Homosocial Spaces and the Negotiation of Black Male Masculinities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Facets of Identity: African American Stakeholders Constructing Subjectivities

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the non-sexual social bonds of three preadolescent African American males. The social literacy case studies, reveal the discursive ways the boys produce and were produced by neighborhood contexts and wider societal influences and ideologies of Black masculinity. The author highlights three themes: culturally relevant caring practices and relations, storytelling as salve, and creative expressions of brotherhood. The author concludes by arguing that the homosocial space and social narratives reveal complex cartographies of emotion navigated by young Black males. The author argues further that many of the literacies performed within the homosocial spaces were asset based (Paris, 2012) literacies that can enrich understandings of how to nurture the lives and literacies of young Black males.

Author

• Roberta Price Gardner, Georgia State University