Black Men Writing, Reflecting, and Discovering Self: Personal Narrative Essays of College-aged African American Men at an All-male Historically Black College or University (HBCU)
Keywords:
Personal narratives, childhood;, education, resilience, family, Black college-aged men, self-identity, self-confidence, fathers, siblings, mothersAbstract
Personal narratives are studied in many disciplines, but theoretical analysis of the personal narrative in composition classes has lagged behind the research. This qualitative study examines the personal narratives of thirty Black college-aged men. This study presents the feelings and thoughts of Black males through their personal stories and perspectives; in the study, they detail their life experiences. The narratives were analyzed for elements of narrative discourse, which include (1) Thesis; (2) Transitions; (3) Use and Evaluation of Sources; (4) Audience, Tone, and Rhetorical Appeals; (5) Organization; (6) Claims, Warrants, and Support; (7)
Paraphrases, Direct Quotes, and Summary; (8) In-text Citations and Works Cited Page; (9) Style and Syntax; and (10) Mechanics (see scoring procedures). Each narrative was analyzed according to the criteria described in the Personal Narrative Rubric; the number of elements was counted for each category. The researcher recommends additional narrative studies of Black men in different age groups, educational backgrounds, social and economic levels, and geographical regions.
References
Bamberg, M. (2007). Narrative: State of the art. John Benjamins Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.6
Bell, E. E. (2017). A narrative inquiry: A black male looking to teach. Qualitative Report, 22(4), 1137-1150. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.6
Brown, L.B. and Donnor, J.K. (2011). Toward a new narrative on Black males, education, and public policy. Race Ethnicity and Education, 14(1), 17-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.531978
Ellis, G. J. (2020). Critical race theory and the impact of oppression narratives on the identity, resilience, and wellness of students of color. Boise State University Theses and Dissertations.
Curry, T. (2017) The man-not: Race, class, genre, and the dilemmas of Black manhood. Temple University Press.
Emanuel, B. (2009). An exploration of the lived experiences of African American males to determine factors that contributed to their success. Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas.
Fox, S. (1997). “Memories of Play, Dreams of Success: Literacy Autobiographies of First Year College Students.” English in Texas 28.1, 17–26.
Fraser, H. (2004). Doing narrative research: Analyzing personal stories line by line. Qualitative Social Work, 3, 179–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325004043383
Gates, H. (1989). Introduction: narration and cultural memory in the African American tradition. In L. Goss and M. Barnes (Eds.), Talk that talk: An anthology of African American storytelling (pp. 15-19). Simon and Schuster.
Gonzalez, F.O.S. (2015). Personal narratives: A pedagogical proposal to stimulate language students’ writing. HOW Volume. 22, (1), 65-796.
Guerrero, A. L. (2011). Narrative as resource for the display of self and identity: The narrative construction of an oppositional identity. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 13(2), 88-99. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.3771
Hagler, J.. “The Untold Narrative of Black Men in the United States.” Center for American Progress, March 17, 2015.
Harper, S. R. (2012). Black male success in higher education: A report from the national Black male college achievement study. Penn Graduate School of Education, Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education.
Harper, S. R. and Davis, C.H.F. (2012). They (don’t) care about education: A counter narrative on Black male students’ responses to inequitable schooling. Educational Foundations, Winter-Spring 2012, 103-120.
Harris, K.D. (2020). Written Therapy for Black Men. Self-published.
Harrison, M.C.. “A Narrative Inquiry of Successful Black Male College Students,” Dissertation, Walden University 2014.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Huber, J., Caine, V., Huber, M., Steeves, P. (2013). Narrative inquiry as pedagogy in education: The extraordinary potential of living, telling, retelling, and reliving stories of experience. Review of Research in Education, 37, 212-242. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X12458885
Johnson, L. P. (2017). Writing the self: Black queer youth challenge heteronormative ways of being in an after-school writing club. Research in the Teaching of English, 52, 13-33.
Langellier, K.M. Personal narratives: Perspectives on theory and research. Text and Performance Quarterly, Volume 9, 1989 - Issue 4,243-276. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462938909365938
Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analysis, and interpretation. SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985253
Martin, S.J. (2010). Skills acquired through personal narrative writing instruction. Master Thesis, St. John Fisher College.
McDougal III, S. (2020). Black men’s studies: Black manhood and masculinities in the U.S. context. Peter Lang Publishers. https://doi.org/10.3726/b16453
Nash, R., and Viray, S. (2013). The who, what, and why of scholarly personal narrative writing. Counterpoints, 446, 1-9.
Newkirk, T. (1997). The performance of self in student writing. Heinemann.
Polkinghorne, D.E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. In. J.A. Hatch and R. Wisniewski (Eds.), Life history and narrative (pp. 5-24). Falmer. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839950080103
Riessman, C. K. 1993. Narrative analysis, Sage.
Riessman, C. K. (2003). Analysis of personal narratives. In J. A. Holstein and J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Inside interviewing: New lenses, new concerns (pp. 331-346). Sage.
Scheibe, K. (1986). Self-narratives and adventure. In T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct (pp. 129±151). Praeger.
Schiffrin, D. (1996). Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language in Society, 25, 167–203. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500020601
Smith, S. (1993). Who’s talking/who’s talking back? The subject of personal narrative. Signs, 18(2) pp. 392–407.
Smith, T. “To change narratives about Black men, we must start with Black boys.” NPQ Newsletter, October 21, 2021.
Stinsen, D. W. (2008). Negotiating sociocultural discourses: The counter storytelling of academically (and mathematically) successful African American male students. American Education Research Journal, 45 (4), 975-1010. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831208319723
Trahar, S. (2009). Beyond the Story Itself: Narrative Inquiry and Autoethnography in Intercultural Research in Higher Education [41 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung /Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1), Art. 30, http://nbnresolving.
de/urn:nbn:de:0114- fqs0901308. © 2009 FQS http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/fqs/
Watson, K. A. (1973). A rhetorical and sociolinguistic model for the analysis of narrative. American Anthropologist, 75(1), 243–264.https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1973.75.1.02a00150.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright for articles published in Narrative Works is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to Narrative Works. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.