Methodological Considerations for Endarkened Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

This article extends the previous conversation around endarkened narrative inquiry, a culturally situated approach informed by Black feminist thought, womanism, endarkened feminist epistemology, and narrative inquiry. In this article, we reclaim narrative in the context of a methodological process that centers Black women-centric ontoepistemologies, informed by theoretical perspectives and existing literature, to focus on Black women’s ways of storying their lives. We also discuss the creation of wisdom whisper as a methodological consideration for data collection. Finally, we reflect on the methodological mentoring and negotiations that took place to culturally situate this methodology and offer a method of inquiry aligned with a Blackness-centered framework of analysis.

Keywords

wisdom whisper endarkened narrative inquiry spirituality

This article is a collaboration between two authors who were formerly a dissertation advisee and advisor. We exist in community as friends and cocreators. Keondria identifies as a woman from the African diaspora. She graduated with a PhD in adult learning and leadership and her research focuses on older Black women and their psychosocial development, explicitly centering on Black women’s wisdom from their lived experiences.

Kakali identifies as a woman from the South Asian diaspora and has been working as a qualitative methodologist for almost 16 years. Her mentoring philosophy centers on the mentee’s situated understanding of their life experiences and cultural and other identities. She encourages her students to be as expansive, creative, critical, and generative as they wish, without imposing limits, recognizing that multiply marginalized scholars might find certain traditional approaches incompatible with culturally situated ontoepistemologies.

We discuss the methodological mentoring and negotiation that occurred as the authors came together to develop endarkened narrative inquiry (ENI), a culturally situated methodology, and wisdom whisper, a method of inquiry aligned with a Blackness-centered framework of analysis. We extend our initial conversation on ENI (McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021) to offer wisdom whisper conversations as a methodological consideration for data collection when engaging in work with Black women. Therefore, the writing of this article will depart from some conventional traditions.

Where possible, Keondria will speak with citations; where necessary, she will speak from embodied, communal, and cultural understandings or draw on methodological moves aligned with the tenets of Black feminist thought (Collins, 2000), without reference to citational authority, to justify her embodied experiences. In a previous publication (McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021), these tenets have been elaborated thoroughly and grounded in the experiences of the cocreators in an ENI study. In the following section, Keondria offers abbreviated descriptions of the thematic tenets of ENI to foreground methods of inquiry aligned with these tenets.

Framing Culturally Situated Inquiry

In qualitative inquiry, the few methodologists of color in the field are often marginalized and/or tokenized. Moreover, students have limited resources with which to consider how to engage methodologically within a culturally situated inquiry. Examples of theorization and analysis from culturally grounded perspectives exist, but traditional, culturally distant methods of empiricism are rampant in dominant discourses in qualitative inquiry.

For example, narrative inquiry is a storytelling methodology but does not offer the nuance and cultural responsiveness necessary to highlight stories of Black women’s experiences. Nor do methods of data collection or analysis credit or center storytelling as a cultural construct of various non-Western civilizations. For example, Natyashastra, an Indian storytelling framework, is virtually absent from the dominant discourse of narrative inquiry, except in a few instances where scholars of color have used it (Martin, 2021).

Many scholars have centered Black women’s narratives (Etter-Lewis, 1993; Evans-Winters, 2019; Harris, 2015; hooks, 2000; Johnson-Bailey, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995), but the methodological framing of narrative inquiry creates a need for more space-making to advance the knowledge of multiply minoritized scholars. In this article, we reclaim narrative in the context of a methodological process that privileges Black women-centric ontoepistemologies informed by theoretical perspectives and existing literature to focus on Black women’s ways of storying their lives.

ENI grew from Keondria’s interest in Black women-centric ontoepistemologies. In her dissertation, she set out to understand Black women’s negotiations of sexuality and spirituality in relation to various informal learning constructs (McClish, 2018). Specifically, the research questions were as follows:

Research Question 1: What are the ways in which the participants describe their sexuality?

Research Question 2: What are the ways in which the participants describe their spirituality?

Research Question 3: In what ways, if any, do the participants relate their sexuality with their spirituality?

Research Question 4: In what ways, if any, do the participants attribute informal learning experiences to their sexuality as informed by their spirituality?

In this study, ENI¹ was presented as three theoretical constructs that could inform Black women-centric narrative inquiry. This article extends the previous work by offering empirical applications of ENI (McClish, 2018; McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021).

Following the tradition of dominant discourses in qualitative research, initially, Keondria’s first instinct was to hold focus groups to explore how older Black women negotiated their understanding of sexuality and spirituality through informal learning environments. However, that approach seemed culturally incongruent with the ways the Black women in her study would naturally engage with each other. Kakali asked Keondria, “What would it look like if you just wanted to learn from the cocreators, instead of collecting data? How would you engage them if you did not have an academic gun pointed at you?”

