Black Queer Youths’ Invitations to Researcher Self-Revelation

• In Event: “We are not a monolith”: Expanding Blackness Through the Intersections

Abstract

This paper emerges from data collected in a comparative case study (CCS; Bartlett & Vavrus, 2016) featuring semi-structured interviews with six Black queer youth; these conversations traced their lived experiences and agency in and outside their schools. In this work, I consider vulnerable storytelling and self-revelation as relational acts of dissolution where the boundaries between researcher and researched begin to blur, opening portals for self-reflection and recollection. Specifically, I highlight questions the youth asked me, and how these invited me to articulate my identities and histories. In this way, they opened pathways for an intergenerational dialogue where we could learn about and from each other, simultaneously preserving our life stories and documenting the Black queer relationality we cultivated together.

Author

• Mara D. Johnson, University of Michigan