Where We Live and Be: (Re)Turning to Black Girlhood for Project-Praxes of Otherworld-Making in Educational Research

The Human Project within Black Girlhood

At the turn of the 20^th century, Dr Anna Julia Cooper (1892/2016), teacher, activist, and scholar, proclaimed that without a fuller image of Black women and girls—as opposed to the limiting controlling images (Collins, 1991) discursively circulated then and now—a fuller image of humanity is impossible. Black girlhood, specifically, offers alternative and “multiple/co-existential/relational modes” (Baszile, 2019, p. 9) or genres of being human, those after Man, as Wynter (2003) implored. In fact, the humanity and mattering of Black people have always lived in Black girlhood. When a different human project is left unconsidered, ignored are “alternative modes of being human” (Wynter, 2003, p. 282). Looking to where Black girls live and be (re)defines notions of human, humanity, humanness, and living for it begins at Black girl epistemes. Furthermore, as a point of departure from Wynter (2006), we, the authors of this article, do not believe that attending to the unique oppressions of Black girls and women—sometimes at the hands of Black people—distracts from the goals of Blackness as a human project; we believe Black girl epistemes, in fact, sharpen genres of humanness, being, and living. As Garner et al. (2019) noted, “Black girlhood forces the field [of Black Studies] to at least name its commitments to and hopefully divest in patriarchy, homogeneous narratives, and compartmentalized storying of Blackness void specifically of gender, sexuality, and youthfulness” (p. 196). Therefore, we (re)turn to Black girlhood frameworks and theories in our contribution to Black approaches in educational research. The potentiality of Black girlhood as a creative space for designing Black approaches in educational research has yet to be fully realized. Thus, following Wynter’s call for a new humanness, one that promises liberatory futures (Wynter & McKittrick, 2015), we offer Project-Praxes of Black Girl Otherworld-Making to scholars and researchers occupying educational space, considering their/our responsibility and answerability firstly to Black people, and secondly, to the fields of Black Studies, Black Girlhood Studies, and education in a transdisciplinary sense.

Black Girlhood Studies

Black Girlhood Studies (BGS), as a discipline, was created to (re)define, grapple with, and interrogate the human question as it pertains to Black girls. As an area of study, Black girlhood centers the celebration of Black girls and Black girlhood; thus, requiring new ways of engaging Black girls that begin (and continue) with unlearning and critically examining the/(my) self. BGS makes visible the creative, intellectual, and cultural production of Black girls and Black girlhood while simultaneously illuminating the dearth of attention afforded them (Hill, 2018). BGS also reveals the various ways Black girls and Black girlhood have expanded understandings of how Black girls resist, refuse, and navigate oppressive circumstances and make possible otherworld-making outside of and beyond western European expectations of human existence: what “humans” look like, sound like, and how “humans” must act. Black girls assert their own forms of life and living in their everyday interactions and “beingness” that resist what others say they should be. Black girls have their own embodied sensemaking and creative, life-affirming practices that can only be understood if we listen directly to them. As a result, the field of BGS was created to center and honor young Black girls’ experiences, specifically from their voices and perspectives, and exists as a creative space that honors their everyday ruptures and refusals (Halliday, 2019; Hill, 2018; Smith, 2019).