This notion of being at gunpoint denotes the violence with which we must contend in academia, specifically as women of color, where our culturally congruent ways of knowing and being are erased, delegitimized, or dismissed as backward. Depending on the severity of one’s disruptiveness, the interlocked power structures of academia activate a system of surveillance, discipline, and punishment. The mere act of imagination without such power structures is an act of resistance and freedom-oriented thinking.

Within qualitative research, the need to collect rich, thick, descriptive data from narratives relegates cocreators to the status of repositories from which data must be extracted, analyzed, and represented to an audience. Given that qualitative research is a predominantly White discipline (based on the key textbook authors and the countries in which most qualitative research is published), privileging, centering, and normalizing White scholarship is ubiquitous. The empirical application of ENI encompasses a commitment to culturally responsive discourse and analysis for the communities and people with whom we engage. Integrating these moves with Black women’s storytelling disrupts dehumanizing practices and shifts our posture and ontoepistemologies as justice-oriented Black and Brown researchers.

In response to Kakali’s questions, Keondria considered how she might engage cultural elders in the community beyond the guidelines of academia. We agreed that Black women elders are not data repositories and we need to frame their storied lives in culturally situated and dignified ways. ENI offers such a Black-women-centered interconnected framing.

ENI

ENI is a methodological framework the authors constructed through improvisations (McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021) to answer Keondria’s questions. Keondria reviewed novels, novellas, and short stories by Black women (e.g., Angelou, 1969/2009; hooks, 1983; Hurston, 1937/2006; Walker, 1982) and other women of color (e.g., Bambara, 1992; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015) to identify shared themes, concepts, and literary motifs. Using a coded matrix, she organized and categorized the themes, analyzing patterns that converged and diverged, and tensions and conflicts that arose. The identified themes included elements of spirituality, family, love, pain, advice, and humor.

Throughout this process, Keondria continuously asked, “Am I missing anything?” “Are these themes present in the novels?” and “Do these themes accurately represent the Black women I know or know of?” Keondria periodically checked in with Kakali to discuss the multilayered approach and ensure that the complexity of Black women’s narratives was not reduced. Keondria identified three thematic narrative tenets: (a) life lessons on surviving and thriving as a woman, a Black person, and a Black woman; (b) spirituality as a protective barrier and source of strength; and (c) lives, dreams, and hopes deferred to stand in the shadow of our men and families.

Life Lessons on Surviving and Thriving as a Woman, a Black Person, and a Black Woman

Black women in the United States confront confounding issues of sexism and racism (hooks, 2000). Their multiply interconnected identities affect their lives differently from those of White men, White women, or Black men. For example, White women may suffer from sexism while oppressing Black women through racism, and Black men may suffer from racism while oppressing Black women through sexism, but Black women can do neither (hooks, 2000). In addition to gender and race, Black women’s realities comprise ethnicity, national origin, culture, age, sexual orientation, social class, and ability, among many other dimensions (Collins, 2000; Sheared, 1994).

Whereas all groups have unique characteristics that incorporate interconnected identities, Black women’s experiences and survival stories integrate cultural elements that are often absent, distorted, tokenized, or minimally present in dominant discourses. Although Black women may share commonalities, such as gender and skin tone, their experiences and survival stories cannot be generalized and their ontoepistemological stances cannot be homogenized into general depictions of Black womanhood. Such depictions are proffered as stereotypes and weaponized, substituting unflattering and superficial masquerades for complex embodied experiences and ancestral knowledge.

These stereotypes deny Black women’s uniqueness and diminish their societal contributions. In response, many Black women disrupt oppressive narratives and defy limiting expectations by discovering themselves more fully and healing from trauma through deep inner work. Such work may lead to discovering the empowered version of oneself celebrated in literary motifs featuring Black women and women of color (Angelou, 1969/2009, 2013; Bambara, 1992; Lorde, 2007; Taylor, 1998).

Spirituality as a Protective Barrier and Source of Strength

Spirituality is a complex construct relevant to how Black women embody and construct narratives of success, agency, and resiliency. ENI recognizes that spirituality can include and exceed organized religious beliefs. Spirituality is an individualistic practice that comprises finding purpose, wholeness, love, joy, and peace (Canda, 1988; Mattis, 2000), and may encompass a connection to a higher power (Bridges, 2001; Butler, 2013) or the feminine divine (Brooks et al., 2021).

Spirituality is also an ontoepistemic prelude to Black women’s navigation of relationships and the world. Black women are often expected to bear the burdens within and outside their communities while maintaining a resilient facade. This facade reinforces the social construction of Black womanhood (Banks, 2017) through dominant narratives characterizing Black women as tough and resilient while renouncing the traumas they endure. Such perspectives can harm Black women by encouraging them to accept unwarranted hardships in the belief that such endurance will yield eternal rewards or a better afterlife (Rutledge, 1990).

