This article extends the previous conversations around Endarkened Narrative Inquiry (ENI) and wisdom whisper. Endarkened narrative inquiry is a culturally situated qualitative framework rooted in Black women’s onto-epistemologies and narrative inquiry. Wisdom whisper is a qualitative data collection method that attends to the various nuances of language, attitudes, and upbringing that exist in discourse, particularly from an intergenerational context. In this article, I expand that knowledge base, informed by existing literature, to present the creation of Vulnerable, Empowered, and Spirit-Driven Narratives (VES Narratives) as an approach to qualitative data analysis and (re)presentation from a culturally situated perspective. Specifically, I offer VES Narratives to reconcile O’Neal’s and other scholars’ critiques of using Western Bildungsroman as a coming-of-age technique for people of color, especially women of color.
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