Cartographies of Blackness and Black Indigeneities

Cartographies of Blackness and Black Indigeneities acknowledges the saliency of Blackness in contemporary social formations, insisting that how bodies are read is extremely important. The contributors to this volume elicit or produce both tangible and intangible social, political, material, spiritual and emotional effects and consequences on Black and African bodies, globally. It is a call to celebrate Blackness in all its complexities, including race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, spiritualities, and geographies. Understanding Blackness is to insist on Black and African political and cultural appreciation of the phenomenon outside of Euro-colonial attempts to regulate and define how Black and African bodies are perceived. This book intersperses discussions of Blackness with Black racial identity and cultural politics and the required responsibilities for the Global Black and African populations to build viable communities utilizing our differences—knowledges, cultures, politics, identities, histories—as strengths.


Mapping Blackness: An Introduction

George J. Sefa Dei, Ezinwanne Odozor and Andrea Vásquez Jiménez (Editors)


Conceptualizing Blackness: Theorizing Indigeneity

1. Teaching Race and (African) Indigeneity: Personal Reflections of a Black Scholar

George J. Sefa Dei


2. Black Indigenization as Politics of Transformation: Implications of the Zimbabwe Experiment

Munyaradzi Hwami and Edward Shizha


3. Making Peace with Movement: Dislocation and the Black Diaspora

Ezinwanne Toochukwu Odozor


Resisting Anti-Blackness and Anti-Black Racisms

4. Writing Black Life: Theoretical Underpinnings

Marlon Simmons


5. Navigating Being a Tall Black Female in Hostile Environments

Carla Rodney


6. In Search of Dark Stars: Addressing Anti-Blackness in Schools through Critical Racial Embodiment in Educational Leadership

Michelle Forde


7. Unlearning Our Blackness

John Castillo


8. The Black Woman Who Has Learned to Fear Herself: An Inquiry of the Myth of the Angry Black Woman

Ke’Shana Danvers


9. Special Education: When and Where Does Blackness Fit in?

Shaniqwa Thomas


10. Prisoners of a Skin Color: The Criminalization and the Social Construction of Blackness in Risk Assessment of Black Youth

Paul Banahene Adjei and Harriet Akanmor


Black Futurity and Educational Praxis

11. The Complexities of Race, Racialization, Blackness, and Africanness: Working to Decolonize My Teacher Education Program

Andrew Allen


12. Black Theorizing in Academia: Toward an Anti-Colonial Reading, a Response to Professor George J. Sefa Dei

Jennifer Mills


13. Black Graduation at the University of Toronto: A Case for Placemaking as Liberation Praxis

Jessica P. Kirk


14. A Spiritual Call for Afrocentric Learning Spaces and A Reflection on the Current State of Afrocentric Education in Toronto

Kimbra Yohannes Iket


15. The Intersection of Afrofuturism and African Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Implications for Black Studies

Gloria Emeagwali