Spirituality can empower Black women as they draw strength, patience, and forgiveness while heeding their lessons (Agyepong, 2011). It provides a foundation for hope and inner peace as one grows through challenges and learns through adversity. Spiritual practices (e.g., meditation, reflection, faith rituals, and prayer) may restore hope, purge emotions, and facilitate the deep inner work of cathartic healing (Armstrong & Crowther, 2002).

Lives, Dreams, and Hopes Deferred to Stand in the Shadow of Our Men and Families

Keondria wrote this section with the utmost humility, cognizant of not contributing to the oppressive gaze seeking to further co-opt Black experiences or reduce them to mere stereotypes. Various works by Black women discuss how patriarchy plays out in Black communities and families (Franklin, 2000; hooks, 1983; Walker, 1982), but historically patriarchal expectations for Black women go beyond their roles in the Black community and families. Black women have made sacrifices to care for others, sometimes willingly and sometimes involuntarily (hooks, 1983; Walker, 1982). In light of current voting rights, civil rights, anti-brutality, and women’s rights movements, Black women remain viable and visible, sometimes while internalizing obligations or abdicating responsibility for themselves. Despite emotional, physical, and mental traumas, Black women face complex, heart-wrenching challenges to continually uplift communities and families (Douglas, 1999).

Many women of color have advanced the narratives of people of color. ENI is a piece in a larger mosaic that encompasses those who came before us and enabled us to do this work. The tenets of Black feminist thought (Collins, 1989), womanism (Phillips, 2006), endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2000), and narrative inquiry (Kim, 2016) are interwoven into the core of ENI. In the following section, we discuss methodological considerations in employing ENI.

Methodological Considerations

While highlighting the data representation process in Keondria’s dissertation (forthcoming in another publication) is beyond the scope of this article, we want to share some possibilities for data collection and analysis methods aligned with ENI (McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021). Please note that these methods are dialogic in nature. Readers are expected to create their own entry points and think expansively and generatively, so as not to be locked into restrictive or prescriptive ways of engaging Black women’s narratives. This is the first point of dialogue in which we enter humbly as learners and this article serves as a living document.

Keondria was eager to explore Black women’s engagement in intergenerational conversations as a critical qualitative research method. Scholars have documented methods, such as formal, informal, semi-structured, open, and natural conversations, to spur and engage in discussion to understand an experience (Roulston, 2010). Among Black women, these intimate dialogues among peers, girlfriends, or those of similar generations who share similar cultural experiences go by many names; for example, sister circles, girl talk, sister-to-sister talk, or kitchen table talk (Banks, 2017; Brock, 1988; Currie, 1999; Smith & Smith, 2015).

However, in intergenerational engagement as a method of inquiry, cocreators from different generational cohorts may reference different terms (Borland, 2018). Keondria and her cocreators are from different generations, and Keondria reveres these women as cultural elders. Therefore, somewhere on the continuum of inquiry lies what we termed wisdom whisper as an intergenerational engagement and inquiry method with Black women cocreators.

Generally, individuals regard elders as culture-bearers in the Black community. Many elders accept the responsibility of sharing knowledge and customs with younger generations as their elders shared with them. They recognize the importance of transmitting the cultural histories, family life, and spirituality that have sustained them as a people despite the incessant appropriation of knowledge and cultural customs through colonization. Wisdom whisper acknowledges the value of intergenerational connections and wisdom shared across generations, and captures the generations’ different understandings of language and relational terms.

Wisdom whispers emerged from Keondria’s understanding of her existing relationship with her cultural elders and the relationship she wanted to create within the culturally situated inquiry. Wisdom whispers are by invitation only because of the communal nature of these conversations, and access to them relies on reverence from both parties. Black women personify independence, strength, and resilience. Therefore, wisdom whispers may involve uncomfortable but brave conversations about navigating sexual and platonic relationships, finances, spirituality and religion, love, raising children, and reclaiming one’s time to value and honor oneself.

Keondria approached her cocreators as a humble recipient of the information they were willing to share as cultural elders. The cocreators, Viola and Pamela, were enthusiastic about this work. They offered nuggets of wisdom or essential lessons they wished to convey to other Black women, such as, “Do the work to know who you are. Know that you are enough; you are lovable, strong, resilient, and beautiful.” They spoke as if to a daughter or niece, sharing wisdom on self-perception, self-esteem, and self-respect. They wanted other Black women to know there is no shame in seeking help, mentorship, or trusting relationships with other Black women.

The tenets of voice, community, and perseverance are foundational for ENI work. Wisdom whisper is not relegated to particular domains of knowledge; the key is to remain open to other domains of knowledge that may develop through wisdom whisper conversations. These rich intergenerational interactions are reserved for protected spaces in which Black women can engage in candid and civil conversations and accept wisdom, which may lead to discovering interconnected identities and contribute to coming-of-age experiences. In this way, Black women’s narratives provide a source of empowerment and a way to construct meaning. These narratives are deeply rooted communal connections that have been cultivated throughout time. Their relational aspects acknowledge the humility required to be willing to learn from those who are cocreators and also life guides.

