Transgressngroove: an exploration of black girlhood, the body, and education

Blackgirls have recently begun to receive focused attention in the discipline of education.Usually, we are compared to our White female or Black male counterparts and/or located within frameworks designed without our bodies and realities considered. Failure to recognize the simultaneity of race and gender operating in the lives of Blackgirls results in a reduction of our livelihood into gender and/or race narratives void of our specific experiences. Alongside the diminution is the unfair reading of Black femininity through lenses of Whiteness, White femininity, and Black masculinity. Attune to how Blackness and femininity differentially mark Black female bodies and the scant documentation of how we make meaning of our experiences, this auto/ethnography interrogates the dialectical between culture, the Black female body, and Black girlhood. This study foregrounds Black female bodies; mine particularly, to illumine the schooling and educational experiences of Blackgirls. It names silence, stereotyping, and shame as trends of Black girlhood and documents how they play out in Blackgirls’ and Black women’s lives. In contrast. body-activation, voice-instigation, and imagining emerged as tools for resisting, healing, and counteracting the aforementioned trends. Venturing into three community spaces—academe, Blackgirls, and my family—that reveal a feminist, body-centered praxis, transgressngroove. As a process-oriented investigation this study’s contributions highlight Black feminist (and Black girl) ways of knowing (in education), expands the budding area of Black Girlhood Studies and narratives, and introduces a praxis that mobilizes vulnerability to facilitate self-aware and body activated educational experiences