For the Poetic Scholars: A Black Feminist Prospectus on the Use of Poetic Positionality Statements in Qualitative Research

Abstract

The underpinning of positivism persists even in the most progressive of education canons. Thus, critiques of dominant research paradigms still remain at the margins. So, we stand at the edge of the margins and “talk back” (or defiantly re-engage) the methodological canon to uproot persistent barriers to authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality within qualitative inquiry. This study examines how two Black women tenure-track assistant professors fused Black feminism and the use of poetics for positionality statements to create what we call “positionality poems.” We created self-authored poems as a methodological tool to explore the relationship between researcher identity and qualitative inquiry. Using an interpretivist approach, we analyze our poems alongside works by Black women poets to investigate how positionality and poetics challenge dominant paradigms in education research; and to demonstrate how arts-based methods can enhance authenticity and trustworthiness in qualitative research. Findings reveal four “ancestral whispers” that illuminate the liberatory potential of integrating Black feminisms and poetics into research design and analysis, offering both a methodological and empirical contribution to the field of education research.

“I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean—in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.” Audre Lorde (1985, p. 37)

Qualitative research has long been shaped by hegemonic norms of scientific discovery that privilege eurocentric epistemologies and white normative assumptions of reality. These norms dictate what counts as “legitimate” science and marginalize alternative ways of knowing (Luker, 2009; McKittrick, 2020; Wynter, 2021; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). Historically and contemporarily, Black and non-Black scholars of color have experienced epistemic violence and axiological oppression through methodological invalidation within the academy (Collins, 2000; Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2021; Pedota et al., 2025). Such exclusionary practices not only distort knowledge production but also undermine authenticity and trustworthiness in qualitative inquiry (Bhattacharya, 2016b). Addressing these tensions requires methodological approaches that resist positivist traditions and center collective marginalized standpoints of positionality.

Notably, the underpinnings of positivism persists even in the most progressive of education traditions of research (Warren, 2018). So, we start at the root of this phenomenon and “talk back” (hooks, 1989) to the methodological canon, using poetry to disrupt persistent barriers to authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality, relying on Black feminism and Black studies as a guide. We make a scholarly pivot towards the arts, more pointedly poetics, presuming that many scholars are deeply moved by words, lights, sounds, and actions, but somehow stuck—bound by methodological traditions and more broadly, the academy. Hence, we present reflexive poems, which we call positionality poems, as data and connect our poetic phrasings back to our Black feminist foremothers to illustrate how poetics can be employed as a methodological tool and evidence.

Focused on this pivotal connection between the qualitative researcher(s)’s positionality and methodology, we aim to answer the following research questions: (1) How does developing collective poetic positionality statements influence two Black women professors—Dwuana and LaShawn’s— collective understandings of self, the academy, and qualitative research methodology?, and (2) In what ways do poetic positionality statements disrupt dominant qualitative paradigms and offer liberatory research possibilities that promote authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality in qualitative research? Through our presented themes, again—referred to as ancestral whispers, we lend evidence to the interconnectedness of Black Studies and Black feminism as articulated through the artistic expressions of poetic positionality statements in qualitative inquiry on, and by, Black people.

Review of Literature

Authenticity in qualitative research depends on the researcher’s lived experiences, professional development, and relational engagement with participants (DeCuir-Gunby, 2020; Saldana, 2021). For Black women scholars, conducting research can be contentious and dehumanizing because our ontologies and epistemologies often conflict with dominant white research logics (Tuck & Yang, 2012; Washington, 2024; Wynter, 1994, 2003). One mechanism for asserting integrity and transparency has been the use of positionality statements. However, their value remains contested. Critics argue that reflexivity statements lack rigor or introduce bias (Savolainen et al., 2023), while advocates contend they enhance methodological integrity and democratize knowledge production (Bhattacharya, 2016a). This debate underscores the need for innovative approaches that move beyond formulaic declarations toward embodied, culturally grounded practices. Our study intervenes by reimagining positionality through poetics—a method which amplifies voice, resists erasure, and deepens reflexivity.

Poetic Justice: Poetry as Method, Resistance, and Innovation

Poetics offers a methodological response to ontological repression and epistemicide (which is the killing of cultural knowledge from marginalized communities as a result of eurocentric ideologies and hierarchies). For example, hooks, 1984 conceptualized “talking back” as an act of intellectual and artistic resistance, and Wynter (2021) calls for sociopoetics that situates ethnos within its historical particularity. Both hooks and Wynter highlight how artist resistance and the historical lineage of Black sociopoetics links to alternative approaches to intellectual inquiry through the arts. Arts-based approaches in qualitative research have gained traction as scholars employ poetry to express lived experience, report findings, and challenge dominant paradigms (Cutts Givens, 2026; Evans-Winters, 2019; Okello, 2019). These practices demonstrate that poetry is not decorative but a rigorous tool for inquiry, reflexivity and standpoint articulation, and data analysis (Cutts Givens, 2026; Ohito & Nyachae, 2018). Particularly for scholars who identify as Black women/femme, the use of poetics as a qualitative methodological tool fosters additional layers of research possibilities, which move away from draconian patriarchal research standards (Cutts & Sankofa Waters, 2019), promotes rigor and reconnections with Black ancestral wisdom, knowledge, and Black feminist theorizing (Cutts Givens, 2026; Ohito & Nyachae, 2018). Judd (2022) argues, “Black women artists [scholars] approach and produce knowledge as [an] internal and complex sensation entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy” (p. 7), and this complex knowledge is not often promoted or given the space to be articulated within prominent research processes. Yet, poetry is powerful and it can be a dynamic reflexive methodological tool for exploring researcher’s positioning within the research process. Thus, by integrating poetics into positionality statements, researchers can foreground the affective, cultural, and political dimensions of inquiry—dimensions often flattened by traditional methodological norms.

