Out of the Box: Countering the Silence of Black Girls With Memory-Work

• In Event: Strong Black Girls: Reclaiming Schools in Their Own Image

Abstract

This chapter is a memory-work analysis that counters stereotypical narratives in schools that silence and misrepresent Black girlhood and womanhood. The author intersects tenets of critical race theory and Black feminist thought to join Black girls’ counternarratives against misrepresented stories of Black girlhood and womanhood. In the author’s analysis of a K-12 school memory, she examines how Black girls endure forced silence in classrooms and how Black girls utilize silence as a coping mechanism for stereotypes, microaggressions, and misrepresentations of their girlhood. Using the author’s written memory cue of a fifth-grade school experience, she engages in the three phases of memory-work analysis. From histories of forced silence as girls, deliberate silence is a strategy and coping mechanism of Black girls and women in schools. This chapter demonstrates the importance of deconstructing negative school experiences to inform the ways in which Black girls and women work with these experiences in institutional settings such as classrooms and schools. These memories offer generational healing and guidance that reach Black girls who feel that their silence is more accepted than their voice. As Black women continue to construct their narratives with experiential knowledge, counter-storytelling, and memory-work analysis, this work exemplifies how Black girls and women lift themselves from boxes of stereotypes that attempt to write their girlhood experiences for them.

Author

• Asia Thomas