According to Hill (2018), BGS “stands as a reliable location and ever developing archive for Black girls” (p. 385) and demands the “celebration of Black girls in all of their complexity” (p. 386). BGS is a site of conversation and inquiry between the lived experiences of Black girls that inspire and generate stories, ideas, and imaginings of Black girlhood: past, present, and future. As such, BGS encompasses historical narratives of Black girls navigating structural oppression and coming of age stories (e.g., Chatlelain, 2015; Hartman, 2019; Ladner, 1995; Simmons, 2015; Wright, 2016), Black girls’ experiences across the diaspora (e.g., Field & Simmons, 2022), the creation of spaces created by and for Black girls to thrive (e.g., R. N. Brown, 2009, 2013; Cox, 2015; Price-Dennis et al., 2017); contemporary narratives of navigating school-based and societal harm (e.g., Cox, 2015; Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2017; Morris, 2016; Shange, 2019; Smith-Purviance, 2021; Wun, 2016); deep theorizing and interrogations of Black girls’ positioning in their world and the ways they create new modes and methods of describing their daily realities (e.g., Halliday, 2019); the creative and play practices and literacies they employ to affirm their lives (e.g., Gaunt, 2006; Halliday, 2020; Muhammad & Haddix, 2016; Winn, 2011); and honors their imaginations and the stories they craft for their other-world making to become a reality (e.g., Griffin, 2022; Toliver, 2022). To do so, BGS brings together various disciplines, such as Black Studies, arts and humanities, anthropology, education, sociology, and history, to name a few, offering better understandings of the paradoxes and complexities of how they survive and resist systemic violence and simultaneously reimagine new ways to build, live, and co-exist in community (Kwakye et al., 2017; Reynolds, 2021). BGS furthermore moves away from constraining, jargony languages that can often reinforce harm and oppression, and centers the languages, behaviors, and communal spaces Black girls shape as the necessary frames of Black girl freedom-making to guide our next steps in reimagining policies, projects, and praxes.

Locating, Theorizing, and Framing Black Girlhood

It is important to first clarify the “who” in “Black girl” not for the sake of being responsive to whiteness’ disregard to the existence of Black children, but rather for a recognition of the expansiveness in how Black girls position themselves and their intersectional identities. Professor Ruth Nicole Brown, scholar-activist and BGS foremother, addressed this “who” in a 2023 virtual talk for Agitate Journal stating, “we aren’t leaving behind Black girls as they reinvent themselves and find new ways to name themselves including trans and nonbinary youth to presumably prioritize conceptualizations.” This proclamation is a reminder of the revolutionary mission of Black girlhood that keeps Black girls and their self-determination at the center, and the expectation for the field to evolve and be responsive to the hearts of Black girls. McEachern’s (2017) notion of ratchetness and Shange’s (2019) Black girl ordinary analyze more deeply modes of Black girls disrupting gender binaries and “queered disidentification.” This progression therefore situates Black girlhood as an identity, radical disposition, and framework inclusive of those committed to supporting the liberation of Black girls/femmes/nonbinary youth; “often the people least guaranteed to be centered as valuable in collective work and social movements” (R. N. Brown, 2013, p. 1). Hill (2018) adds, “To see girl as not bound by age but as a political location that Black girls and women, traditionally defined, can claim and reclaim, is to make Black girlhood an unending site of possibility” (p. 400). Although Black girls may have found each other because of their similar experiences with oppression, Black girlhood does not begin from a place of what Black girls are lacking or their exclusion from mainstream society. Black girlhood begins at the celebration of what Black girls have been able to cultivate for themselves and each other.

