Lessons in Love, Literacy, and Listening: Reflections on Learning With and From Black Female Youth

• In Event: When Mentoring Is Method: Exploring Spirituality, Black/Endarkened Feminisms, and Relationship in Black Girls Lives

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to emphasize the role of listening in a research-based discussion group comprised of Black female youth and adult women. Because the intended purpose of these weekly discussions was to read, write, and speak about the lived experiences of young Black women, listening became an essential component in developing and deepening the relationships and love (hooks, 2001) between the researcher and her Black female youth research participants. In this paper, the author reframes traditional notions of mentoring from teaching and telling to listening and learning (Meier, 1996; Schultz, 2003) and examines the implications for those working closely with Black female youth. The author will draw on Schultz’s (2003) conception of listening as a central act of teaching, learning, and transformation that is also akin to the mentoring relationship that evolved between the researcher and these young women. Additionally, the author will draw upon Black and endarkened feminist frameworks (Collins, 2009; Dillard, 2006) in order to speak to the ways in which race and gender also shape how listening was conceptualized and used within this group. This presentation includes data from a year-long qualitative study that explored the lives and literacies of young Black females. During this time, the researcher met with a group of young women on a weekly basis to read, write, and speak about issues that are of most concern for them including their relationships, school experiences, future goals, and identities. Although, the researcher facilitated each of these discussions/activities, topics were driven by what arose from the weekly sessions and/or what interested the girls. Based on these discussions/activities, this paper will further explore how the dynamic between the researcher and her participants shifted in order to facilitate a broader understanding of mentoring and the identities of Black girls. Qualitative data sources included: Field notes in a research journal, video-taped recordings of weekly meetings, one-on-one interviews with participants, and writings by the participants. Preliminary analyses suggest that listening became a pathway toward collective healing (hooks, 1993), reshaping the notion of mentoring as a recursive, give-and-take process between the researcher and participants. The preliminary findings of this paper offer new understandings of the mentoring relationship as more dialogic than pedagogic and involving collective transformation of identities and self for the participants and the researcher. These findings are also significant in that they demonstrate how listening to and learning from Black girls becomes one way of centering their lives, beliefs, and voices within academic research and within our classrooms.

Author

• Erica Nicole Womack, The Ohio State University