"Getting Lost in Stars and Glitter": Black Girls' Multimodal Literacies as Portals to New Suns

• In Event: Freedom Dreaming: Black and Latinx Youths' Multimodal Compositions of Future Selves and Literacies

Abstract

Using a framework rooted in radical hope (Furrow & Furrow, 2007) and building on Octavia Butler’s (1993, 1999) Black girl-centered and prophetic science fiction writing through the Parable trilogy, this paper will explore the ways one Black girl, Seraphina, used her multimodal literacies (Author 5, 2020; Street, 2005) to explore the liminal space between pessimism and optimism sustained by ongoing encounters with a white supremacist heteropatriarchy and with histories of continued survival and the creation of joy beauty, art and magic by Black women and girls in spite of it. The data examined here, including fieldnotes, semi-structured interviews, and written and artistic artifacts, was engendered in an afterschool writing community built in partnership with middle school girls of Color. This presentation will narrate the ways Seraphina used literacies to create future imaginings of the worlds she deserved, fueled by entanglements of pessimism and optimism rooted in lived experiences and raced-gendered creative power (Anzaldúa, 2015), creating images of herself and the future. Seraphina, used her literacies to confront reality, what exists under this earthly sun for her, and, in turn, also imagines and shares a new world, under a new sun, built for and by Black girls.

Authors

• Grace D. Player, University of Connecticut - Storrs

• Oluwaseun Animashaun, Teachers College, Columbia University