Wisdom whisper’s potential as a method of inquiry into Black women’s lives is influenced by numerous conversations among women of color, which are widely documented in the literature and theorized within communities of color (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015; Phillips, 2006; Smith & Smith, 2015). For example, Keondria’s grandma gave her and her female cousins sewing, cooking, cleaning, and gardening lessons during summer visits. In these treasured moments, their grandma would share nuggets of wisdom. Keondria vividly recalls her grandma telling them, “The last thing you do, when you can’t do anything else, is get married. Live your life before you get married.”

Many Black women have shared cultural and ancestral confidences for generations as a way to advance Black women’s agency and counter dominant discourse. Agency is not a single act or hierarchical order of responses to an oppressive system, but rather interconnected acts that challenge systems of subjugation and dominion (Davidson, 2019). The notions of agency, personhood, and autonomy are closely tied to the legal and political conceptions of citizenship, equality, rights, protections, and privileges that women of color have fought for diligently. Acts of resistance and enactment of agency can span a lifetime and beyond, as Black women often assert their agency for others through both public activism (e.g., Black women rallying for families who have lost children to police brutality) and everyday acts. These acts are neither unique nor extraordinary, but they lay a foundation upon which other Black women can build to express courage and assert agency.

Cocreator Profiles

The cocreators in the study were Viola and Pamela. Viola—colorful, spirited, knowledgeable, soft-spoken yet firm in her stance and beliefs—is quite active in the community and managing her design business. Hence, pinning her down for conversations was sometimes like trying to catch a butterfly. Keondria met Viola through a mutual friend, and they had spoken many times informally. When they sat down to talk about the dissertation, it felt organic, like talking with an auntie. In their first wisdom whisper, Viola gave Keondria a tour of her home, pointing out recent renovations while they discussed sorority life, upcoming travels, and Viola’s latest creative projects. The discussion soon switched to research as she was familiar with the process, having a doctorate herself.

As detailed in the following sections, Viola’s narrative integrates her parents’ legacy as she remembered the strength they instilled in her by watching and learning to fight against racial oppression, integrate spirit-driven practices in their daily lives, and remain hopeful during tough times. Viola carries these lessons with her, and we see them illustrated in her narrative as she discussed dealing with racism, psychological and suicidal distress during graduate school, divorce, and coping with the loss of her parents.

Pamela is an educator who advocates for women and children, and is a bold, witty, resilient fighter who faces challenges head-on. Pamela and Keondria crossed paths at an event where Keondria had spoken, exchanging information at Pamela’s request. Pamela was in transition and staying with a friend at the time of the wisdom whispers, so they met in the early evening at various locations, including the park or the car.

From Pamela’s narrative, Keondria understood why Pamela had a fervent passion for advocating for women and children. Through her wisdom whisper, Pamela detailed experiences of molestation, sexual abuse, and learning about an HIV/AIDS diagnosis. The human-to-human interactions she discussed contributed to Pamela’s relationship with her environment and the spirit, and aided the process of healing from old wounds while empowering the younger version of herself.

At the end of each conversation, Keondria asked Viola and Pamela whether there was anything they wanted to share that she hadn’t asked or advice they wished to pass on to other women of color. The wisdom whisper composite encapsulates these concluding narratives of wisdom. Pamela and Viola shared that what holds us back most is unforgiveness. They advised learning to forgive ourselves and others, which releases us from continually reliving the emotional hurt and trauma from poor decisions while still retaining their valuable lessons. We support Black women in discovering their strengths and tapping into their power, using it to uplift, heal, and offer other Black women that which we desire: support, knowledge, respect, and validation (McCish, 2018).

It is vital to acknowledge and revive such intergenerational guiding wisdom within the sphere of Black women’s ontoepistemologies. Wisdom whispers are interchanges among Black women who share discoveries grounded in lived experience. Such conversations acknowledge Black women’s strength, supporting empowered coming-of-age discoveries. Three tenets are foundational to wisdom whisper: relationship building, treasured elicitations as agentic participation, and spirit-integrated practices.

Relationship Building

Relationship building is key to this work as the cocreators’ and researcher’s voices are intertwined and the researcher focuses on listening and learning, not merely extracting information. Culturally situated data collection methods attend to the complexity of navigating cultural insider/outsider spaces while amplifying a sense of agency for the cocreators and researcher alike. This degree of engagement calls researchers to explore various ways of knowing and doing research while scrutinizing the epistemological, political, and ethical foundations of their work (Dillard, 2012a).

As Hurtado (2003) observed, “traditional methods alone—be they qualitative or quantitative—cannot capture the multiple realities of people who have not been studied systematically as part of building these methods” (p. 216). Therefore, the practices of “naming ourselves and . . . telling our stories in our own words” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015, p. 23) have been instrumental in advancing conversations on methods of inquiry (Bhattacharya, 2013; Hurtado, 2003; Lorde, 2007; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015). These discussions encompass the negotiations women of color engage in not only with outsiders but also within their communities and themselves.

