Growing With Your Peers

Over the course of the semester, we have learned about different literacies and the advantages of being literate. Robin Wisniewski discusses how getting involved with your peers can help you to advance your literacy.  Here at Spelman, we have something similar to the peer counseling program she started at her college. It’s called the writing center, where students help other students to improve their writing skills. At Wisniewski’s college, the peers were not only helping students with writing but also with other literacies as well. It was very interesting to see how successful the program was and the fact that it was very successful due to the students who were giving the counseling. Ms. Wisniewski brings up two particular students Lauryn and Vania who were peer counselors in the program. These two students shared how this particular program helped them with identity issues and how it was ok to be an individual who had her own opinion and voice that was not to be identified with her race. As they began to help their peers find their own identities and transform, they were able to do so as well. They talked about how learning different concepts in their courses was not just about mastering them, but also using different strategies such as flash cards to help them learn more.  Vania felt that understanding her students was the best way to help them to progress. She made them feel as if they had a voice which helped them too to feel like individuals.

This was a very interesting reading as I am able to relate to the things discussed in Robin Wisniewski’s reading. When I go to the writing center to get help with a paper, I feel as if I am not only receiving advice from my peers but also that they take into account what I do and do not understand. They are able to teach us and help us to become better writers, and I feel that programs like these are very beneficial to students as they not only can get help from their professors but also from students have may have had the same trouble that they have at one point in time. 

Appreciating African-American Female Teachers and Professors

In the text Voices of Our Foremothers:  Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Women Educators, a chapter in Reader’s of the Quilt by Joanne K. Dowdy, Sunny-Marie Birney tells of her experiences from being adopted as a small child to finding herself with the help of her African-American female teachers and professors.  Adopted at age two by people of Euro-American decent, Birney, a young African-American woman, felt out of place, lonely, and worthless.  She makes reference to the negro spiritual Motherless Child- stating that she found herself “a long way from home.”  Later majoring in Psychology and Black studies triggered a “cultural and spiritual awakening” which began her journey “home”.  This is the point where she decided to focus her efforts to solve issues involving education in the African-American community.

Birney goes on to mention three African-American female college professors that made a lasting impression on her life.  From these professors, she gained an understanding of her place in the world and the world as it relates to academics.  These professors inspired and uplifted Birney through their levels of commitment and laudable skills.  From these African-American female professors, she felt a sense of care and concern not only having to do with her studies but care and concern for her general well being.  These women inspired her calling to serve the African-American community through teaching.

 A definition of service by Carter G. Woodson explains that service is a necessary part of life.  Author-Freire speaks on the importance of service and how it is beneficial to both the students and teachers.  He explains a style of education “for the practice of freedom” called liberation education.  It involves stimulating the mind through communication as opposed to just giving information.   Like Freire, another author- bell hooks describes education as a practice of freedom.  Birney, looking back on her career as a student, agrees with Freire and hooks in their understandings of education.  Birney’s African-American female teachers and professors throughout her student-hood illustrated the idea that education is about how students could grow as individuals and not just about how much information students can memorize.

Just as we have come to a new understanding of literacy, this text sheds light on an understanding of education that is not dominantly recognized either.  Most people would agree that students are more deeply affected by teachers and professors who seem to care about them.  It is mentioned in this text that more African-American female teachers and professors show their concern for students than other teachers and professors.  They show their dedication and push their students to reach levels of success that they may not have even thought of before their encounters with these teachers.  This text brought more appreciation for the efforts of African-American female teachers and professors.

Using Education to Serve a Community

For this weeks blog I read “Voices of Our Foremothers: Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Women Educators: A Personal Dedication” by Sunny- Marie Birney. In it Birney talks about her experience with her African American teachers and how they became “..[her] mothers away from home...”. In the next section she discusses Carter G. Woodson and how she believes that teaching is a form of service. This caught my attention in the sense that I never looked at teaching in that light, but after her analyses of it I now see that it is indeed a service.

A teachers job is much more than simply teaching a child information about a subject. A good teacher, a true teacher, knows how to expand a mind and actually get their students to think, process and use information that they learn. Teachers hold just as much power, if not more in certain situations, as a child's parent(s). Birney expressing that she saw her teachers as “mothers” shows that the interaction she experienced with them was significant. Therefore, it can be noted that teachers have a major impact on the students that come across their path. A teacher that is successful in not only teaching academics, but helping their students grow as individuals has succeeded in performing a service of educating. 

