Pedagogy of pain: pulling passion, potential, and possibility from the pain of silence and truth telling

ABSTRACT

Cultural and faith-based narratives live in our skins and personal lives. Each body is tied to the stories that are written on it, and thus the body and the soul within it are central to our coming to know of tears, wounds, pain, and suffering. Using autobiographical narrative inquiry and poetry, I share my lived experiences and encounters with the pain of silence and truth telling. As a Canadian, Muslim, woman of color, and mother of four children, I unapologetically question the “psychic violence” of strategic silencing, scripted conformity, and structured surrender enforced and performed in institutions and society toward people of color. I seek to embrace, dwell in, and engage with pain to pull out passion, potential, and possibility. I offer the truth of my knowing to construct pathways and possibilities for reimagining and deconstructing pain and tears as the cure for personal and systemic liberation.

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

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Notes on contributors

Momina Khan

Dr. Momina Khan, a mother of four children, holds a PhD and MEd in Education from the University of Saskatchewan, and an MSc in Management Studies from the University of Peshawar, Pakistan. In life and scholarship, as a mother, scholar, poet, and Muslim woman of color, she engages in constructing counter stories through interweaving narrative, research, and poetry. Momina has published several peer reviewed articles, book chapters and poems for which she has received numerous awards. Her work invites schools and educators to become leaders in eradicating barriers to racialized students’ sense of self, sense of hybridity, sense of belonging, and sense of citizenhood. Her scholarship interests include narrative inquiry, poetic representation, inclusive curriculum, racialized parent knowledge, anti-oppressive practices, and racial and religious identities.