Notably, the first statement on the first page of Ruth Nicole Brown’s (2013) groundbreaking book, Hear Our Truths, is “The Vision: Black girlhood is freedom and Black girls are free.” Profoundly, it does not discuss freedom as a future aspiration for Black girls. It reads as a declaration of what we must believe and be willing to fight to protect for Black girls in the now. According to Dill (2022), “Black girls are present-day maroons in plain sight who resist structural bondage and re-make practices of survivance in the pursuit of freedoms on an everyday basis” (p. 263). In a similar vein, Shange (2019) builds from Aimee Cox’s (2015) concept of social choreography to which she describes Black girls’ genius navigation of the state. She discusses Black girls as fugitives to the state to affirm that “it improvises on social and aesthetic choreographies to disrupt the inherited rhythms of captivity, progressive or otherwise. Regular, degular, schmegular Black girls stay dancing in the face of state sanctioned slow death- ours is flesh made fierce” (p. 99). These theorizations connect to a larger project of mapping the physical/spatial and socio-political sites of Black girls or Black girl cartographies (Butler, 2018). Black girlhood scholars are often learning from the ways Black girls are pushed out/excluded from spaces, or cultivating other homeplaces to heal, explore, and be safe. Therefore, we return to other critical scholarship that merges Black girlhood and Black geographies that suggest Black girls are located as “out of place” (Reynolds et al., 2021, p. 151) or “the place they looked last” (Browne, 2015; McKittrick, 2006) to consider the power of Black girlhood being illegible rather than a problem (Cox, 2015). Black girl fugitivity sits at the center of this discourse in that we must embrace the resistance and refusal observed as Black girls. It recognizes the agency of Black girls as on the run from the state rather than as possession of the state. Considering how research can operate as surveillance (Browne, 2015; Ferguson, 2012; Reynolds, 2019), or making visible Black girlhood can reproduce threat, or bring more violence; we drew from other Black girlhood scholars and our own experiences to wrestle with the power of invisibility and illegibility.

Our Methods for (Re)Turning to Black Girlhood to Think Anew

To unlearn and critically engage in the intra- and interpersonal work required to think anew, we, the authors, whose research centralizes Black girlhood in education, engaged in endarkened feminist sista circles (EFSC), a methodological approach that foregrounds the power and spirit of Black women and girlfriend groups, makes space for us to engage in conversations about specific topics or experiences, and connects us across physical and spiritual locations. EFSC is built from the confluence of endarkened feminist epistemologies (Dillard, 2006) and sista circle methodology (Neal-Barnett et al., 2011). The distinguishing features of sista circles include a focus on communication dynamics (e.g., the specific patterns of speech and verbal/non-verbal expressions used by Black women), the centrality of empowerment (e.g., how Black women access and create individual and collective power in community), and the researcher as a participant (e.g., researchers share personal experiences) (Johnson, 2015). Further, endarkened feminist epistemologies are guided by six assumptions: (1) self-definition forms one’s participation and responsibility to one’s community; (2) research is both an intellectual and a spiritual pursuit, a pursuit of purpose; (3) only within the context of community does the individual appear, and, through dialogue, continue to become; (4) concrete experiences within everyday life form the criterion of meaning; (5) knowing and research extend both historically in time and outward to the world, to approach them otherwise is to diminish their cultural and empirical meaningfulness; and (6) power relations—manifested as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.—structure gender, race, and other identity relations within research (Dillard, 2006, pp. 672–678).

Our EFSCs met weekly for two hours over the course of four months in the spring and summer of 2023. We wanted to focus our weekly conversations on specific topics and experiences, so our sessions were guided by questions created by two of our sistas, Tiffany and Aja:

○ What are the specificities of which you have experienced Black girlhood as a Black girl from (insert spatial/geographical location(s))?

For each question, we engaged in endarkened feminist communication dynamics. Sometimes, we finished each other’s sentences. Sometimes, we cut each other off to share a story in solidarity. Sometimes, we engaged in call-and-response practices to affirm a sista’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Sometimes, we reiterated a sista’s point (e.g., “what I’m hearing you say is…”) to think through our own lived realities alongside the experiences of our sista scholars. Sometimes, we called each other in and forward to engage in gentle accountability. Always, we engaged in laughter, joking, and joy. Always, we included music.

We audio and video recorded each meeting, and we transcribed the audio recordings. As researchers and participants engaging in self-definition and responsibility to each other within community, we included the transcripts (to ensure that we created a permanent record of our conversations for analysis, review, and memory), audio recordings (to hear the lilt of our voices and notice communication dynamics that are stifled in transcription), and video recordings (to note the nonverbal dynamics of our conversations) as data entries. We then individually and collectively (in one of our EFSCs) engaged in a theming process where we analyzed the data both within and across each meeting to note commonalities. From this process, we noticed the following themes: research observations, reflections, methods; humanness and outside the white gaze; specificities of blackness, girlhood, and location/geographies; tensions and challenges doing freedom work in unfree places/spaces; creativity; practicing Black girlhood; spaces and places that affirmed our Black girlhood; how we are with Black girls and conduct research/programs with Black girls; disrupting methods/methodology (moving away from methods not created with us in mind); approach/pedagogy to research with Black girls; dehumanization/harming of Black girls; and theorizing Black girlhood.

