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Abstract

This narrative traces the experiences of mothering a Black child coming to consciousness about the role and place of Blackness in the United States. Working from a pedagogy of pain and love, Pillow seeks out an endarkened, embodied praxis of mothering that allows Black youth places of “disidentifications” to imagine other spaces and futurities. Utilizing Sara Ahmed’s discussion of “strange encounters,” Pillow reviews how Blackness is intimately linked to stranger danger and stranger fetishization in the United States, the depths of which played out in Trayvon Martin’s death. She suggests that José Estaban Muñoz’s theory of “disidentification” offers a critique of hetero-patriarchy lacking in current research on Black youth racial identity and that such a critique is necessary not only to build new forms of resilience for Black youth but also to develop structural critiques of racialized systems, discourses, knowledge, and practices.

Keywords

Black youth mothering Blackness racial identity/racial threat queer of color

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Mothering a Black Son Who Dreams of Another Country

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