, Syracuse University