As the EFSCs required us to look historically through time and demanded that we acknowledge that we are not alone in this work (Butler, 2018), we knew that keeping our analysis to the present and to our conversations would be a disservice to our process, even if we consistently brought the literature of Black girlhood scholars into the discussion space. So, alongside the analysis of our conversations, we (re)searched, or searched again, the literature on Black girlhood with the aim of exploring how other Black women researchers approached their work with Black girls. More specifically, we searched literature databases using the Boolean search terms “Black girlhood” OR “Black girls” AND “methods” OR “methodology” to find work that would help us to better understand: how researchers used Black girlhood theories and frameworks to create new methods and methodologies; how these scholars positioned methods, ethics, and research standards in work with Black girls; and how these scholars aligned with and/or disrupted more traditional qualitative approaches.

Upon reading, annotating, and analyzing the literature, we found the following connective threads: methodological risk-taking; images and meaning-making; the influence of performance and Black studies; making space for Black girls to define themselves; methodologies of doing; critical care for Black girls; and Black women needing to identify the self in Black girlhood research. By (re)searching the literature, we mended the histories and experiences of Black girl researchers, showcasing that we are always already thinking alongside one another in this work, suggesting that our findings must hold space to see the collectivity of the pursuit of Black girlhood research.

Combining the threads of our collective literature study with our analysis of EFSC conversations helped us to narrow our findings to seven pursuits of Black Girlhood methodology that could redefine how we work with, for, and about Black girls: (1) humanness outside the white gaze and after Man; (2) remembering where Black girlhoods lived; (3) ethical engagements with Black girl(s)/hoods; (4) Black girlhood approaches in educational research; (5) reflexivity in doing freedom work in unfree places/spaces; (6) transdisciplinary intellectual rendezvouses that seriously read and cite Black women; and (7) writing with regard for the spectrum of legibility. Derived from conversations within our physical and literary EFSCs, these pursuits, or constant strivings, are the foundation for our conceptualization of Black Girl Otherworld-Making in educational research.

A Rendering of (and Call for) Project-Praxes of Black Girl Otherworld-Making

Building upon understandings of projects of humanization (e.g., Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014) and praxis in education (e.g., Freire, 1970; Stovall, 2011), we conceptualize Project-Praxes or reflexivity with action that is guided by the ongoing revisioning, reimagining, redefining, and rebuilding of what already exists. Recognizing the power that has given BGS to be something else, the dash represents the necessity of a simultaneous working through and towards liberation. In essence, it is reflective action for the purpose of otherworld-making beckoning us to rebuild and name what we are building. We situate this as otherworld-making specifically because Black women have always recognized that the current world—and how they were understood as nonhuman in it—was not going to work for them. But what good is praxis without clear visions of what we are working towards through an ethic of collective care (Nyachae & Pham, 2024; Reynolds, 2021) by which we engage in reflexivity and responsive actions? Project-Praxes of Black Girl Otherworld-Making in education considers the research (er)’s political commitments and goals for Black girls/femmes/nonbinary youth and Black girlhood, reflexivity, relationships, navigating one’s own inner Black girl child (Smith-Purviance et al., 2022), ethics around accessing and doing fieldwork in Black girl spaces, consent, and data collection processes. Specifically, in the next sections, we weave in excerpts from our EFSCs while describing the following seven pursuits of Project-Praxes of Black Girl Otherworld-Making: (1) humanness outside the white gaze and after Man; (2) remembering where Black girlhoods lived; (3) ethical engagements with Black girl(s)/hoods; (4) Black girlhood approaches in educational research; (5) reflexivity in doing freedom work in unfree places/spaces; (6) transdisciplinary intellectual rendezvouses that seriously read and cite Black women; and (7) writing with regard for the spectrum of legibility.

