Sadie Stories

Abstract

In their seminal work Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences, Prendergast et al. (2009) point out that: “[t]he need for a plurality of methods that can be applied to individual research projects on the human condition has never had a stronger calling than it does now … [p]oetic methods are qualitative and call for self-conscious participation … with life as lived, up close and personal …” (xi). As a language artist-scholar and imagination-intellect theorist working in interpretive methods around issues of race, class, and gender and how they affect the social foundations of American society, here I use poetic inquiry to explore the importance of empathy in imagination-intellectual development. Sadie Stories draws upon informal conversations with an African-American mother and young African-American homeless women, to empathize with homelessness from a daughter’s perspective. This work is written as if Sadie has stopped on the street to speak to an audience.

Keywords:

• poetry
• African-American
• homeless