I feel that the professors I interact with here at Spelman College fall into the description of performing a service. Since being here I feel as if my mind has been expanded and I’ve been forced to think critically about situations and life. Professors here are open and willing to answer questions about both the curriculum and everyday concerns. Being at a school with a smaller population makes building these types of relationships and having these interactions possible and for that I’m thankful.

The Importance of Different Literacies

Dr. Bessie House-Soremekun grew up in Lanett, Alabama with her family who all valued education. From her grandmother Bessie to her parents, she was able to learn different literacies. Growing up, one of her literacies was that of learning the bible and learning about God. It could have been called religious literacy in which she learned from attending church. Because, Dr. House-Soremekun grew up in quite a large family, she was able to learn not only from her parents but from her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She points out how storytelling was a big part of how she learned. Her grandmother would give her knowledge of other literacies that her father learned as a slave. It was interesting that the most important literacy that he learned was that of knowing how to use eating utensils since he was not able to eat with them as a slave. Another literacy that she learned from her grandmother was that of succeeding in life. This is very important. Because blacks were being oppressed, there was a lot that we were not able to do. We were inferior to whites, and they wanted to keep it that way. No matter what, whites tried everything to keep the blacks from gaining any type of knowledge because like Dr. House-Soremekun said “knowledge is power”. They allowed blacks to learn with books, but those books were the ones with missing information and were outdated. Blacks were addressed by their first names while they had to say “Mr. and Mrs.” to whites. 

Reading about Dr. Bessie House-Soremekun’s life and her learning of different literacies shows how blacks have definitely come along way. She took what she learned from her grandmother’s life and her owns and succeeded in life. Although she was always being categorized, she showed how powerful and strong black people and black women are. She is a great model of how we as black women should be no matter how many times people try to bring us down. This is a very inspirational story. 

Looking Deeper, Changing Perspectives

            Sandra Golden recalls her experiences as a 20 year old pregnant woman, with multiple problems, and many fears about life, as she begins her article entitled “Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single- Parent Women”.  I was immediately drawn to the realness of the article, particularly as Golden began to explore negative connotations that society often connects to public assistance, commonly known as welfare. Golden asserts that many welfare recipients are not complacent, lazy, and abusing the system. Instead, her view is that welfare serves to assist you as you rebuild your life and is suppose to take steps to ensure stability through work training and placement programs and the creation of a support system for you.

            This article explores many topics, besides her methodology behind the “stigma” of public assistance.  Golden addresses problems within our system of assistance too. She believes that people are not placed into the proper programs, programs are repeated, and for these reasons and many others, public assistance has not aided in the growth of its recipients as much as it could. What has happened?

            In society today I’m not certain that people understand the meaning of public assistance and what it was created for.  This system was created to help manufacture more independent, self-reliant and stable people by aiding financially. Daily I see people who are in need, so public assistance is a necessity in our society. However, to the extent where people have children to receive more money and are completely abusing a system that was intended to help, it is unfortunate for the people who are truly in need. When this abuse continues to happen, the entire system becomes revamped because tax payers get frustrated because their money is not being used to serve the person who will directly benefit from it.

            Golden really sheds light on how people who may not have achieved high academic literacy levels, are still literate in other ways, including but not limited to survival, communication, and family.  We live in an age where education is pushed and I am definitely an advocate for education and advancing. With this said, it is still important to remember that college is expensive, sometimes support is limited, and everyone does not have the same belief. Sandra Golden wants us to not be so quick to judge but to understand that we all lead very different lives.

Overcoming Archetypes of Black Women on Welfare

In the article, Black and on Welfare: What You Don't Know About Single-Parent Women, Sandra Golden opens with a story about the trials she faced in her experience with welfare as a 20 year-old Black woman while pregnant, unemployed, separated from her husband, and living with her parents.  She uses the words "dehumanized" and "humiliated" when describing how she felt after her experience in a welfare office.

