“Oh, What a Way to Grieve the One You Love”: Black Families, Grief, and the Limits of Resilience Rhetoric for Positive Mental Health Outcomes

ABSTRACT

This essay is a triple autoethnographic text written by three Black scholars with similar but uniquely positioned backgrounds with the purpose of exploring the ways that Black families negotiate and communicate about death (and in one instance) incarceration (social death), loss, and the existential cognates of grief and mourning that naturally arise in their wake. Singularly and collectively, each author reflects on painful experiences of losing brothers (both blood and bond) to build a case for how autoethnography provides a pathway to critically explore the communication that Black families have or do not have about the mental and emotional impacts that siblings may endure during these moments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a Marvel Movie that is the sequel of Black Panther. Grief is the central element of a movie that mourns the loss of star Chadwick Boseman, a real-life tragedy that makes the blockbuster action film the most downbeat Marvel adventure yet. But the ending, in which Shuri faces her grief for her lost brother T’Challa, suggests the hope of renewal.