Foremothers and Methodological Inspiration

Our methodological choices are deeply informed by Black women poets, such as (but not limited to) Pauli Murray, Maya Angelou, and Nikki Giovanni, whose work embodies resilience, intersectionality, and liberation. Pauli Murray’s (2018) Dark Testament reflects the psychological toll of systemic oppression and the enduring struggle for justice, offering a lens for understanding poetic research as a site of resistance. Maya Angelou’s poetry and prose celebrate radical self-actualization and affirm authenticity as a cornerstone of trustworthiness in scholarship (Angelou, 1997; Angelou, 2014; Angelou, 1995). Lastly, Nikki Giovanni’s work, including A Good Cry (2017), foregrounds vulnerability and healing as sources of strength—principles that resonate with our approach to reflexivity. These foremothers do more than inspire; they operationalize Black feminist concepts that guide our analytic process. Themes of relationality, joy, sorrow, and liberation theology (Pollard, 2021) foreshadow the ancestral whispers that emerge in our findings, linking artistic expression to methodological rigor.

This literature establishes the foundation for our inquiry into poetic positionality statements as a methodological intervention by situating our work within critiques of epistemic violence, debates on reflexivity, and traditions of Black studies and Black feminist poetics. Through this lens, we position poetics not as ancillary but as integral to advancing equity and rigor in qualitative research.

Conceptual Framework

We glean from Collins’ (2013) standpoint epistemology, as discussed in her book On Intellectual Activism, which emphasizes the importance of knowledge production from the perspectives of marginalized groups. Collins argues investigating the subjugated knowledge of those who are “othered”—in this case, from the standpoint of two Black women—requires significant ingenuity, pointing out the rigor in the process of applying Black feminism in qualitative methodology (Collins, 2013). In her essay “Learning from the Outsider Within Revisited,” (Collins, 1986) she discusses Lorde’s (1984/2012) concept of the “outsider within,” which refers to the unique perspectives of individuals who exist on the margins of dominant social groups. This vantage point allows marginalized individuals to contribute to a deep understanding of social phenomena. This concept underscores the importance of incorporating diverse voices and experiences into the research process for comprehensive knowledge development (Collins, 1986; Collins, 2013). This approach highlights the value of lived experiences and the unique insights they provide, challenging traditional hierarchies of knowledge and advocating for a more democratizing approach to research.

“Talking Back” as Epistemic Resistance

Black scholars, specifically, have used positionality statements as a form of ‘talking back” (hooks, 1989) to a canon that continuously tries to assassinate our intellectual contributions and presence in the academy, with the aims of flattening our humanity. In this way, talking back is an act of resilience, rebellion, and freedom of expression and aligns with the humanizing art of poetic positionality statements as a measure of authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality in the qualitative research process.

As daughters of the hooksian tradition (Washington, 2024, 2026), we relied heavily on bell hooks, 1995, Art on My Mind, to understand the boundary spanning nature of the Black Arts movement reflected in the methodological use of poetic positionality statements—particularly in the midst of political epistemicide and ontological repression (Garces et al., 2021; Pedota et al., 2025). As a Black feminist, hooks wrote poetry and about the use of poetry as a historical liberatory literary tool for Black writers (hooks, 1984). Her work reminds us that epistemicide and ontological repression requires an improvisational praxis of agency and resilience as an act of resistance and joy seeking—however illegible it may be to the academy (hooks, 1994, hooks, 2001).

Also, Sylvia Wynter’s (2021) reflections on the tradition of Black aesthetics emphasizes the importance of intergenerational exchanges and the exploration of Black life-worlds through art. She argues, “Ethno-socio-poetics can only have validity if it is explored in a context of sociopoetics where the socio firmly places the ethnos in its concrete historical particularity” (Wynter, 2021, p. 1). Thus, Wynter begs us to showcase, through poetics, how we are made and remade by our ethno-racial, socio-cultural, socio-economic, and socio-political racialized-gendered realities. This perspective informs our collaborative approaches by highlighting the significance of Black trans-Atlantic traditions within the continuous dialogue between generations of predominantly U.S. born, Black women, scholars.

Emancipatory Relationality

Lastly, to illuminate the principles that constitute Black feminism as a theoretical conceptual framework, we “talk back” (with due disrespect) as a form of “intellectual activism” that centers the concept of “emancipatory relationality” (Bradley, 2023). Emancipatory relationality is an articulation of Blackness, rooted in Black Studies and Black feminism, which enhances our understanding of the data by offering a critical reflexive framework through which we seek to understand each ancestral whisper (Bradley, 2023). Emancipatory relationality asks us to extend our expressions of our onto-epistemic positionality by: (1) Relying on an innovative collaborative approaches that center co-constructive ways of knowing and being in community with Black people; and (2) Illustrating the importance of asset-based community-centered research.

Through this conceptual framework, we offer a contribution as to how all scholars might rely on positionality poems to resist epistemic tensions that lead to the flattening and erasure of Black humanity in methodological inquiries.