“A Black single parent female utilizes special literacy skills to negotiate with a social context that marginalizes and disenfranchise groups based on gender, race, education, and class.” (Golden 28) 

Golden speaks about young Black women who deal with burns from judgmental eyes.  Assumptions that these women are uneducated or inadequately educated are not the only ideas that are viewed as a common characteristic of the Black women who seek assistance in the welfare office.  People often assume that these women lack the skills and motivation that is necessary to find their way to a better situation in life.  Therefore, these women are given a hard time when they go out and seek help in a welfare office.  Because Black female-headed families have been recognized as inferior to other types of families, unproductive, pathological, and dysfunctional for so long, it is not easy to change those ideas of families headed by single Black women even though many of the situations these women are in do not match the image that was created by the ideas of the past.  Although the purpose of welfare, according to the PRWOPA, is to provide assistance to families in order to avoid unwed pregnancies, end dependence on government benefits, and to promote healthy marriage, it doesn’t seem as if this organization really has the best interest of these families at heart. 

The young Black women who reap the benefits of a welfare program are commonly close to illiterate in terms of formal education but, these women are highly skilled and educated in their respective venues of action.  They put forth a great amount of effort in order to obtain the respect of those around them and even more effort to be the best they can for their families.

A Dialectic Education

In Unearthing Hidden Literacy the author Lillie Gayle Smith discusses how through taking her “Black Woman's Literacy” class she was able to better appreciate her past experience with picking cotton. However, her story of picking cotton was not the only thing that stood out to me. The classroom setting in which she participated is what allowed her to talk about her past and realize that it was nothing to be ashamed of and in fact something to take pride in. 

 In my ADW class we recently discussed the different types of teaching styles that can be experienced in a classroom. The main one we discussed was dialectic. Which is open communication between the students and the teacher. Through dialectic teaching the teacher listens to what the students have to say and embraces their ideas and point of view. This allows for students to express themselves and draw connections between themselves and what they’re learning. And that’s exactly what Lillie Smith experienced.

If it wasn’t for Lillie Smith’s teacher allowing her students to talk and share their stories Smith would have never been able to reach her revelation. She says, “..I would not have disturbed my comfort with memories of repetitive, back-breaking work, which means that I would have ultimately denied myself the awakening that comes only from more fully understanding significant life experiences” (Smith 38). Not only did she help herself, but she was able to bless everyone else in her class as well. 

Here at Spelman College we too participate in a dialectic education which allows us to share our knowledge with one another. Not only do we learn from the teacher, but we also are fortunate enough to learn from our peers. If this was practiced in all classroom settings I believe more people would be able to have experiences similar to Lillie Smith’s. 

Working the Cotton Field

In Unearthing Hidden Literacy, Lillie Gayle Smith talks about the lessons she learned from picking cotton in her aunt's cotton field. Picking cotton reminds us of slavery, and while doing this job Lillie was able to learn more about herself as a person and also as a black woman.

She took up a course in graduate school called Black Women's Literacy. In this course, Ms. Smith "observed examples of women's resistance in a course where the male professor had a gender preference for the males when giving an answer" (Smith 39). Lillie was able to connect what she learned to her life in her past and present. She wanted to forget about her working days in the cotton field but taking this course only made her realize the true meaning and importance of this job. Her mother made her and her brother start to pick cotton because she felt that it would teach them different learning experiences, and it did. Ms. Smith talks about how working in the cotton field made her able to listen to what the elders had to say about valuing education. She was encouraged to do well so that she could have the life that they never had.

It was interesting to see how the author connected the hard labor of picking cotton to her life today. Although she wanted to forget about those days, taking that course made her realized that that job was not only a part of her, but it taught her so much. It taught her about herself and about women in general. Women have had to overcome so many obstacles and black women even more. Having an education means a lot because it empowers black women to do more in their life as far as making decisions that will help them better themselves. The literacies that these women learned were what helped them survive in times of racism and when gender was taken into account.
It is important that we as black women think about the struggles that our ancestors before have went through and what we go through today. Although we are not going through half as much as they went through, we have to remember what makes us who we are. We have to make sure that we learn something from every situation that we are in because that only makes us more knowledgeable of other things making us better African American women.

Our Roles

Joanne Kilgour Dowdy interprets roles of black women in films.  She references “Passion Fish”, “Wit”, “The Color Purple”, “Losing Isaiah”, “The Josephine Baker Story”, “Clara’s Heart”, “Sarafina”, “Music from the Heart”, and “Eve’s Bayou”.  Each of these nine films provides a distinct view of black women.  "The Color Purple" was filmed earliest in 1985.  This film shows the triumph of a young woman who was manipulated and abused.  Nevertheless, she persevered and created opportunities for herself.  Produced in 2001, “Wit” was the latest of the films.  It depicts the story of a black nurse named Sue.  Dowdy’s students viewed Sue as the "invisible character" as she played a key role but was not a main character.

