Centering Black mothers’ stories for critical literacies

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to mine Black mothers’ stories to highlight the critical literacy work they do for themselves and their daughters, to change stereotypic views of them, and to illuminate how they negotiate intersectional structures such as gender, sexuality, race and class practice, to sustain and uplift them.

Design/methodology/approach

To generate a mother’s narrative, the author asked the following research question: What do you think Black girls need in an afterschool club or in education, or in general?

Findings

The author found that the mother’s narrative could be productively contextualized within a reproductive justice framework which gave insights into the mother’s experiences of multiple and simultaneous oppressions which aligned with her social identities with regard to race, class, gender and sexuality. These experiences in turn informed her critical literacies of Black motherhood and girlhood. The author found the system of white heteropatriarchal capitalism, through the privatization of public goods and the lack of adequate social services penalizes Black working mothers and obstructs their ability to mother their children adequately.

Research limitations/implications

Critical literacies of Black motherhood and girlhood should be harnessed for holistic approaches to the literacy education of Black girls, with a focus on improving their life outcomes, enhancing potential for them to realize their gifts, and ending the many forms of violence against them.

Originality/value

Centering the voices of Black mothers as critical literacy education has the potential to thwart oppressive reproductive politics and practices and promote social justice.

Citation

Richardson, E. (2019), "Centering Black mothers’ stories for critical literacies", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 21-33. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-05-2019-0078