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Introoduction
- University of Illinois Press
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Introduction The vision: Black girlhood is freedom, and Black girls are free. As an organizing construct, Black girlhood makes possible the affirmation of Black girls’ lives and, if necessary, their liberation. Black girlhood as a spatial intervention is useful for making our daily lives better and therefore changing the world as we currently know it. Love guides our actions and permeates our beings. For those who do not know love, we create spaces to practice Black girlhood and sense love, to name it, claim it, and share it. What we know, what we say, our process, and what we make is of value, especially if it surfaces in unexpected forms. The space is specific enough that Black girls recognize it as theirs. The making of the space is collective and creative; uncertainty and complexity motivate, and revolutionary action is the goal. To inspire greater visions of Black girlhood than I could dream of alone, I suggested Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, affectionately known throughout this book by the acronym SOLHOT. SOLHOT is a space to envision Black girlhood critically among and with Black girls, who, it seems to me, are often the people least guaranteed to be centered as valuable in collective work and social movements that they could very well lead and organize. This book is about SOLHOT as a particular methodology of creating spaces to practice and enact a visionary Black girlhood. Whether the vision is simply stated as the celebrationofBlackgirlhoodinallofitscomplexity,orrevisedandelongatedas statedaboveintheopeningparagraph,SOLHOTasutopia,SOLHOTasdismal failure, and SOLHOT as mostly everything in between is about foregrounding complexity in collective and creative work with Black girls and women. SOLHOT is a small but important work that points to larger realizations about the artistic imaginations of Black girls and women, systemic violence and persistent inequality, and also the possibilities of social change ignited, for example, by a poem written by someone who claims not to be a poet, new organizing principles shaped by skeptics who have been Black women harmed by previous organizations, and, of course, a visionary Black girlhood that means freedom. More often than not, when SOLHOT shows up, they, we, have never seen anything like it, like us, being ourselves; and what we learn in and out of sacred time, practice, and relationship is that we are certainly worth our own liberation. SOLHOT reveals that our commitment to the practice of Black girlhood is incredibly imperative, and when we own our shine and feel compelled to share it, we feel free and affirmed. SOLHOT as a means of loving Black girls, loving ourselves, and valuing our interdependence embodies the very best principles of organizing, the very best principles of education, and the very best principles of living well. The following questions guide my vision for Black girlhood as practiced in SOLHOT and also motivated me to write this book: What is necessary to imagine Black girlhood as a space of freedom? What would need to be abolished and created to enact such a vision of Black girlhood? Who would commit to such an idea? How do Black girls experience affirmation, and how does it feel, to them, to be free? How is this vision of Black girlhood useful for Black girls and women? What is so specific about practicing Black girlhood that the process is able to lead to something beyond the world as we currently know it? What does this vision of Black girlhood look like in practice, and what new knowledge emerges that may then be useful for and benefit everyone? “At the end of the day” may be an overused cliché, except when spoken by a Black girl. In SOLHOT, I have learned that the words “at the end of the day” preface Black girls’ truths, the kind of truth telling Audre Lorde (1984b) insisted is made possible when silence is transformed into language and action. At the end of the day, even as we toddle into another millennium, structural conditions shaped by sociohistorical forces continue to perpetuate injury, hurt, and harm in the lives of Black girls even as they continue to find practical ways to deal, cope, and resist (Ladner, 1995). Ask the beautiful Black girl in Minneapolis whose teacher turned the lie “You will never amount to anything” into a pedagogical practice; remember all of the Black women and girls who died prematurely with the circumstances of their deaths too often unknown and unresolved; know that quite a few girls, too many to be acceptable, are brilliant yet routinely disciplined...