Research Design

To reconnect with our Black ancestral knowledge and (re)member and embrace the use of Black feminist poetic inquiry (Cutts Givens, 2026), we use Black Feminist Thought and methods of Black Studies to guide our research design (Collins, 2000; hooks, 1989; Wynter, 2021). As such, we rely on a unique methodology to grapple with the tensions between Black feminism, Black Studies, and white normative qualitative standards within the broader discipline of education research and our shared lived experiences as scholars. Combining understandings of the social world through both personal experiences and shared socio-political contexts, our arts-based methodology reflects what we call an embodied onto-epistemic socio-political praxis. This process involves understanding the world (ontology) through an intimate and detailed examination of material data (epistemology), grounded in shared socio-political experiences of the observer(s) and/or subject(s) (Okello & Morton, 2024; Teague & Nagbe, 2024). It is an iterative sense-making process focused on how phenomena are understood through individual and collective reflection across time, space, and genre as a form of free and authentic expression. The process centers critical examination of the power dynamics that shape the design, findings, and implications of the inquiry. Central to our methodological design was the use of poetic positionality statements—self-authored poems—as primary data to explore the relationship between researcher identity and qualitative approach.

Between Fall 2022 –Spring 2025, we met weekly for 60-120 minutes with few exceptions, analyzing our self-authored poems for the seedlings of influence and shared experiences embedded in our poetic expressions of who we are in relation to one another as qualitative scholars committed to anti-oppressive research methodologies. We wrote two original individual poetic positionality poems and employed an auto-ethnographic (Wynter, 1989), Black Ancestral Textual Analysis (Teague & Nagbe, 2024) to qualitatively explore the restorative phenomenon of poetic expression between the two of us as two pre-tenured Black women faculty members in large research-intensive institutions. We juxtaposed our poems and epistemic statements with prominent themes found in Black feminist thinking among Black women poets who have greatly influenced our positionality as pre-tenured Black women. As mentioned previously, we specifically asked: (1) How does developing collective poetic positionality statements influence two Black women professors’ understandings of self, the academy, and qualitative research methodology?, and (2) In what ways do Poetic Positionality Statements disrupt dominant qualitative paradigms and offer liberatory research possibilities that promote authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality in qualitative research? As presented in the findings (ancestral whispers) below, we recreated mini-collectivistic poems, reconstructed to align with our Black being and resistance. The co-constructed mini poems exist as both process and evidence, exemplifying how Black women’s collective yet individual standpoints resist and create life-giving resilience in the face of Black social, political, and cultural assassination.

Positionality Poems as Data

Here we call attention to the call and response nature of the collectivistic meaning making process of positionality poem development. However, we first point out how the meaning-making process was made richer because we individually authored our respective poems, without consideration of a future content analysis. As such we uniquely defined our visions and perceptions of Blackness via poetry independent of one another and in very unique political contexts—one in progressive Southern California, the other in a progressive school of education in politically shifting Wisconsin. Both poems were written in different contexts and at different professional rankings. We honor these points of individuation by presenting both poems as independent points of data.

Dwana’s Poem

Black girl. Black like grand-daughter of a grand-mother Raised by a fictive grandmother And grandfather Who tilled Southern “U.S. soils” in an effort to reap so-called “shared crops” From a land that was just yesterday referred to as a plantation, meant for all those who survived the brutal kidnapping, dehumanization of Africans prior to the proclamation of her emancipation. From what nation-state? I may never know, and was taught to pledge no allegiance to in your public school. But still know to hold allegiance to with respect to who I am As a Black girl Black Like That.

Black like, Country Black. Black like born and raised, and ancestrally rooted up and down the mighty Mississippi River Black.

So I’m a “quit runnin’ in and outta my house” Black Mama; I can’t say eh-nuf about that shit Black. But like I said; spirit sensitive. So when I’m on my gentle parenting it’s Mommy not mama, Black Black like that. Black like, “church-girl” Black. Even though I wasn’t raised in the church, Gworl. Black.

Black like, spiritually sensitive GIFTED SPIRITUALLY, Black So much so that spirit had me looking for answers in the CHURCH for a while. Cause that’s where Black folks found a many o’ answers at, just to get us through the struggle. I can’t say eh-nuhf about that shit Black. But like I said; spirit sensitive. Black like that.

Black like queer Black. So queer my daddy never seen me Even though I spent my whole life thinking he was seeing me. Even though he BIG upped me to my BIG sisters so much, he had us all believing I mighta been the only one he felt was even worth seeing. Black like that.

Black like, gifted Black. So gifted, I’m disabled Black, so disabled, I’m gifted Black. Yeah I know how it sounds, but Black like Illegible to an ableist, anti-Black, morally corrupt illiterate capitalistic health and education system; Black. Black JUST like that.

Dwuana’s Epistemic Stance

Embodying what Sandoval (2013) describes as a methodology of the oppressed, my epistemological stance is rooted in survival. To embody Blackness as a scholar is to, every day, resist your own physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and socio-political death; as well as a practice of resistance of one’s own cultural death within community (Sharpe, 2016). The community I speak of is Black by social construct, genealogy, and marred by financial disenfranchised. My epistemology practices truth seeking that grapples with perspectives beyond my own assumptions as a mode of understanding a world designed to systematically distort and destroy those who occupy marginalized and disenfranchised positions (Sandoval, 2013). At times, my truth seeking (hooks, 1989) occurs horizontally, engaged with the assumptions of those only differently oppressed. However, I find myself more often in a forced vertical engagement with the assumptions of those privileged enough to have their ways of knowing normalized and prioritized as legitimate and ideal.

