First-Generation Women of the African Diaspora Collective: Finding Fullness Through (Re)membering, an Endarkened Feminist Participatory Action Research Project

Abstract

In the midst of a global pandemic and during a time of emboldened white supremacy, a group of women of the African diaspora created a collective to examine our experiences as first-generation college students navigating college. What started off as a conversation about the ways in which Black women’s voices are often silenced in the academy through misogynoir, developed into our search for fullness through the act of (re)membering. Together as a collective, 22 undergraduate and graduate first-generation women of the African diaspora (FGWAD) represented a wide range of the transnational African diaspora (Black, African American, African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, and Afro-Latina), having allegiances to multiple nation states ranging in age from early 20s to mid-50s. Engaging in the three-manuscript format method, this project examined the impact of systemic racism in higher education and explored our intersectional identities as first-generation college students. The author realized early on that the power of this research collective was not only to discover the impact of social injustice in the academy but also revealed a Black woman’s way of knowing. Along our journey for clarity, we created an endarkened feminist participatory research methodological approach (Collins, 1990; Cooper, 1892; Dillard, 2000; Drame & Irby, 2016). Black participatory research informed our work and members of the collective took part in each aspect of the research process, including research design, collection of data, analysis of data, establishment of findings, and their meaning. Each of these manuscripts were concerned with the larger implications of deficit-based ideologies, systemic oppressive structures that maintain power, and the collective grappling with complex and messy binary constructs such as race/gender, superhuman/ subhuman, and trauma/resilience. While co-researchers conversed about the ways in which the academy was suspicious of their stories, members of the collective came to trust and honor their complex and multiple truths through our collective storytelling. For example, the research demonstrated that FGWAD were expected to exhibit strength and exceptionality. On one hand, strong Black woman or Black girl magic ideas created a specific type of capital to navigate the university space or exceed their ancestors’ wildest dreams (Nell & Dunn, 2020), but on the other hand, it was also the site of great pain as members of the collective were expected to maintain excellence at all costs. This research project sought to transcend Black women’s experiences in which their knowledge was questioned, misunderstood, and oftentimes disrupted. Not only is this work significant to sabotage normative claims around research and knowledge, but it is also important in creating a new trajectory for future research.