These nine stories reflect the roles that black women play every day in real life.  We learned about the many roles of black women in readings such as “Going Against The Grain” and “To Protect and Serve".  Outside of our educational pursuits in this class, we see the struggles that black women have endured particularly in another class called African Diaspora and The World.  In “Reel Women: Black Women and Literacy In Feature Films” Joanne Dowdy explores ways that symbols help create our world.  Each of the films named above were constructed by a white director.  Therefore, Dowdy had her students use critical analysis when viewing these films, particularly when black characters are in the cast. 

I think that Dowdy wants her students and readers to be aware of how black people, specifically black women are represented by the media.  She uses nine films that were produced over sixteen years to show similarities in the roles black women have played.  In movies, we are often abused, weak, and sometimes incompetent.  When these films are continuously being produced, these images of black women begin to come to life in society and many of the ideas from the films become reality.  Black women can either conform to the expectations of society or use the expectations placed upon us as inspiration to do better and learn more.  We need to create new pictures; positive images that uphold integrity and hard work; images that radiate our beauty.

Developing Literacy

"Throughout the pre-Civil War era, African Americans helped themselves to literacy in provocative and creative ways (M. Davis 1981:266) [...]"(152).  In the text Going Against The Grain by Jaqueline Royster, there is a subsection entitled "The Doors of Opportunity".  This section of the text gives readers an idea of how African Americans went about becoming literate after the Civil War.

In this text, Royster sheds light on an energy to learn within the African American people of the post-Civil War era.  According to the text, this energy was “cycled” by the Sabbath School Movement, the Missionary School Movement, and the Community or Public School Movement. 

Sabbath schools were church sponsored, community run schools.  African Americans would run these schools in their communities.  The basic literacy African Americans taught in these schools made them responsible for the foundation of literacy in their communities.

The missionary school movement stemmed from northern church and community organizations’ efforts to intensify their mission activities which urged freedom, justice, and empowerment.  The missionary school movement was a dominant educational avenue for decades. 

Southern leaders went about heightening their authority by supporting the education of African Americans.  These southern leaders made efforts to reduce the influence of northern liberals such as those missionaries who urged freedom, justice, and empowerment, by establishing public schools which gave African Americans ways other than the missionary schools to gain opportunities for education.  Recognizing how a literate African American population may positively affect the economy, these leaders still did not agree with the idea of African Americans having a northern culture and getting rid of the southern culture which they thrived on.  These public schools were geared toward an industrial education and against liberal arts education.

African Americans have been taking advantage of every opportunity to gain literacy all throughout their experience in America.  We, African Americans as a people, are capable of many things in terms of education.  Taking advantage of educational opportunity is not as common as it once was.  The energy Royster mentions in the text must be embodied again in the African descended people of American society today.  Especially now, literacy can be obtained in so many ways that hopefully, African American people will find the energy to learn again.

--Asya Ziyad

Mothers of the Land

In Jacqueline Royster’s Going Against the Grain, she talks about the lives of African American women as slaves, and how they fought through the struggle to get where they are today through expressing literacy. The many things that Royster said throughout the reading connected to many of the other readings we’ve been reading and discussing within our class.

One way that they connected was that in Elaine Richardson’s To Protect and Serve, she talks about how African American women used storytelling to express their literacy, and Royster touches on this as well. She talks of how they used storytelling to express their beliefs to their community.

Royster also says that women played two roles in their communities, “They were the interpreters and reinterpreters of what was going on. They were the transmitters of culture as mothers, actual and fictive, as teachers, as social activists” (110). Like in the other readings, Royster is touching on how these women became mothers of their communities. They have maternal literacy as they know how to nurture their people and teach them things that they believe they should know. They give them knowledge that they know they were not getting anywhere else due to the oppression of African Americans.

These women were also responsible for taking care of the illnesses of their people. They provided support for other African Americans because they knew that it was important for no one person to be alone. It is important to help your people to become knowledgeable, and according to Royster, black women did exactly this. They used their vernacular showing that it was acceptable to express their culture and beliefs.

These women were very powerful and helped fight the struggle for not only African Americans but for the women as well. It is vital that we recognize all of the important women because they helped to shape the lives of African American women today as we are awarded more opportunities than before.

