“Dreamland”

Black Girls Saying and Creating Space through Fantasy Worlds

in Girlhood Studies
Author:
S.R. Toliver University of Colorado Boulder, USA Stephanie.Toliver@Colorado.edu

Search for other papers by S.R. Toliver in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3397-252X
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2022.150103
Keywords:
Black girl cartography; Black girlhood; Black ratchet imagination; saying space; social geography; speculative fiction
Restricted access
USD  $22.00
Click here to view the full Terms and Conditions

All currencies in US Dollar

PayPal Logo

Abstract

The rampant murder of Black women and girls in the United States proves that this place is not safe for them. In fact, it is questionable whether any space currently known can be safe when antiblackness and misogynoir are interwoven into the fabric of our world. For this reason, researchers must explore the unbound landscapes Black girls create for themselves in fantastic narratives. In this article, I examine the fantasy short stories of two Black middle school girls who participated in a writing workshop to explore how they resisted spatial control by creating new worlds they had the power to construct and dismantle.

Contributor Notes

S.R. Toliver (ORCID: 0000-0003-3397-252X) is an assistant professor of literacy and secondary humanities at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her scholarship centers the freedom dreams of Black youth and honors the historical legacy that Black imaginations have had and will have on social change. She is the author of Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research: Endarkened Storywork (2022). Email: Stephanie.Toliver@Colorado.edu

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Cover Girlhood Studies
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
17
Keywords:
Black girl cartography; Black girlhood; Black ratchet imagination; saying space; social geography; speculative fiction
Print Publication Date:
01 Mar 2022
Online Publication Date:
01 Mar 2022
Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022

  • Adomako, Andrea. 2018. “Reimagining Black Girlhood: Literary and Digital Self-Representation.” National Political Science Review 19 (2): 11–20.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bell, Karen. New Georgia Encyclopedia (Rev. ed.), s.v. “Atlantic Slave Trade to Savannah.” Athens: New Georgia Encyclopedia, (2002) 2020.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bledsoe, Adam. 2019. “The Primacy of Anti-Blackness.” Area 52 (3): 472–479. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12599

  • Bledsoe, Adam, and Willie Jamaal Wright. 2019. “The Pluralities of Black Geographies.” Antipode 51 (2): 419–437. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12467

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Brown, Nadia E., and Lisa Young. 2017. “Ratchet Politic: Moving beyond Black Women's Bodies to Indict Institutions and Structures.” In Broadening the Contours in the Study of Black Politics: Citizenship and Popular Culture, ed. Michael Mitchell and David Covin, 45–56. London: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Brown, Ruth Nicole. 2013. Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

  • Browne, Simone. 2012. “Everybody's Got a Little Light under the Sun: Black Luminosity and the Visual Culture of Surveillance.” Cultural Studies 26 (4): 542–564. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.644573

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Butler, Tamara T. 2018. “Black Girl Cartography: Black Girlhood and Place-Making in Education Research.” Review of Research in Education 42 (1): 28–45. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X18762114

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Carababas, Elizabeth. 2015. “Integration in Savannah High School for the Georgia Historical Society.” https://elizabethcarababas.com/integration-in-savannah-high-school_georgia-historical-society

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Cooper, Brittany. 2012. “(Un)clutching My Mother's Pearls, or Ratchetness and the Residue of Respectability.” The Crunk Feminist Collection, 31 December. http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2012/12/31/unclutching-my-mothers-pearls-or-ratchetness-and-the-residue-of-respectability/

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Elwood, Sarah. 2021. “Digital Geographies, Feminist Relationality, Black and Queer Code Studies: Thriving Otherwise.” Progress in Human Geography 45 (2): 209–228. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519899733

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Forman, Murray. 2000. “‘Represent’: Race, Space and Place in Rap Music.” Popular Music 19 (1): 65–90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000000015

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Garner, Porshé R., Dominique C. Hill, Jessica L. Robinson, and Durell M. Callier. 2019. “Uncovering Black Girlhood(s): Black Girl Pleasures as Anti-Respectability Methodology.” American Quarterly 71 (1): 191–197. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2019.0012

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Halliday, Aria S. 2019. “Introduction.” In The Black Girlhood Studies Collection, ed. Aria S. Halliday, 1–20. Toronto, ON, Canada: Women's Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hill, Dominique C. 2019. “Blackgirl, One Word: Necessary Transgressions in the Name of Imagining Black Girlhood.” Cultural Studies — Critical Methodologies 19 (4): 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616674994

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hines-Datiri, Dorothy, and Dorinda J. Carter Andrews. 2020. “The Effects of Zero Tolerance Policies on Black Girls: Using Critical Race Feminism and Figured Worlds to Examine School Discipline.” Urban Education 55 (10): 1419–1440. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085917690204

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Jenkins, DeMarcus A. 2021. “Unspoken Grammar of Place: Anti-Blackness as a Spatial Imaginary in Education.” Journal of School Leadership 31 (1/2): 107–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052684621992768

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kelley, Robin D. G. 2002. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press.

  • Kelly, Lauren Leigh. 2018. “A Snapchat Story: How Black Girls Develop Strategies for Critical Resistance in School.” Learning, Media and Technology 43 (4): 374–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Love, Bettina L. 2017. “A Ratchet Lens: Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop, and the Black Ratchet Imagination.” Educational Researcher 46 (9): 539–547. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17736520

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McEachern, Montinique Denice. 2017. “Respect My Ratchet: The Liberatory Consciousness of Ratchetness.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 6 (3): 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2017.6.3.78

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McKittrick, Katherine. 2006. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Moore, Nathan Alexander. 2017. “An Ode to Wildseeds: Black Girls, Creativity, and the Making of Freedom.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 6 (3): 98–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2017.6.3.98

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Morris, Monique W. 2016. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. New York: The New Press.

  • Payne, Ashley N. 2020. “The Cardi B–Beyoncé Complex: Ratchet Respectability and Black Adolescent Girlhood.” Journal of Hip Hop Studies 7 (1): 26–43. https://doi.org/10.34718/pxew-7785

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Pickens, Therí A. 2015. “Shoving aside the Politics of Respectability: Black Women, Reality TV, and the Ratchet Performance.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 25 (1): 41–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2014.923172

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rary, Kristen. 2021. “Protestors March through Downtown Savannah in Reaction to Violence in Gaza.” WTOC, 15 May. https://www.wtoc.com/2021/05/15/protestors-march-through-downtown-savannah-reaction-violence-gaza/

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Reese, Ashanté M. 2019. Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Russell, Clare. 2012. “Upheaval in Savannah: The Protest Cycle of a ‘Short’ Civil Rights Movement.” Journal of Contemporary History 47 (4): 773–792. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009412451289

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Stallings, L. H. 2013. “Hip Hop and the Black Ratchet Imagination.” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 2 (2): 135–139. https://doi.org/10.1353/pal.2013.0026

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Thomas, Ebony Elizabeth. 2019. The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York: New York University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Toliver, S. R. 2018. “Imagining New Hopescapes: Expanding Black Girls’ Windows and Mirrors.” Research on Diversity in Youth Literature 1 (1): Article 3. https://sophia.stkate.edu/rdyl/vol1/iss1/3

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 2826 1538 146
Full Text Views 185 15 0
PDF Downloads 266 29 3