“Weird Is Normal”: A Womanist Discourse Analysis of Black Girl Nerds’ Community Building

ABSTRACT

Constructing school spaces where Black girls feel comfortable enough to be their full selves is essential in a system that consistently shows them that they do not matter. Cultivating these spaces, however, requires educators to understand that Black girls’ identities are multiple and varied, that Black girls can be anything. Still, some identity positions, such as nerdiness, are often only attributed to white youth, forcing nerdy Black girls to hide themselves in fear that their interests confirm that something within them is wrong. In this article, I use womanist discourse analysis to examine the unstructured talk of six Black girl nerds who participated in a writing workshop. In analyzing these conversations, I emphasize how the girls engaged in womanist practices of community building that honor the full spectra of their identities. Further, I argue for the cultivation of safe spaces for Black girl nerds to exist.

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

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S. R. Toliver

S. R. Toliver (ORCID: 0000-0003-3397-252X; Twitter: SR_Toliver) is an assistant professor of literacy and secondary humanities at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her scholarship honors the historical legacy that Black imaginations have had and will have on activism and social change. She is the author of Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research: Endarkened Storywork, and her academic work has been published in multiple journals.