 I appreciate Royster’s words as she helps me to become knowledgeable of happenings that I did not know previously. She, like the women she talks about, passes her knowledge down to another African American female like myself.

Danielle Broadnax

"Fabric of Resistance"

I believe that our past shows that when many people join together towards a common goal, much can be accomplished. One voice multiplies and this is what leads to change and progression.

In the section of “Going Against the Grain” entitled The Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Jaqueline Royster discusses activism in African American communities.  Whether large or small, she believes that these acts have formed our fabric of resistance, which is the phrase the she uses to symbolize the ways in which people of African descent have continuously come together to fight for equality and against injustice. She references examples such as revolts against dehumanizing conditions, particularly during slavery, when people were stripped of freedom, educational opportunities, and mere rights that whites were given.

Royster acknowledges that the founding fathers of our nation attributed the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to select people, which was obvious because of the oppression that occurred. Her account goes on to discuss the Age of Enlightenment to explain how the three rights above came into existence.

The idea of coming together that our ancestors embodied made me reflect on where we are today as a culture. We still need to come together because the race is not over. Our fabric of resistance in the past was the springboard for the acquisition of many rights such as gaining the right to vote and ending the Jim Crow era.  Royster even discusses the founding of schools as early as 1793, which was done by Catherine Williams Ferguson, a former slave. Ferguson resisted the belief that blacks should not be educated. She went against the grain and strengthened our fabric.

This entire historical account delves into ideas that really make you wonder. I think that I found fascination in the fact that our ancestors understood what needed to be done and worked toward accomplishing it.  They were neither passive nor complacent, but vigilant and determined. Society can learn from this now.

-Berkley

Two Can Play That Game

In Jacqueline Royster’s piece Going Against the Grain, she gives examples of African American women at the beginning of the U.S. slave trade being leaders and competent of their surroundings while being held captive.  I found this very interesting because, before reading this piece, I had a notion that the Africans who were brought to America were unaware of their situation and that they were completely oblivious to their surroundings.  Beyond that, I believed that they would not know how to effectively fight against the injustice that was being thrust upon them.  Royster shed light on their awareness and made it clear how much strength, diligence, and perseverance our ancestors embodied.

Royster uses the story of Lucy Terry in order to illustrate how African American women were performing tasks that were deemed beyond their comprehension during that time.  Terry was brought to America as an infant and sold into slavery at the age of five.  In 1756 she married Abijah Prince, a former slave, who bought her freedom and four years later, they moved to Guilford, Vermont where they received threats from their white neighbors.  Terry took it upon herself to confront the governor’s council to complain against her assailants.  She demanded the protection of her home and family.  This was fascinating seeing that a black women who grew up as a slave knew how to handle the affairs of her household in a legal manner.

Royster goes on in detail about Terry’s court trial where she represented herself and won!  During the process of legally saving her property, Terry took her case to the Supreme Court and claimed victory.  This alone shows that although their literacy may have been presented in many different ways, African American women were definitely literate.

 

Learning about African American women who knew how to operate a legal system that was designed to work against their entire race showed made it clear that as an African American woman, I can be powerful.  Mrs. Lucy Terry Prince portrayed a capable and competent black woman.  Before this reading, when slavery times came to mind, I thought of us, African American women, as if we were unaware of the circumstances we faced.  Moreover, I never imagined we would know how to go about protesting the cruelty that was inflicted on us.  It was pleasing to learn that we as a people, though underestimated, were capable of overcoming obstacles then and are capable of overcoming new obstacles now.  Now, I know that we can breaking barriers and create change. 

A Personal Journey

“I was free to dream, and in my dreams I could become anything I wanted to be,” (186) proclaims Leonie C.R. Smith in her text entitled “To Be Black, Female, and Literate: A Personal Journey in Education and Alienation.”

Smith, who is shown above, depicts her journey to achieving a PhD, moving to America, and her story to success in this text. She grew up in Antigua, where opportunities were not abundant, but was pushed by both of her parents to become literate, independent, and self-sufficient. Both of her parents understood the demands of the world and the importance of education for future prospering. Smith was able to overcome many obstacles such as the death of her mother, a fire that almost killed her entire family, and enduring racism at Hamilton College. Through all of this adversity, she really learned the true meaning of strength, perseverance, and diligence.