When engaging with cultural elders, culturally situated ethics come into play. Researchers cannot anticipate what will happen as the research process unfolds. Hence, Keondria leaned on the mutual respect and kinship bond she established with the cocreators. In one instance, during the member reflections (Tracy, 2020), Pamela was taken aback by seeing her life depicted on a timeline. With evident panic, she asked, “Are you going to put all of this in there? What do my momma and all of these people have to do with my story? Why would you include them? Are you going to tell people these details? Who is going to read this?”

Pamela was concerned that Keondria would reveal family secrets and felt embarrassed at seeing her life in black and white. Keondria assured Pamela that the timeline was an organizational tool and that she would use pseudonyms for all names and not reveal anything without Pamela’s consent. Pamela was not fully reassured by this answer, so Keondria promised to consult Pamela on any decisions made about her narrative. Pamela accepted that response and wanted to review the narratives, but refused to review the timeline. The co-construction of the narratives is part of the author’s due diligence and honors the cocreators and their apprehension about being reproduced in text for an imperial, disciplinary gaze rooted in anti-Blackness.

Following this discussion with Pamela, Keondria consulted with Kakali. Kakali advised Keondria to journal and remain aware and vigilant, reminding her that these women had experienced a great deal in their lifetimes and would tell Keondria stories within their boundaries. In addition, they likely had developed coping mechanisms as a result of navigating difficult life experiences.

Kakali advised Keondria to find balance with the cocreators by providing space for them to choose what to share and to tell their stories at their own pace, remaining mindful that she was glimpsing intensely sensitive parts of people’s lives. We agreed that some knowledge is sacred between Keondria and Pamela and Viola. Keondria had earned the trust of the women, but the whole world had not. Therefore, we remained mindful of what needs to remain sacred communal knowledge, away from published spaces, and what could be shared broadly, mitigating anticipated harm and anxiety.

The cocreators’ agency must be safeguarded to create space for empowered reflections and storytelling. This is often accomplished through elicitation—the use of visuals that may be produced by the researcher or the cocreators (Bagnoli, 2009). The use of elicitation in participant-driven inquiry is well documented and many scholars suggest using nontraditional sources to understand people’s experiences (Bagnoli, 2009; Bhattacharya, 2013; Jackson, 2012; Lander, 2017). The use of expansive sources, coupled with Dillard’s (2000) proposal of an endarkened epistemology, provides space to reflect on the how and why of knowledge production and to build from an endarkened framework. This is what McClish-Boyd and Bhattacharya (2021) did for ENI, and that endarkened framing extends to wisdom whisper elicitations.

In reflecting on how and why knowledge is produced, we invite a methodological consideration in which we relinquish a will or right to know, regardless of a participant’s signature on a consent form (Bhattacharya, 2007, 2009). Signing paperwork, historically, has harmed numerous communities worldwide. So, whereas institutional review boards (IRBs) require a consent form, the ethical standards with which one conducts ENI far exceed IRB requirements. Obtaining consent is a Western idea that is often incongruent with the values and sociocultural norms of underrepresented and minoritized communities. Thus, we advocate cultivating relationships with cocreators, which are culturally congruent.

Cultivating a relationship built on mutual respect from a space of learning takes time and intentionality but assists in navigating awkward or uncomfortable conversations, especially intergenerational conversations on sensitive or personal topics. Discussing one’s deeply held secrets requires cultivating a sacred trust that cannot be established through consent forms or interview protocols. To achieve this trust, researchers must relinquish any notion of entitlement to information. The cocreators’ sharing of their experiences should be accepted as a gift, not seen as data the researcher has a need or right to extract. This approach foregrounds women of color’s declarations and narratives (Dillard, 2012b) as means of re-searching the construction of truth through the researcher–participant relationship. It encourages building relationships grounded in culturally situated social norms and relational identities.

These dynamics were demonstrated by Pamela’s vulnerability in disclosing that at the time of the interviews she was in transition, with no place to call home. Because Keondria and Pamela shared a mutual interest in education, their relationship developed organically. Thus, at the time they scheduled the interviews, Pamela was comfortable disclosing her living situation and the challenges it raised without embarrassment or reticence. Both women were grateful to share this space.

Pamela and Viola’s willingness to discuss with Keondria deeply held secrets from their lives demonstrates that the rapport between the researcher and cocreators extended far beyond the transactional nature of research (Bhattacharya, 2020). Sharing moments from their lives with Keondia, Pamela and Viola made sense of their past and the present, as if they used the interview process to dictate diary entries and document the emotions and reflections of the more pivotal recollections of their lives. There were occasions when Viola and Pamela did not make eye contact with Keondria or utter a word because the stories they shared needed time to settle. Everyone sat in silence and allowed the settling to occur. It was necessary to respect the wisdom they shared and allow it to emanate, marinate, and integrate into each other’s ways of being, knowing, living, thinking, and feeling.

