How do diasporic Black girls live in our epistemologies? Such is the central question raised by Field and Simmons in The Global History of Black Girlhood. Taking us around the globe, the archives come alive to show us how Black girls not only experience power but how they “clap back.” The volume itself is a clap back at previous scholarship!
Organized in three sections, the book invites us to think critically about the meaning of Blackness, girlhood, and Black girlhood, as well as history’s account of diasporic Black girls. The editors write, “By adopting a comparative historical framework, this volume provides nuanced contextual histories that track how Black girls responded to changing definitions of girlhood and how they drew upon local resources to express their own understandings of what girls are and what they need” (13). Demonstrated across the chapters is how the archives can bring out the voices...