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In this Provocateur Piece, the authors featured in the themed issue re-create a virtual kitchen table talk where they dialogue across their respective work as English teacher educators and scholars who foreground Black feminist/womanist epistemologies in their personal, social, and professional lives. They discuss what it means to be Black women, mothers, sisters, and daughters who do work with Black girls in K-12 educational settings and Black women in teacher education. Why is it critical that all educators acknowledge Black girls' literacies in their work? How are Black girls' literacies honored in our work? What does it mean for us as Black women educators to do this work? How does it enrich our lives? What are the challenges? The piece ends with an open letter to Black girls as an affirming call for their reclaiming and redefining of their literate selves.
The kitchen table. Where mothers and daughters prep Sunday dinners on Saturday afternoons and each head of hair is pressed for Sunday's church service. Where women kinfolk play cards and drop dominoes. Where girlfriends drink morning coffee and afternoon tea, sharing the latest gossip and breaking down politics. The kitchen table represents physically and symbolically an inclusive space for Black girls and women to come together, to be seen, to be heard, and to just be. The kitchen table signifies the rich history of our foremothers and grandmothers who sat at the kitchen table where, beyond gossip and social talk, women bared their souls and received healing and affirmation in the company of their sisters.
The reference to "sitting at the kitchen table" also has great significance among circles of women scholars of color in the academy. In 1980, Black feminist writers and activists including Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith started a publishing press for women of color, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. The press was created to provide publishing opportunities for the work of women, feminists, and lesbians of color given challenges faced with White-dominated journals, and particularly some White feminist journals. Barbara Smith (1989) defined the press as "a revolutionary tool because it is one means of empowering society's most dispossessed people, who also have the greatest potential for making change" (p. 13). Naming the press "Kitchen Table" emphasizes the...