As a Black woman from an economically (and thus by design, educationally) disenfranchised community, I recognize I am traversing an intellectual landscape that is traditionally white and middle class and, subsequently, lacking in basic literacy as it relates to Black intellectualism (Cooper, 2017; Grant et al., 2015; Wynter, 1994). Therefore, the ways in which I discover and embody truth (ontologically), my relationship with the data/participants (epistemologically), and my integrity throughout the process (axiologically) are always minimally negotiated against the prevailing ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions/standards of the dominant culture. As a result, a fundamental aspect of my investigative “sense-making” (Merriam, 1998) as a scholar-advocate concerned with policy equity for marginalized communities, involves sitting with intangible and sometimes unmeasurable truths. These truths are often gleaned from those who are disenfranchised and silenced by a policy’s development and implementation and require strategic employment of research mechanisms that illuminate truth. As such, I rely on my knowledge and experiential knowing as a Black socio-legal scholar with professional experience in tier-one university enrollment management and the higher education policy arena as an interpretivist heuristic, through which my ability to frame the education problems, determine research questions, and subsequently analyze the data is greatly enhanced.

LaShawn’s Poem

I am Black I am Ebony I am Woman With big deep mahogany brown eyes that are Southern Southern like homemade sweet honey cornbread & old school Baptist Mississippi mass choirs with the big church robes Born to two parents who were both born without full rights and liberties, Some call it the Jim Crow South I call it home. First in my family to get a college degree. First in my entire lineage to get a PhD. Phenomenal woman I be, (two snaps for me) Maya Angelou’s sermonic words stream within my soul deeply. You see, Being both Black & woman is an intersectional blessing and a burdened Olympic size pool that I back stroke in daily. Sometimes for leisure, most of the time for survival For it is a delicate dance to be Black, woman, academic, and critical. For new acquisitions of knowledge bring both joy and sorrow… but also, possibilities Possibilities for liberation Possibilities for reimagined futures Possibilities for me to grow, and for me to know, that my journey of truth seeking and telling continues … One intimate cherished story at a time that folks entrust to share with me. And I take on this sacred task with love and grace wholeheartedly. For I am Black I am Ebony I am Woman

LaShawn’s Formal Epistemic Stance

My positionality poem above details how my heritage, salient identities, and approaches to research are intrinsically interconnected. Akin to African oral traditions of storytelling (Evans-Wynters, 2019) Black scholars have used poetry as an artistic medium of self-expression, assertions of self, and embodiment within scholarship (Cutts Givens, 2026, Haynes et al., 2020; Lorde, 1984/2012, Okello & Morton, 2024). According to Okello & Morton, 2024, “out of crevices of power, poetics has given license to multivalence, multivocality, and witnessing within the encampment of dominance” (p. 3). Meaning within academic literature, poetics can be an avenue for scholars with historically marginalized backgrounds to “bear witness” to their own embodied experiences and positionality within academe and the broader society. Thus, I self-identify and visibly present as a cis-gendered golden-brown- skinned heterosexual Black woman with Southern roots who is an artist and scholar. My onto-epistemology is rooted in Black feminist ways of knowing and being (Collins, 2000), and I actively aim to dismantle white supremist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 2001) through my collegiate teaching, research, and service. In alignment with critical standpoint theory (Collins, 2013), I aim to utilize research as a technology for liberation for all parties involved (both the researcher(s) and participants). My intersectional researcher positionality (Crenshaw, 1989), coupled with my life experiences and worldview, provides me unique insider knowledge into the lives and experiences of Black people, more specifically Black women, within a U.S. context. While Black women should not be seen as homogeneous, due to our collective experiences (Collins, 2000), I pull on these shared experiences to better understand the stories participants share with me, and when interpreting researcher observations, and during the data analysis process.

Data Analysis

Invoking the poetic phrasings of Teague and Nagbe (2024), we refer to emergent themes and findings as “ancestral whispers” to impress upon the reader the sacred ancestral technology (or methodological process) used in this dual-purpose qualitative inquiry. Also, in this study we relied on Black Ancestral Textual Analysis (BATA) as our primary analytic tool (Teague & Nagbe, 2024). BATA asserts that ancestral knowledge constitutes scientific knowledge and offers a protocol for excavating wisdoms and warnings embedded in texts through a Black studies lens. BATA merges Black studies methodologies, critical content analysis, and Wynter’s (1994) concept of the “inner eye” to interrogate power and recover alternative epistemologies. This method honors ancestral and embodied knowledge as central to qualitative inquiry and resists positivist traditions which flatten Black humanity.

Our analytic process was specifically guided by the four interrelated dimensions of BATA: storage, storytellers and storytelling, story, and ancestral knowledge. We began by situating our texts within their archival and cultural contexts, including our self-authored positionality poems and selected works by Black foremothers such as Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, and Nikki Giovanni. This initial step required reflection on where these texts “live”—in published anthologies, autobiographies, and oral traditions—and the institutional and historical conditions shaping their preservation. This is a key aspect of our use of critical reflexivity to examine our own positionalities and the power dynamics that make those positionalities vulnerable throughout the research process.

The second dimension involved examining the positionalities of the storytellers—ourselves as Black women professors and the foremothers whose works informed our analysis. This interrogation considered how identity, historical moment, and sociopolitical context influenced the narrative strategies and epistemic stance of each poem and epistemic statement. After first separately interpreting our own poems and statements, we then applied line-by-line interpretations to one another’s poems, followed by analytic meetings to ensure consensus in our meaning-making of “the other.” We then interrogated the data for points of divergence embedded in the complex subjective realities expressed through our poetic phrasings, our epistemic statements, and extant literature written on, and by, the foremothers. The ancestral whispers of these didactic memos guided our qualitative assessment of inter-rater reliability.