Sharing experiences of molestation and sexual abuse was part of Pamela’s process of healing from old wounds and empowering the younger version of herself. Often, after speaking of past trauma, she met Keondria’s gaze with a concerned smile, trying to gauge her reaction. The emotions she experienced during such remembering at times created tension in the conversation.

Viola honored her parents’ legacy through her narratives. She remembered their strength in battling cancer, their resilience in confronting racism in the South, and their unyielding resolve to instill a work ethic, spirituality, religion, and morals in their children. Situating herself in the humble position of a learner, Keondria learned to accept all that unfolded with gratitude, even when it was awkward or difficult. In honoring Black women’s spirit and agency, such an approach recognizes the value of the cocreators’ empowered reflections for the ontoepistemic foundations of work regarding Black women.

Treasured Elicitations as Agentic Participation

Given the importance of relationship building in ENI work, Kakali continued to ask Keondria how she might approach cultural elders if she were not engaging in an academic study. Through many conversations, we agreed on the need to enter the research space with humility. Inspired by existing methodological conversations about elicitations (Harper, 2002; Radley & Bell, 2007), we sought to create learning possibilities by identifying the most agentic ways in which cocreators could share their storied lives.

Elicitation typically involves cocreators sharing pictures based on researcher prompts and offering narratives associated with these pictures. Conversely, researchers can share pictures and note the reactions and narratives they elicit. Elicitation can be done with any object, however, and researchers have indeed diversified the items used to elicit participant responses (Bhattacharya, 2009).

Black women’s lives comprise experiences and beliefs that are often dismissed by the dominant discourse and traditional qualitative inquiry. Moreover, a single-issue struggle does not exist for Black women as we do not live single-issue lives (Lorde, 2007). This understanding led us to improvise, inviting Black women to choose any item they wished to signify various aspects of their lives.

We imagined that wisdom whispers would be full of emotion, insights, and dialogue. In Keondria’s (2018) study, she asked the cocreators to assemble a treasure box to inform the wisdom whispers and created a spirituality and sexuality timeline from the wisdom whispers. The treasure box provided a place for the cocreators to collect significant items they “treasured” related to their understanding of spirituality and sexuality as Black women. The timelines aligned with a womanist framework, contextualizing the person in their environment and evaluating their human-to-human experiences through their own lens. The timelines did not draw on linear perceptions but instead denoted pivotal events highlighting the entanglement of spirituality, sexuality, and informal learning spaces.

Understanding that this project might be unsettling or overwhelming for some, the researcher provided prompts for the cocreators while remaining open to whatever they were willing to share. An example of a prompt was

As you know, this study is about understanding how you think of yourself as a spiritual or sexual being. For our next wisdom whisper conversation, would you put some items in the treasure box, which can be anything of your choice about how you learned about spirituality or sexuality? These items could include, but are not limited to, key moments or events that stand out to you, books, journals or diaries, music, writing, pictures, movies, or whatever reminds you of your journey.

For the next wisdom whisper, the cocreators shared the items in their treasure box, narrating their significance and sharing details as they remembered them. After discussing the first prompt, Pamela noted that it would be helpful to have the prompts written down so she could read and reflect on them. Hence, Keondria provided the prompts in advance for her and Viola. Pamela reported that the written prompts helped her focus her thoughts, recall memories, and prepare to share relevant information.

The cocreators had ample time to think about and gather the items of significance. For items they could not access—for example, Pamela’s belongings were in storage and Viola had gifted some mementos to her adult daughter—they wrote down what they would have shared. Items Viola shared included her worn and tattered Bible, some old photos depicting significant memories, and a necklace her mother gave her when she was baptized at 10 years of age. In discussing the necklace’s significance, she noted,

It was the first piece of Christian jewelry my mom had ever given me, and I cherished it for two reasons: first, I felt I was closer to God, and second, I knew how hard my mom and dad had to work to get that necklace and still provide for six children.

This marked a pivotal point in Viola’s life: the moment she integrated spirituality, knew she was a spiritual person, and recognized her connection to a Creator power. The womanist framing of the interconnectedness of humans, environment, and spirituality is explicit in this narrative through the relationship Viola has with her mother, church family, and God.

Pamela’s treasure box contained her journal, photos of her children, and information about her HIV/AIDS status, among other things. In recalling how she found out she had contracted HIV, she detailed,

I got infected after I had Jaceyon, my last baby. I just didn’t know it because I didn’t get tested until my baby was two years old, and the test came back positive. I felt devastated like I couldn’t take another ounce of bad news. I was furious. After I found out, I went home to tell Maurice, to which he responded, “I love you anyway.” But he was hiding that he was infected this whole time, ’cause he used to go to the doctor all the time; I just didn’t know why.

