Grieving Labor: Curating a Public Image in the Aftermath of Youth Homicide

• In Event: Benevolent Harm: Survival in the Shadow of Institutional Regimes of Care

Abstract

On September 24, 2009 sixteen-year-old, Derrion Albert, was beaten to death while walking home from school. Footage of the melee was captured on a bystander’s cellphone, who sold the video to news outlets where it was circulated widely. As the murder grew into a national spectacle, Anjanette, Derrion’s mother was called upon to grieve publicly so as to prove her son’s innocence. Drawing from six years of ethnographic fieldwork, I analyze Anjanette experience as a case study of what I term Grieving labor--the uncompensated carework Black mothers bare in the aftermath of their child’s murder.

Presenter

• Ina Marie Kelleher, University of California-Berkeley