We Can Speak for Ourselves: Parent Involvement and Ideologies of Black Mothers in Chicago

This work is an intervention of self-representation that explores experiences of five Black mothers of the same Chicago elementary school with respect to their relationship with the author - a qualitative researcher - over a period of two years. Black feminist epistemology is the framework that directed this project, fieldwork, and interpretation of the findings. Additionally, this work employs tools of poetry, counternarratives, and critical ethnography. "This book is a multi-generation chronicle of resistance work, which challenges the dominant understandings of Black mothers in American society. We Can Speak for Ourselves is rooted in the everyday lives of Black mothers and contributions to their communities that include children, partners, cousins, stepparents, godparents, Big Mama, neighbors, and teachers. This book asserts their narratives as empirical data and is critical in nature because it is a call to action." Foreword excerpt by Dr. Kristal Moore Clemons