Black Girlhood Approaches in Educational Research

“Black girls deserve good research.” – Aja

“We create methods, utilize theories, that tend to Black girls versus trying to make Black girls fit into white-centric theories and methods. And that, I think, is a powerful thing.” –Stephanie

“We reify whiteness and white supremacy when we hold ourselves accountable to doing ‘studies’ versus accountable to the young people we work with and what they want to see, what this research looks like for them, if they even call it research in the first place.” – Ashley

“What does it mean to be a researcher, but being okay with just being in space with Black girls in the midst of data collection?” – Tiffany

The study of and with Black girls is complex (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016), not to be presumed an easy task simply because we were once Black girls (Lindsay-Dennis, 2015). It requires that we take risks methodologically and pedagogically, make decisions, and bend/dismantle “rules” for the liberatory futures we desire (Kwakye et al., 2017; Lewis, 2019; Taaffe, 2014). What is missed when methods and methodologies are guided by whiteness, objectivity, and uninventiveness because, as Stephanie put it, “no one had Black girls in mind?” Professor Ruth Nicole Brown (2014) reminds us that research “is a ‘live’ thing and subject to all that happens in the present” (p. 37). Therefore, be bold in creating, naming, and trusting the methods and methodologies that are responsive to Black girls and used to analyze and interpret their renderings (Garner et al., 2019). Additionally, employ the paradigms, ethics, methodologies, and methods that other Black girlhood researchers have created and/or explicated through their work with Black girls and the archives. Table 1 provides examples of Black girlhood research approaches, which offer so much more than research, in sociology, education, literacy, psychology, performance studies, and curriculum studies. They are methodologies of doing (K. Brown et al., 2022; Kwakye et al., 2017; Taaffe, 2014) and many were created through the convergence of multiple disciplines, such as, BGS, performance studies, Black studies, and education (e.g., K. Brown et al., 2022; Garner et al., 2019; Hill, 2018; Kwakye et al., 2017; Taaffe, 2014). Black girlhood researchers are otherworld-making; creating new paradigms and methodologies/methods for living in ways that are affirming and healing. As an illustration, Hill (2018) describes reliability in research and what makes “good research” from the purview of Black girls and celebratory Black girl spaces. Additionally, many of the approaches privilege Black girl meaning-making (e.g., Lewis, 2019). In fact, Taaffe (2014) argues that the tools used for data collection, analysis, and representation are automatically made anew when used in Black girl spaces. Ultimately, Black girlhood approaches in educational research disrupt the status quo of “how to” methods because they must; their guiding onto-epistemologies and axiologies challenge or de/reconstruct traditional rules. Through personal responsibility and self-awareness, researchers of Black girlhood attempt to conduct studies that are rigorous, authentic, and accurate; ensuring that Black girls are focal to the analysis (Collins, 1991; Lindsay-Dennis, 2015).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Examples of Black Girlhood Approaches in Educational Research.

