Listening to Myself, Those Before, and Those Around Me: A Black Feminist Investigation of Strength and Intimacy in a Black Women's Virtual Support Group

Abstract

Black and endarkened feminist epistemologies are grounded in the understanding that Black women have ways of knowing and knowledge production that have been overlooked and undervalued in patriarchal, white systems (e.g., academia) (Collins, 2000; Dillard, 2008). In this dissertation, I uplift those ways of knowing. Sister Space is a virtual support group in which I aimed to investigate emotional intimacy, notions of strength and online support group work for Black graduate student women. Using my personal experiences and insights facilitating Sister Space, I center the knowledge and experiences of Black graduate student women. I highlight the various roles I have played in my own life as a Black academic woman in the US, including the support group facilitator (i.e., clinician) and Strong Black woman (Abrams et al., 2014). I highlight complicated scenarios that arose for me conducting Sister Space (e.g., addressing latecomers to group) and offer my recommendations for facilitating virtual support group work (e.g., working with a co-facilitator). I present some of the ways in which “strength” was instilled in me through past experiences (e.g., my mother’s passing) and the tensions in conceptualizations of strength for Black graduate student women (e.g., finding comfort in being “strong,” even if it means caring for others in spite of oneself). Despite previous literature suggesting that pressures to be strong may inhibit emotional intimacy (i.e., intimacy) among Black women (Davis, 2015), I observe and present the ways in which Black graduate student women establish, demonstrate, and conceptualize intimacy (e.g., having another Black woman who one can “really talk to”) within Sister Space. Throughout this dissertation, I stress the importance of listening to Black women and valuing their ways of knowing, including intuition, and knowledge production.