This text references prior concepts that were discussed in “To Protect and Serve” by Elaine Richardson, such as codeswitching. Smith discusses the skill of codeswitching on page 187 of her text, when she has moved to New York and begun her formal education in America. In school she is taught British English, however at home she spoke patois, so this directly correlates with Richardson’s conception of codeswitching.


Smith’s Mom embodied maternal literacy and her father paternal literacy. This relates to our literacy essay, in that they each had a nurtured skill that enabled them to help their children become literate and self-sufficient. Smith’s paternal grandmother was illiterate and as a result, she lost her estate and wealth, because a woman gave her a promissory note and she was unable to read it. This unfortunate situation led Smith’s father to becoming an advocate for education, thus affording more opportunities to his family.

Compared to all of the readings that we’ve done thus far, Smith’s recollection was the most compelling and inspiring. On numerous occasions she could have given up, but she prided herself on representing black people well on all fronts and showing her counterparts that she too was capable of achieving her dreams.

Branching Out; From McVay's Perspective

In her text "Black Women/Black Literature", Joanne Kilgour Dowdy reports her interview of Christina McVay.  Dowdy is looking to share an alternative perspective to black literature, a perspective from someone who is not black.  Christina McVay, a white woman, teaches Pan-African studies to black females.  She is fully emmersed in black culture, particularly black literacies, and her willingness to accept cultural differences has aided in her success as a teacher.

Christina McVay creates a comfortable classroom setting for her pupils by allowing them to speak freely and in their own vernacular.  She believes that her students know when to use proper English, which she prefers to call consensus English.  Because of this welcoming environment that she creates, her students learn and desire to know more.  Furthermore, Christina McVay says, “I think probably more lights have gone off for me than for my students.  I suppose I’m really doing this teaching for myself”(95).  She really is emphasizing the equal exchange that comes with being an educator and how learning is a life long and never-ending process.

It is intriguing to see how interested McVay is in black culture.  It is rare to find a teacher who is not black  with such desire to know about black culture.  She understands that language is relative to culture and that different cultures embrace different traditions and understandings. She sees the world from a multidimensional point of view, and for this reason, we thought fondly of her beliefs and perspective of our culture.

We believe that it would be beneficial to have more educators that are ensuring the success of their students. Educators who want to learn about the struggles of their students will help to make students more responsive and passionate about their studies. We did feel that McVay painted black people with a broad brush, in suspecting that many black people do speak slang. However, overall we appreciate her support of black females and the differences she is attempting to make in women like us.

Conscious Decisions

Elaine Richardson emphasizes the idea of consciousness several times in the text To Protect and Serve: African American Female Literacies. She explores consciousness as a situational occourence. Often times African Americans have had to conform when in certain settings. This is particularly because African Americans have been present as a minority in the American society. According to Richardson, conforming happens when one changes their speech, condition, and position.

Richardson says in To Protect and Serve that “The black woman’s consciousness of her conditioning, her position/ing in American society, the conditioning of her audiences must be factored into her language and literacy practices”.

This quote draws on the idea that there is a stigma amidst being both black and a woman in America. From the past, ideas that both groups are inferior have led us toward a culture that does not celebrate the contributions that African American women have made to better the society. For this reason, black women have had to work for acceptance, by changing their vernacular and sometimes cultural traditions. Such literacy practices such as storytelling, performative silence, and steppin/rhyming are identified with African American women. These practices have not been widely accepted. Therefore, the idea of consciousness has affected when and where African American women practice their traditions.

This text stimulated a lot of reflective discussions for Melodies about growing up in a society where there are so many divisions and little grey area. Jasmine, one member of the group, noted that when she texts peers that are proper she tends to write in a similar way. However, when she is texting friends that use text lingo and slang, she replies in the same format. Berkley pondered on her middle school years when she attended an all girls, predominantly white, private school and had to be herself while still desiring to make friends and be accepted by the students. Danielle offerred insight into her years in private school when she overheard her white peers jokingly referencing black lingo. Asya refenced her memory of etiquette class and how the black girls didnt seem out of their element even though she knew that they didnt live the way they acted in class. W.E.B. Dubois shed light on this when he introduced his theory of double consciousness and the internal conflict of being black and American. The group agreed that self acceptance and confidence comes with maturity and leads to one being able to exist comfortably in various, diverse settings. Overall the group was affected negatively by the text because of the stereoptyical way that black women were portrayed. Despite their personal opinions of the text, the group felt empowered and able to change negative images of African American women through all of the different ways that they express literacy.