Brief description
Paradigms
Black girl literacies (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016)	Black girls know, possess voices, and exhibit/produce diverse onto-epistemologies; Black girl literacies are multiple in practice and theorizations, co-constructed, historical, intellectual, political, critical, complex, inextricably linked to identities, and maintain a deep concern for humanity
Black feminist-womanist research paradigm (Lindsay-Dennis, 2015)	Black girl research is a spiritual and intellectual pursuit for community building, and social and personal change; the individual only appears through community; perspectives and navigational tools are transmitted intergenerationally; personal experiences with (and assumptions about) Black girlhood influence research practices/processes; Black girl perspectives include intersectionality and metaphysical realities
Ethics
Black girl reliability a (Hill, 2018)	Make spaces that foster close authentic relationships with Black girls and celebrate all iterations of Black girlhood; inclusive of tracing or a consideration of who gives knowledge, who has access to it, who the lesson is for, and the relationship between the giver(s) and receiver(s), collective grounding or sustaining relationships where imagining otherworlds, check-ins, celebration, being challenged, and theorizing happen in community, embracing paradox or welcoming mismatches in the everchanging “what” Black girls know, say, think, and create and how they feel about it
Relationships, beingness, and voice (Edwards et al., 2016)	Research processes must involve relationships between the researcher and participants that are dialogic, transparent, nourishing, and judgement free but not without challenge; beingness that centers Black girl personhoods and “profoundly being together and being ourselves” (p. 432), have an ethic of care, commitment, and access beyond the research project, places Black girl needs before research agendas; centering Black girls’ voices and their naming of lived realities, and labor against the co-opting of their experiences
Saving our lives hear our truths (SOLHOT) a (Kwakye et al., 2017)	Vow not to harm Black girls, practice collective leadership and responsibility, engage in accountable love for the self and others, be present, “perform research, be personal, vulnerable, dare to insert your narrative and claim that Black girls matter” (p. 7)
Methodologies/Methods
Anti-respectability Methodology a (Garner et al., 2019)	Black girl pleasures, agency, and body decision-making shape the community formed during data collection and what is then created in that community; rooted in love as a reciprocal collective and relational action, reliability (see Black girl reliability in Table 1), and funk or the conceptualization of bodily knowledge through work, play, and performance
Black feminist poetry (Ohito & Nyachae, 2019)	Employed for rigor in critical discourse analysis through the de/reconstruction of initial data analyses that produces new analyses via three poems: (1) list poem or an inventory of declarative statements from the raw data arranged in poetic format; (2) three-voice poem that puts researchers in dialogue with the data and with each other for triangulation; (3) free verse poem for reflexivity
Black girl cartography (Butler, 2018)	Study and exploration of how and where Black girls are mapped in education physically and socio-politically and the ways Black girlhood is bound to geospatial location through intersectionality; attending to the spaces/places where Black girls thrive, are oppressed, make meaning, negotiate, and the spaces they create, demand, and/or seek
Black/Girlhood imaginary (K. Brown et al., 2022)	Working/making/doing with Black girls and the archives to recover, recuperate, repair, and reconcile their knowings, embodied experiences, images, and subjecthood to “construct and excavate an imaginative space of Black girlhood” (p. 77) across the diaspora, time, space, and geographies
Endarkened storywork (Toliver, 2022)	Researchers and participants engage in African ancestorial, familial, and spiritual storytelling practices and storylistening to remember, recover, and revive Black storytelling traditions for deeper relationality and creatively expansive forms of data collection, analysis, representations, and reporting; capturing Black girl sociopolitical experiences and otherworld dreaming and imaginings that can guide us to freedom
Melt Methodology a (Lewis, 2019)	Researchers and participants co-develop processes for engaging their spirits, curiosity, creativity, self-definition, identity, Black girl aesthetics, image-and meaning-making while critiquing and/or disrupting societal representations of Black girls for the purpose of producing a magazine
Photography in black girl spaces a (Taaffe, 2014)	Black girls produce images and methodology, and engage in collective meaning-making, analysis, and knowledge production through their creations; photography, photovoice, and visual ethnography in Black girl spaces are transformed into tools for “interrogating notions of power, voice, representation, and stereotypes” (p. 190)
Wreckless theatrics a (R. N. Brown, 2014)	The intentional creation, dramatic structuring, display, and valuing of Black girl meaning-making, multiple truths, culturally embodied knowledge, complexities, (e)motions, images, performances, and stories of Black girlhood to critical communities of practice

^aBirthed within Ruth Nicole Brown’s (2013) SOLHOT space.

