The girls wrote multiple and complex representations, which included ethnic, gender, intellectual, kinship, sexual, individual, and community representations. Findings show that the girls wrote across platforms similar to those African American women have addressed historically, which included writing to represent self writing to resist or counter ascribed representations, and writing toward social change. Coupling sociohistorical and critical sociocultural theories, I organized and analyzed their writings through open, axial, and selective coding.

This inquiry investigated self-representations in the writings of eight African American adolescent girls ages 12-17 who participated in a historically grounded literacy collaborative. others pathologizing and defining who they are. Nor, for the most part, have studies examined how girls represent themselves among a society of. Few investigations have explored how they respond to and interpret such imposed representations. This paper aims to reveal Ward’s fierce criticism of racist ideology that has caused the double dilemma of survival and spirit of black people in the American South and demonstrate her deep understanding as well as support for the ideals and actions of African Americans in terms of their eagerness to integrate into the mainstream society.Ĭurrently, African American girls are being depicted as overly sexual, violent, or confrontational, are judged by physical features, or are invisible across mainstream media and within school classrooms. Based on Erich Fromm’s alienation theory and his theories of love, this paper gives an analysis of the alienation of the protagonist at the level of love and racial identity and focuses on the struggle of the black group to survive in the white mainstream society, which resulted in their dual lack and dual pursuit of love and identity. Sing focuses on a black family in the American south, which was nearly torn apart by poverty, drugs, and racial discrimination Apart from the estranged kinship in the black family, represented by ghost Richie, the black group in the novel also shows a seemingly strong desire for identity. It was Sing that laid a solid foundation for Ward’s reception from the American literary circle as a powerful new voice. Jesmyn Ward’s third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, however, is Ward’s second work to have won the National Book Award for fiction.

Sing unburied sing cliff notes