The Sankofa Writing Method and Philadelphia Community Youth Court: A Narrative Framework for Restorative Change

• In Event: Ancestral Futures: Sankofa, Afrofuturism, and Black Educational Imagination

Abstract

This conceptual paper examines the integration of the Sankofa Writing Method (SWM) a culturally sustaining, decolonial storytelling framework within the Philadelphia Community Youth Court (PCYC), a community-based, youth-led restorative justice initiative. Rooted in Afro-Indigenous and Afrofuturist methodologies, SWM reclaims collective memory, confronts cultural trauma, and imagines liberated futures through structured narrative recovery. By centering youth voice, agency, and healing, this paper proposes a replicable, trauma-informed method to transform school community justice practices. Grounded in restorative justice and narrative repair, the SWM–PCYC collaboration challenges carceral logic and promotes narrative accountability as collective care. Applications illustrate how writing and storytelling can create liberatory, non-carceral educational spaces, contributing to qualitative education research that is both historically responsive and future forming.

Authors

• Ayana T. Hardaway, Stanford University

• Francine Hardaway, Philadelphia Community Youth Court