The third dimension focused on the story itself. We conducted line-by-line interpretive readings of our poems, attending to language, metaphors, and narrative structures. This interpretive process included juxtaposing our poems with ancestral texts to identify resonances and divergences in how Black womanhood, intellectualism, and resistance are articulated. First, we compared our original poems with works by prominent Black women poets to draw connections and highlight shared experiences and interpretations of our racialized socio-political and gendered identities. In so doing, we took an interpretivist qualitative approach, focusing on the subjective meanings and interpretations of our lived experiences, as expressed through our positionality poems. Our poems were analyzed to identify attunement with Black feminism, authenticity, and criticality. Next, we applied inductive line-by-line interpretations to our own respective poems and discussed the deeper meanings of each poetic phrasing. This step allowed us to operationalize a co-constructed analysis of in-vivo and interpretivist constructs to draw conclusions from the data.

The final and most critical dimension of BATA centered on ancestral knowledge. Here, we meditated on silences and un/seen messages within and across texts to discern what Teague and Nagbe (2024) describe as “ancestral whispers.” These whispers represent epistemic insights that emerge from intergenerational dialogue and embodied knowing. We started this last process of analysis by drafting didactic memos of our foremothers’ selected poems, biographies and autobiographies, edited anthologies, and peer-reviewed journal articles. The didactic memos we wrote focused our attention on their biographical representation of imperfect objective facts of life, which often revealed utterances of intergenerational relationality between the selected foremothers themselves and others. Rather than coding for conventional themes, we categorized our inductive interpretations as ancestral whispers to honor the sacred and speculative dimensions of Black knowledge-making. We also noted their artistic expressions of self-evolution represented by their imperfect subjective realities, archived to reflect their most inner self-portraitures. As Teague and Nagbe (2024) eloquently articulate, we went through an intuitively guided, but methodologically enhancing process of reflexive thinking about our positionality as coauthors, juxtaposed to the positionalities of our ancestors as articulated through their poetic phrasings. Applying BATA, justifies our juxtaposition of poetry (as raw data) with transitioned and contemporary Black academic poets as a legitimate qualitative inquiry of mourning, cultural sustainment, and axiological responsibility in the afterlife of slavery (Hartman, 2019; McKittrick, 2020; Sharpe, 2016). This process allowed us to weave together what emerged from BATA with prominent Black feminist themes inductively found in our expressions of self as researchers.

Trustworthiness (Creswell & Poth, 2025) was established through inter-rater reliability measures, didactic peer debriefing of themes and subsequent findings over 20-months, and peer-debriefings with critical scholars in the field. In addition, we engaged in check-ins with those tied to the genealogy (fictive and blood-relative) of our positionalities to verify the facts of life that exceeded our recollection.

Collective Positionality as an Epistemic Stance of Resistance and Trustworthiness

Together, as authors, we (re)present a collectivistic voice on Black feminist thinking and Black Ancestral Textual Analysis(BATA) in research-intensive environments. We do so by reconfiguring our independent poems into a collective voice produced by understandings from BATA (Teague & Nagbe, 2024). As such, we collectively represent a swath of perspectives among instructors of research methodologies at prestigious research universities. As tenure-track faculty members, we have come to understand research methodologies as a product of our educational training and lived expertise incubated in the U.S. Southern context. Moreover, our scholarly alignment, demonstrated and cultivated, throughout the methodological process reflects the shared experiential understandings gleaned from advancing Black feminist approaches as methodologists committed to anti-oppressive research methodologies. Our individual and collective understanding and experiences as Black women academics informed how we constructed our poems and our interpretations of the poems as data.

Findings: Ancestral Whispers Through Poetic Witnessing

Using a Black feminist approach, we center the works of Black women literaries and theorists of Black Studies—e.g., bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Patricia Hill Collins, Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Wynter, and Nikki Giovanni. Each of these women have vividly influenced the poetic ways in which we, as Black women scholars, have come to (re)envision ourselves—both in relation to self and the communities from which we hail and serve. In so doing, we edify the experiences of Black women to respond to a moment in time when institutions are closing doors to diversity, equity, and inclusion, subsequently erasing a multitude of excellence, diversity of thought, and scholarly integrity within the field of education research through interdisciplinary knowledge production (Garces et al., 2021; Pedota et al., 2025). Below, we highlight excavated themes from our positionality poems and demonstrate the relationships between these themes—or what we refer to as ancestral whispers—through the (re)presentation of our individual poems as co-constructed mini-poems.

We present each theme as ancestral whispers categorized based on coded stanzas that reflect the concepts of Black Feminist Thought and in constructs of emancipatory relationality. Here, we aim to demonstrate the power of collective positionality poems to enhance authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality in collaborative qualitative research as we explore the following four themes: Ancestral Whisper 1: Lineage, Legacy, & Country; Ancestral Whisper 2: Intersectionality, Intellectualism, and Olympic Size Pools; Ancestral Whisper 3: Spirituality & Liberation Theology; and Ancestral Whisper 4: Black Possibilities, (Re)Imagined Futures, and (Other)motherhood.

Ancestral Whisper 1: Lineage, Legacy, & Country

We each illustrate the lasting generational impacts of family roots that are planted in the Jim Crow South. Specifically, U.S. chattel slavery was central to the data, and ties this category together in ways that are reflected in both poems. (Re)presented collectivistically the mini poems read as follows,

From what nation-state? I may never know, and was taught to pledge no allegiance to in your public school. But still know to hold allegiance to As a Black girl Black Like That.

Black like grand-daughter of a grand-mother Raised by a fictive grandmother …and grandfather Who tilled Southern “U.S. soils” in an effort to reap so-called “shared crops”

From land that was just yesterday referred to as a plantation, meant for all those who survived the brutal kidnapping, and dehumanization of Africans, prior to the proclamation of her emancipation. –Dwuana

Born to two parents who were both born without full rights and liberties, Some call it the Jim Crow South. I call it home. –LaShawn

In analyzing our poems, notions of ancestry emerged across both poems highlighting lineages of ancestral struggle, Southern cultural expression, and a double entendre sense of country (i.e., nation and rurality). We paint the U.S. South as Country and “country”—as in, a place of nationality and rurality.