And even when armed with Black girlhood paradigms, ethics, and methodologies/methods, we must be okay with whatever Black girls choose to give or not give throughout data collection. Sometimes the conversation just ends, or they give us very little verbally during interviews, and this is okay (R. N. Brown, 2013; Shange, 2019). Remember Black girls do not owe us anything, even those who consented to participate in our studies. Regardless, we should be checking in periodically to renegotiate their consent where necessary (Bhattacharya, 2007). We must also welcome the ways in which participants disrupt methods. For instance, instead of an interview, they might offer a performance, or instead of bringing artifacts, they might take you to their neighborhood. Additionally, and although not always feasible, be okay with (re)starts and pauses throughout data collection, even long pauses, if they will better serve Black girls. Correspondingly, Lindsay-Dennis’s (2015) Black feminist-womanist research paradigm “invites researchers to view their research on a continuum rather than isolated acts of data collection” (p. 511). Nevertheless, be okay with not getting all the data points you had planned, or participants’ outright refusal of research, even if it happens mid-data collection.

Overall, we hope this section “inspires the proliferation of many more creative methods that disrupt preexisting ways of knowing by starting with altogether different genealogies and privileging different revolutionary thinkers and modes of thought” (Taaffe, 2014, p. 37). In particular, we need more methods that are intuitive to what Black girls are not saying. Given the expansiveness and evolving nature of Black girl literacies (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016; Price-Dennis et al., 2017), interpreting Black girls not only through what they communicate verbally or linguistically, but multimodally (e.g., gazes, gestures, etc.) allows for a fuller picture of their meanings and the “immeasurable” in Black girlhood (Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010; Lindsay-Dennis, 2015).

(Re)Turning to Black Girlhood

BGS allowed us the space to return to and reflect on our younger selves in ways that were integrally connected to the communities, Black girl spaces, and scholarship we co-created alongside Black girls. We would not have been able to do this work without being connected to young Black girls, to learn (and unlearn) alongside them new ways to honor our truths, the complexities of our stories, celebrate the creativity and authenticity we each came with as we listened to each other’s dreams and imaginations for collective lives, living, and ultimately our liberation. We mirrored this process as we came together in our EFSCs, shaping new Project-Praxes of Otherworld-Making as Black girlhood scholars intimately rooted in community, joy, and the freedom to show up as our full selves. This approach ultimately disrupted the traditionally harmful, individualistic approaches that run rampant in research.

First and foremost, we were intentional about keeping Black girls and Black girlhood at the center. It was not enough to only be in conversation with our younger selves, but also to bring along with us the memories, voices, and experiences of Black girls who have also shared personal stories with us and carved out spaces where each of us felt seen, heard, and loved. The collective past-present-future otherworld-making that took place in our homes, backyards, through our hobbies, and the spaces where we could be most free as Black girls deeply inspire how we show up and create spaces alongside Black girls today. In many ways this continues to be the Project-Praxes of Otherworld-Making in our scholarship on Black girlhood, as Black girls have full autonomy to lead and guide us. As scholars we seek to step back to truly hear and listen to Black girls. Through Project-Praxes of Otherworld-Making, Black girls can show up as their most authentic selves and fully expect the same of us as researchers. We were not invested in a project of changing, fixing, or colonizing young Black girls through our work. We instead acknowledge that they already have the language to express how they feel and what they know. We hold their descriptions as truth and learn from them to honor their/our lives in the work. We never sought to only take their stories from them but practiced vulnerability and shared our personal narratives in community with them. Most importantly, in this space of otherworld-making Black girls have the freedoms to read, dance, play, eye roll, and clapback too. Project-Praxes of Otherworld-Making makes possible Black girls’ humanity, at the intersection of Black girl fugitivity and BGS, making our freedom dreams a closer reality.