"Let's Start a Movement!" Girls of Color Building Liberatory Political Author/ity Through Lovetelling as Pedagogy

• In Event: Examining Girlhood Across Contexts

Abstract

I examine how Black, Latinx, and Polynesian girls in a high school after-school space (“Critical Feminisms Club”) in the California Bay Area engaged in what I term “lovetelling.” Lovetelling is collaborative storytelling that generatively engages one’s intimate lived experiences as a pedagogical means to affectively build deeper connections with others. I contend that the girls were able to build an increasingly powerful liberatory political author/ity through lovetelling. That is, they developed relationships with each other that supported them in developing the influence (i.e. power) to collaboratively author and (re)write stories of themselves and others (i.e. author/ity). They did so in the interest of transforming the politics of the people and institutions that circumscribed their lives and possibilities.

Author

• Casey Philip Wong, University of California - Los Angeles