In addition, the combined lines from each poem demonstrate a cohesive expression of cultural reverence shown to elders (both fictive and biological) among Black Southerners. Dwuana sustains this fluid (re)visioning of what it means to be a Black woman, beyond the evocation of her role as a granddaughter, intentionally defiant in her reclamation and expression of effervescent youth in the face of gendered racial oppression that simultaneously mammifies, hyper-sexualizes, deifies, and vilifies Black women (Collins, 2000; hooks, 1981).

For LaShawn, describing her relationship as daughter, however, evokes the duality to girlhood, defiantly animating herself as “woman” throughout the remaining stanzas of her self-authored poem. In a later stanza, she offers an ancestral nod to Angelou (1995), referring to herself boldly as a “phenomenal woman” worthy of “snaps” and exuberant celebration, while simultaneously showing literary reverence to our fictive kin. She intimates only once that she is in fact somebody’s child (a girl), here in relation to her lineage—a lineage of duality that she paints with swaths of “joy” and “sorrow,” as opposed to youth and adulthood. In so doing, she takes a stance against yet another type of oppressive imposition—infantilization—an imposition that results from exposing one’s girlhood—a Black girl’s underbelly—the softness lies at the core of her woman-ness and innermost self. At the same time, she names in one powerful stanza: despite being fully grown, we are each inherently worthy of the utmost care and protection—if only in the opinion of those who we belong to—one’s “parents,” or one’s familial/ancestral lineage.

Ancestral Whisper 2: Intersectionality, Intellectualism, and Olympic Size Pools

Naturally, each poem reflects positionalities that embody the concept of intersectionality, originally conceptualized by foremother Crenshaw (1989). Each poem (re)visions the inextricable expression of both Blackness (race) and womanhood (gender) in all its cumulative and tragic abundance. Collectively (re)presented the stanza’s read:

Black like queer Black. So queer my daddy never seen me Even though I spent my whole life thinking he was seeing me. Even though he BIG upped me to my BIG sisters so much, he had us all believing I mighta been the only one he felt was even worth seeing. Black like that. –Dwuana

For I am Black I am Ebony I am Woman –LaShawn

The first stanza of our mini poem invites the reader to process the fluidity of both sexual and gender fluidity, encompassing a dynamic definition of what LaShawn asserts simply as the contours of being “Black,” “Ebony,” and “Woman.”

Most interestingly, and perhaps unconventional in discussions of intersectionality even as it relates to positionality statements in education research, our collectivistic narrative of intersectionality encompasses a salient reflection on Black femme-bending intellectualism in elite research-intensive environments and other systemically oppressive spaces (or Olympic size pools as LaShawn poetically describes them). Collectively, the overlapping poetic phrasings of intersectionality tied to our identity as Black intellectuals are (re)presented as follows:

Black like, gifted Black. So gifted, I’m disabled Black, so disabled, I’m gifted Black. Yeah I know how it sounds, but Black like Illegible to an ableist, anti-Black, morally corrupt illiterate capitalistic health and education system; Black. Black JUST like that. –Dwuana

First in my family to get a college degree. First in my entire lineage to get a PhD.

Being both Black & woman is an intersectional blessing and a burdened Olympic size pool that I back stroke in daily. Sometimes for leisure, most of the time for survival For it is a delicate dance to be Black, woman, academic, and critical. - LaShawn

Dwuana articulates how her Blackness is integrated with her “gifted” abilities and neurodivergence as mentioned. Even though Dwuana acknowledges the way systems of oppression work together to render parts of her humanity “illegible,” distorted by what others cannot decide are “gifts” or “disability,” she ends her poem boldly stating she is “Black. Black Just like that,” as an affirming declaration of all of who she is—proudly Black, in ways that resists ableist narratives as Nikki Giavonni animates in her poem Ego Tripping (Giovanni, 1973); a choice to embrace and perform Black womanhood, despite the gaze of ableist suspicious onlookers and ableist overseers.

Though the theme of intellectual pursuit is relevant to each authors’ expression of self, LaShawn’s poem leans more heavily into accepted concepts of intellectualism, nodding to this element of identity through legitimated indicators of intelligence referencing being “first in [her] family to get a college degree,” “first in [her] lineage to get a PhD.” Lastly, LaShawn talks about navigating her salient identities as if dancing a “delicate dance” moving between spaces and functionalities. This constant swaying and strategic maneuvering align with the realities of many Black women intellectuals and our literary foremothers such as, Murray (2018), hooks, 1994, and Collins (2000).

Ancestral Whisper 3: Spirituality & Liberation Theology

Diasporically, Black people practice a range of spiritual and religious orientations, within and beyond, the United States (Cooper et al., 2016). There are of course those who do not believe in god(s), at all, within the cultural fabric. Given the diverse and complex cultural landscape and migration patterns in today’s world, this is expected. Despite this, there is a cultural tradition of hope, which remains vigilant in the afterlife of slavery (Sharpe, 2016) that is evident in both poems when viewed together. The spirituality we speak of in this theme reflects the spiritual schema of hope among Black folks that has provisioned global survival, despite the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and the afterlife of slavery in places like the U.S. South (hooks, 2000). It is a schema of faith made strong by an interwoven tapestry of unruly and unwavering mechanisms of spiritual coping and traditions of healing and resistance. Formally, this faith is known as Black Liberation Theology (Cone, 1969/2018), a religious tradition among Southern descendants of U.S. chattel slavery. (Re)presented together the poetic phrasings read,