Pamela discussed multiple complex, entangled narratives, including the discovery of her HIV/AIDS status, based on her items. The narratives incorporated the human-to-human and human-to-spirit elements found in a womanist framework. The human-to-human interactions contributed to Pamela’s relationship with her environment. Pamela’s relationship to spirit is not explicit but is intertwined with her ontoepistemic orientation. She stated, “I believed from growing up with what people told me was right or wrong that you had to stay in a situation because God had a plan for you.” Pamela’s connections to the human, environmental, and spiritual domains informed her navigation of these experiences.

Pamela’s narrative was rich with layers Keondria had to unpack, exploring their relational aspects and uncovering their meaning to reveal the empowered thread. Intertwined backstories were brought to the forefront, illustrating the complexities of the cocreators’ lives. For example, backstories related to the relationships Pamela had with members of her family and the meaning she gave those stories were important.

Keondria uncovered the deeper meanings by reading transcripts of the narratives, relating the narratives to the timelines, and engaging in deeper conversation with the cocreators while continuously asking herself, “Is there anything I am missing?” Beneath this question lies the deeper inquiry, “What is being whispered that I may have overlooked?” Asking this question elicited insights that were not fully developed or explicit, deepening the improvisation of ENI by revealing how the cocreators used objects, photos, and other effects to story their lives.

Audre Lorde (2007) observed, “If I didn’t define myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive” (p. 137). Whether narratives are whispered or bellowed, Black women must define themselves in their narratives to disrupt oppressive practices in inquiry and beyond. It is vital for cocreators to remember in their own ways and re/create meaningful relationships with family, spirituality and religion, friends and lovers, and learning environments that hold both joy and pain. In addition, a project exploring older Black women’s narratives about sexuality and spirituality challenges racist, sexist, and ageist stereotypes of these women. These forms of elicitation made space for counternarratives, disrupting stereotypes and centering Black women’s ways of being and knowing.

The women’s stories were rich with life lessons, bearing witness to Black women’s lives in new ways and reorienting them in the context of the ontoepistemological strivings of other Black women who came before them. The questions eliciting these narratives included the following:

What would you say were the most important lessons about spirituality or sexuality you learned as a Black woman?

At this point in your life, how are sexuality and spirituality related? If they are not, what keeps them separate?

As a Black woman, how have the domains of sexuality and spirituality, either together or separately, enhanced or hindered your midlife development?

The prompts and questions, informed by ENI (McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021) and womanism (Phillips, 2006), center Black women as the experts and authors of their own research, data collection, findings, and conclusions.

Spirit-Integrated Practices

Spirituality is an interdisciplinary, multifaceted term, a complex construct that influences how Black women construct and embody narratives of success, agency, and resilience. Within the ENI framework, spirituality encompasses moral decision-making and the search for meaning and purpose, informed by multiple secular wisdom traditions. We see spirituality as an individualistic practice that incorporates a fulfilling relationship with a higher Creator power, leading to the discovery of one’s purpose in life, the transcendence of suffering, and emotions of love, joy, and peace (Canda, 1988; Chapman, 1987; Lewis, 2007; Mattis, 2000). Thus, spirituality involves identifying and embracing that which gives meaning and purpose to one’s life (Banks, 1988) and one’s personal experience with the sacred (Tisdell, 2008).

Wade-Gayles, (1995) described spirituality for many Black people as follows:

[Black people] witness for the Spirit without defining it. I doubt that anyone can because the Spirit, or spirituality, defies definition—a fact that speaks to its power as much as it reflects its mystery. Like a wind, it cannot be seen, and yet, like a wind, it is surely there, and we bear witness to its presence, its power. We cannot hold it in our hands and put it on a scale, but we feel the weight, the force, of its influence in our lives. We cannot hear it, but we hear ourselves speaking and singing and testifying because it moves, inspires, and directs us to do so. (p. 2)

For many Black people, spirituality and religion are not easily separated. A Black woman may be spiritual and religious, spiritual but not religious, or simply religious. For many Black women, like Viola and Pamela, faith and spirituality are integral and undeniable elements of their ontoepistemologies.

Within academia, discussions of spirituality and wisdom traditions are often dismissed as unimportant and unscholarly. Yet spiritual or faith-based principles may play a critical role in how Black women navigate their challenges and make sense of their lives. Some Black scholars have argued that activism and resistance work are “deeply embedded in the spiritual” (Dillard et al., 2010, p. 448).

Consequently, spiritual ways of knowing and storytelling cannot be separated from Black women’s ways of sensemaking and authoring their lives. Dillard et al. (2010) noted, “The implications of a spiritually centered worldview on the methodological tools utilized in the knowledge production process are profound” (p. 448). Spiritual concerns are explicitly or implicitly present in the work of various Black women scholars (Collins & Bilge, 2016; hooks, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995), and more space-making is necessary to integrate spirit-informed practices into methodological considerations in ENI.

