Black Girls Experiencing Their Intersectional Identities in School

Black Girls Experiencing Their Intersectional Identities in School explores the subjective experience of Black girls within the educational context. Based on interviews, diary entries, and focus groups, the author argues that as a result of their intersectional identities, Black girls experience unique challenges and obstacles in the educational setting. Addressing topics ranging from interpersonal relationships, social media, beauty, sexuality, hypervisibility/invisibility, and microaggressions, this book highlights the voices and experiences of Black girls between the ages of 11 and 15. The Girls provide a narrative account of the challenges they face daily in the educational context, describing in detail, the factors that maintain and perpetuate volatile conditions. Additionally, this book explores the coping strategies that this group of Black girls developed to resist and respond to the daily obstacles. Ultimately, this book not only identifies the unique struggles faced by Black girls in schools as a result of their intersectional identities; but most importantly, this work explores pragmatic strategies that can be implemented to create safe and beneficial spaces for Black Girls. The author argues that through the implementation of Black Feminist Pedagogy, an “Ethic of Caring,” and partnerships with Black Girl Empowerment organizations, educational practitioners can mediate the negative experiences and create spaces for growth.

Black Girls Experiencing Their Intersectional Identities in School: A Her-Story comes at a pivotal moment when attacks and microaggressions against black girls have been made irrevocably public. From classroom assaults, to over-policing black girls for swimming while black, to receiving disciplinary action for being our beautiful, natural and nappy selves—the resilient voices of young, gifted, and black girls are pushed forth in meaningful scholarship that can help us all to better negotiate the troubled water of raced and gendered spaces. With recent reports that black girls and women are the most educated demographic in the United States, the work done by Crystal L. Edwards is invaluable in understanding the psycho-social journey of black girls through the educational pipeline. It is well-researched, thoughtful scholarship that adds another layer of sophistication to the black feminist intellectual tradition, but beyond that it is work that declares, unapologetically, that black girls’ experiences matter and that many of us are, in fact, paying attention.

Crystal L. Edwards is a visiting professor at the University of Houston.