Black like, “church-girl” Black. Even though I wasn’t raised in the church, Gworl. Black. Black like, spiritually sensitive GIFTED SPIRITUALLY, Black So much so that spirit had me looking for answers in the CHURCH for a while. Cause that’s where Black folks found a many o’ answers at, just to get us through the struggle. I can’t say eh-nuhf about that shit Black. But like I said; spirit sensitive. Black like that. - Dwuana

Southern like homemade sweet honey cornbread & old school Baptist Mississippi mass choirs with the big church robes

Phenomenal woman I be, (two snaps for me) Maya Angelou’s sermonic words stream within my soul deeply. You see, My journey of truth-seeking and telling continues … One intimate cherished story at a time that folks entrust to share with me. And I take on this sacred task with love and grace wholeheartedly. - LaShawn

Here, the connection between poetic expressions labeled as ‘spirituality’ and ‘revisioning our Blackness,’ highlight how spirituality and Black Southern church culture support hope for a liberated future. The collective and individual phrasings of both positionality poems demonstrate how envisioning and revisioning Blackness is culturally tied to spirituality (Cooper et al., 2016; Evans-Winters, 2019; hooks, 1994). We both expressed spiritually influenced language around church culture and Southern Christianity (e.g., “old school Baptist Mississippi mass choirs” and “Black like, “church-girl” Black”. Dwuana explicitly talks about her identifying as a “church-girl/gworl,” paying homage to the greatest muse of the first poem—Beyoncé’s (2022) Renaissance album. Influenced by the artist and her collaborators Dwuana’s poem’s repetitious poetic phrasings, “Black like that” allude to the song Church Girl, a complexifying critique on the othering of queer and sex-positive self-expression within Black Southern Christian churches (reflecting similarities between Black and non-Black fundamentalist forms of Christianity). In a similar vein, Dwuana’s use of repetition of the phrase “Black like that” is evoked in homage to T.S. Madison (a Black trans-gender woman) whose explicit interlude on the Renaissance album unapologetically asserts her Black identity and ends with “Black like that” in all her complex gender-bending glory. Blurring formal and informal notions of “the church” insinuates direct connections with a higher power but defy the constraints of traditional formalities (empowerment gleaned from traditions of Black liberation theology) (Cone, 1969/2018), Dwuana identifies herself as “spiritually sensitive” and GIFTED spiritually”. The phrasings denote that despite feelings of exclusion within formal church settings she is strongly connected to her heightened spiritual awareness and abilities that developed as she grew up visiting a dad who was a choir director and bible study leader in the Black Pentecostal and Baptist charismatic church and learning to love others as she loved herself from a nondenominational mother. Yet, within Dwuana’s poem she acknowledges her tensions of being “church-girl” Black. Even though [she] wasn’t raised in the church, Gworl,” by switching “girl” to “Gworl,” a common term used within the LGBTQIA+ community, the phrasings evoke complex tensions with Christian Pentecostal and Baptist beliefs. The phrasing demonstrates a continuous grappling with the influence of the Black church as she has come to understand it—as a cultural hub where one must go to be in community even if on the margins due to her gender defiance and sexual fluidity, similar to the nonbinary struggle reflected in the biography of foremother Pauli Murray (Rosenberg, 2017). This is reflected in Dwuana’s mentions of being “spiritually sensitive,” alongside her verbalizing that “CHURCH” seemed to be a place to look for answers to personal and community conflict; answers that would “get us through the struggle” for liberation as decedents of formerly enslaved Africans who seek spiritual healing in formal and nonformal spaces known as “the church.”

LaShawn’s poem, in particular, evokes positive images, smells, and sounds of Black liberation theology (Cone, 1969/2018). LaShawn’s phrasings embody the tone of spiritual rebellion reflected in liberation theology, as well. For example, LaShawn writes, ‘Maya Angelou’s sermonic words stream deeply within my soul.’ In this sense, LaShawn’s interpretation of her foremother Maya Angelou’s (1995) poem entitled “Phenomenal Woman” resonates deeply within her and extends beyond that of a muse. She is, instead, asserting these Black feminist texts speak to our “souls” and not just our intellect. Moreover, some of our foremothers, like Maya Angelou, words spiritually engender “sermonic” convictions within us to take pride in not only our Blackness but also our intersectional womanhood (Crenshaw, 1989; hooks, 1981, hooks, 1984).

Ancestral Whisper 4: Black Possibilities, (Re)Imagined Futures, and (Other)Motherhood

Blackness, and what it means to be Black, is neither flat, monolithic, nor static. The essence of what Blackness encompasses is multifaceted, hence the utterances of “Black AND” (e.g., “Black and Country” or “Black and Critical”) within both poems because of our intersectional positioning of being Black AND women. Black AND..., is also thus an ancestral whisper and manifestation that speaks to the future-forward resilience inherent in Black artistic/academic expression, which constitutes a collective Black positionality that must continue onward. Taking Blackness and black peoples into the future is a revolutionary act of resilience. Collectively the combined poetic phrasings read as follows when (re)presented:

I’m a “quit runnin’ in and outta my house” Black Mama; I can’t say eh-nuf about that shit Black.

But like I said, spirit, sensitive. So when I’m on my gentle parenting, it’s Mommy not mama, Black Black like that. -Dwuana

For new acquisitions of knowledge bring both joy and sorrow… but also possibilities Possibilities for liberation Possibilities for reimagined futures Possibilities for me to grow, and for me to know –LaShawn

The fourth mini poem opens with an assertion from Dwuana on what it means to inhabit positions of authority—positions shaped by social constructs of femininity—while rooted in traditions of firm boundaries and care, as a Black woman. Then the following phrasings weave dynamic expressions, painting intersections of our (re)visions of Black identity, girlhood-womanhood-(other)motherhood, and futurity—a forward-leaning meditation on generational lineages. Through this interplay, the poem offers intricate renderings of what Blackness is and what it might become.

