Unspeakable: A Critical & Conceptual Collaboration to Unveil Black Cognitive Joy

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Radical Youth Literacies: Black Resistance, Disability, and Liberation

Abstract

Black Cognitive Joy (BCJ) offers a necessary and refreshing reframe of how joy, culture, and cognition show up in the lives of Black students. Rooted in communalism, collective identity, and Sankofa, learning from the past to shape the future, BCJ names the cultural pride, flexible thinking, and emotional resonance that emerge when Black learners are affirmed. Drawing from classroom interactions at an African-centered school, this paper illustrates how students engage deeply as they move between play and academic rigor, laughter and reflection. Their joy is not incidental; it is central. BCJ pushes beyond traditional measures to show how joy becomes a cognitive resource—shaping identity, expanding capacity, and sustaining Black students in culturally grounded and collectively held ways.

Author

• Karina Forsythe-Cummings, University of Michigan