For Viola, spirituality is ingrained in who she is and what she does. Her environment and relationships encouraged her spiritual development and spirituality was explicitly interwoven into the narratives she shared. Growing up in a Baptist household where spiritual foundations were imparted daily, she received spiritual guidance at an early age that carried through to adulthood. Spirituality played a significant part in her life as she dealt with the psychological distress of graduate school and navigating the politics of academia, a divorce, and losing both parents to cancer. When it became too much and suicidal thoughts crept into her mind, prayer provided a coping mechanism.

Although Pamela was introduced to the church by her grandma and baptized at an early age, spirituality was not an integral part of her upbringing. Growing up, she learned she had to be clever and use her body in certain ways, which influenced her spiritual development and orientation. She did not realize she had a spirit until well into her 40s.

Beginning at age 12 years, Pamela was sexually abused. She said, “My body became grown, but my mind was stuck at 12.” At that time, she began “living in the gray,” a place of confusion and uncertainty. She did not know who she was or how to find herself. Yet, although she did not tap into her spirituality until her late 40s, spirituality was always implicitly present in her life. She may not have engaged in traditional spiritual practices (meditation, prayer, and a relationship with a higher power), but because of the brief time spent in church with her grandma, she was aware of the peace and joy it offered and recognized its absence from her life.

As Pamela did not fully understand what spirituality was, she tapped into what she called her “safe space” as a protective barrier as she traversed the horrors of drug use, abuse and exploitation, and molestation. As she grew older, she learned there were many levels of maturity and spiritual maturity. Her spiritual growth resulted in creating healthy boundaries and reflecting on lessons learned from prior experiences, creating a source of strength as she became resilient and resolutely navigated the terrain of her life.

Black women’s narratives and experiences are not monolithic, as demonstrated by the brief discussion of Viola and Pamela’s narratives. Moreover, no easy descriptions can explain or define the realities of Black women’s lives. Viola and Pamela’s lives were both directly influenced by spirituality, and reflecting on their lives illuminated the bridge between their spirituality and their sexuality, as well as other areas of their being.

The act of remembering required Viola and Pamela to reflect inwardly and engage outwardly to narrate the pivotal moments that contributed to their understanding of sexuality through spirituality. For many Black women, spirituality offers hope, the strength to fight on, and the ability to forgive themselves and others while attending to the lessons along the way. For some Black women, this embodiment and improvisation create a way when there is no other.

Conclusion

In this article, we have extended the initial conversation on ENI (McClish-Boyd & Bhattacharya, 2021) to offer wisdom whisper as a methodological consideration for data collection when engaging in this work. To implement this methodological possibility, we invite readers to focus first on building relationships without any expectations. If and when it feels appropriate, one can engage with humility in a conversation with the cocreator, identifying what might be helpful to learn from them. Cocreators should then have the agency to refuse or continue the conversation without fear of penalty or judgment.

Cocreators should be invited to offer their narratives, drawing on a variety of sources of their choosing, without many structured questions or predetermined guidelines from the researcher. If they give the researcher permission to work with the stories they share, the final representation should center the Black women’s narratives, woven through the intersection of multiple theoretical perspectives, such as womanism, Black feminist thought, intersectionality, and Pan-Africanist feminism, as appropriate. If spirituality or spirit-integrated practices are encompassed in these stories, they must be honored. The researcher’s goal is to seek the cocreator’s wisdom to challenge existing deficit narratives. The researcher should receive the cocreator’s narratives from a place of unconditional positive regard, recognizing that they themselves may be influenced by various dominant and deficit perspectives of Black women.

Approaches to data collection that align with ENI culturally situate Black women-centric methodological frameworks, extending the work of our Black academic predecessors and expanding narrative inquiry. ENI moves beyond counter-storytelling to reclaim culturally situated storytelling as a method. Yet, although ENI highlights and celebrates the cocreators’ engagement in narrating their own storied lives, these methodological possibilities are not the only ones that can be employed within ENI.

As this methodological move is grounded in womanist tradition, we invite those “committed to the survival and wholeness of an entire people” (Walker, 1983, p. xi) to engage in advancing these narratives. Furthermore, as this method is dialogic in nature, we invite readers to create their own entry points and think expansively and generatively beyond these points of consideration, so as not to restrict or prescribe ways of engaging Black women’s narratives. In advocating for these methodological moves, we seek to foster inspiring connections to Black women’s ways of storying their lives.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Keondria McClish-Boyd

Kakali Bhattacharya

Notes

Author Biographies

Keondria McClish-Boyd teaches qualitative research and human development courses. Her work focuses on the development of Black women and families and embodied narratives. She holds a PhD in adult learning and leadership from Kansas State University.

Kakali Bhattacharya is an award-winning professor at the University of Florida housed in the Research, Evaluation, and Measurement program. She is the 2018 winner of the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Mid-Career Scholar of Color Award. Her coauthored text with Kent Gillen, Power, Race, and Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative, has won a 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from AERA (SIG 168) and a 2018 Outstanding Book Award from International Congress of Qualitative Research. Email: kbhattacharya@coe.ufl.edu

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