Invocations of mothering gesture toward “gentle parenting”—a trauma-informed way of connecting with children who are often among society’s most disenfranchised (hooks, 1989). Here, though, it moves as metaphor, reflecting Dwuana’s deliberate embodiment of feminized gentleness, even within a gender-defiant queer identity. This gentleness heals and restores, building trust and opening “possibilities,” “to grow,” and “to know,” as voiced by LaShawn.

Biblical echoes— “blessings,” “joy and sorrow”—thread through LaShawn’s pursuit of knowledge. Like Giovanni (2017), her phrasings hold the duality of joy and sorrow, drawing again on cultural notions of Black survivance through critical hope and liberation theology (Cone, 1969/2018), as explored in theme three. She acknowledges the realities and vicissitudes of Blackness—and the systems of gendered-racialized oppression—bring both joy and sorrow the deeper we come to know its plights and heights. Yet, amid these harsh truths, LaShawn closes the collective poetic positionality poem with an affirmation: possibility models of Blackness, and the urgency of striving toward liberation and reimagined futures that keep us critical, yet hopeful. Our intersectional depictions of Blackness speak to what is—and to what could be—through visions of Black futurity and thriving in knowledge-making.

Discussion

Poetic positionality statements can function as rigorous methodological interventions that advance authenticity, trustworthiness, and criticality in qualitative research. Through self-authored poems, read alongside our foremothers, we operationalized Black feminist praxis via ancestral whispers—interpretive units that hold lineage, intersectionality, spirituality, and futurity together as intergenerational knowledge. Anchored in Collins’s standpoint epistemology and Lorde’s insistence on poetry as revelation, reflexivity becomes embodied resistance to positivist norms (Collins, 2000, 2013; hooks, 1984; Lorde, 1984/2012). Wynter’s sociopoetics situates the work in concrete historical particularity, aligning with Black Studies’ interrogation of power and labor and positioning poetic inquiry as world-making rather than ornament (Wynter, 1994, 2003).

Preserving the ubuntu ethic—“I am because we are”—our call and response mini poems enact collective voice and honor storytelling as a liberatory practice central to Black feminism. Poetic positionality statements are methodological acts that 'talk back' (hooks, 1989) to dominant paradigms and make visible the lived and loving labor of research. Reading our poems with the words and worlds of our foremothers also carried lineage, intersectionality, spirituality, and futurity into analysis—transforming reflexivity from static disclosure into an embodied practice of being in relation. In practice, collective poetic positionality strengthens methodology. In doing so, Black Ancestral Textual Analysis(BATA) (Teague & Nagbe, 2024) creates transparent interdependent audit trails without flattening the aesthetic grain. Through sociopoetic attention to historical particularity our use of BATA refuses universal abstraction detached from racialized labor and being. These moves cultivate rigor that is felt as well as documented, making methodological imagination inseparable from Black arts-based praxis.

Implications for Teaching and Institutional Practice

Teaching positionality poems moves from formulaic statements towards an embodied, arts-based praxis that cultivates methodological imagination and ethical responsibility. Learners interrogate onto-epistemic commitments while engaging cultural form and historical place, consistent with hooks’s vision of education as transgression and liberation (hooks, 1994). In this vein, ancestral whispers operate as both analytic and pedagogical tools that democratize knowledge production and humanize researcher training. Emancipatory relationality extends this ethic by framing collaborative analysis as a humanizing methodology rooted in Black feminism, Black studies traditions, and community accountability.

As such, institutional responsibility is a critical part of emancipatory relationality for the poetic schol. Our findings suggest, graduate programs might do well to consider embedding arts-based reflexivity within required methods curricula. Tenure and promotion guidelines might recognize creative and collaborative scholarship as legitimate contributions to rigor. Institutional review Boards (IRBs) could adapt protocols for poetic and dialogic data collection. Perhaps most importantly, faculty development should train instructors to teach sociopoetics responsibly by foregrounding the art form that is Black political expression (Wynter, 2021).

Methodological Significance and Future Directions

Employing collective poetic positionality poems allows arts-based reflexivity to flourish meeting expectations of rigor while expanding what counts as data. Replacing generic themes with ancestral whispers preserves political and aesthetic specificity in ways that strengthen interpretive coherence and offers a repeatable pathway for integrating poetics into qualitative research and researcher education. Future work should examine scalable implementation across institutions and document learning outcomes tied to curriculum design, mentoring, and assessment. These implications set the stage for our concluding reflections on how poetic positionality transforms qualitative research and researcher education.

Conclusion

Our findings show poetic positionality statements are more than creative flourishes—they are acts of resistance and a rigorous methodological tool. When we write poetry as scholars, we are not simply expressing ourselves; we are challenging the structures that have long dictated what counts as legitimate knowledge. Anchored in literary works from our Black foremothers (e.g., Murray, Giovanni, hooks, Angelou) and Collins’ (1986) standpoint epistemology, this work demonstrates that knowledge from the margins is not only possible but vital for reshaping research. By embracing the “outsider within” perspective (Collins, 1986; Lorde, 1984), poetry becomes a sacred tool for saying what traditional research paradigms often silence. Yet, here we awakened the silence and unsurfaced the rich possibilities of using poetic positionality statements as avenues to enhance researcher critically, authenticity, and creativity within qualitative inquiry and beyond.