Ali Michael & Orinthia Swindell 
Teaching Beautiful Brilliant Black Girls [PDF ebook] 

Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Libation
Introduction. Black Girls are Beautiful and Brilliant
UNDERSTANDING
I. “Black people I love you, I love us, Our Lives Matter” – Alicia Garza #Black Lives Matter
CH1. Black “Girls” are Different not Deficient
Vignette: Black Girl Got Magic
Vignette: It Takes A Village: Black Girl Physician, Black Girl Scientist
CH2. Black, Beautiful, and Brilliant: It Takes A Village, Counter Safe Spaces for Black Super Girls
Vignette: Ode to the Black Woman High School Student
CH3. A Systemic Response to Creating a School Where Black Girls Can Thrive
Book Review: Hey, Black Child
II. “Nah” – Harriet Tubman: Stereotypes and Tropes
Vignette: Where Does the Sapphire Caricature Come From?
CH4. My Eloquent, Angry, Black Rage
CH5. The Right Kind of Black Girl
CH6. Colorism in the Classroom
Vignette: The Token Tax
III. “Spirit Murdering” – Bettina Love
CH7. Visible Black Girls… Powerful Beyond Measure
Vignette: You Murdered my Rhythm and Blues: Black Girls Still Got Magic
CH8. Why Does My Darkness Blind You? Abandoning Racist Teaching Practices
Book Review: Genesis Begins Again
CH9. Finding My Armor of Self-Love
Vignette: Black Student, White Teacher
IV. “Reclaiming My Time” – Maxine Waters
CH10. Girls in the School to Prison Pipeline: Implications of History, Policy, and Race
CH11. How Dare you Be Brilliant: Precarious Situation for Black Girls
CH12. Girl Trafficking Misunderstood: Understanding The Commercially Sexually Exploited African American Girl
Vignette: Black Girls Trapped in Our Foster Care System
Vignette: My Transracial Adoption Experience: Being Seen and Not Seen At All
Vignette: Know Your Body, Sis
CH13. Little Black Girls with Curves
Vignette: Fat, Black, and Female
V. “Your Silence is a Knee on My Neck” – Natasha Cloud
CH14. Whiteness Competency: How Not to Be BBQ Becky
Vignette: Keisha Resists Karen
CH15. Can I do this if I’m White?: How White Educators can be the Teachers their Black Girl Students Deserve
CH16. Not Knowing and Not Controlling: Learning Alongside Black Girl Students
Vignette: Confessions of a White Teacher: Seven Ways I Failed Beautiful and Brilliant Black Girls
Vignette: Humbling Feedback
Vignette: Is This the Solidarity I Seek?
CH17. Not in Our Name: Fierce Allyship for White Women
Vignette: The Culture Walk
CH18. White Teachers, Black Girls, and White Fragility
VI. “Give light and people will find the way.” – Ella Baker
Vignette: Dear, Dear, Dear!
CH19. A Reimagined Pedagogy of Affirmation and Artistic Practices
Vignette: Infinitely Crowned
RESPECTING
I. “I’ll be Bossy and Damn Proud” – Rosa Clemente
CH20. Who are Black Girls: An Intersectional Herstory of Feminism
Book Review: Crossing Ebenezer Creek
Vignette: This Is What a (Pan)African Feminist Looks Like
CH21. Navigating Multiple Identities: The Black Immigrant Girl Experience
Vignette: It should have been all of us, together, against the system: Latinidad, Blackness, and Queer Identity
CH22. Yes! Black girls are genderqueerand transgender, too!
CH23. Prismatic Black Girls Reflecting African Spiritualities in Learning Environments
Book Review: Pet
II. “I am desperate for change – now – not in 8 years or 12 years, but right now” – Michelle Obama
CH24. Black Girl in the Playground
Vignette: Who’s Going to Sing A Black Girl’s Song
Vignette: My Black, My Beautiful, My Brilliant
CH25. Black Girls Voices Matter: Empowering the Voices of Black Girls against Co-opting and Colonization
III. “Don’t Touch My Hair” – Solange
CH26. She Wears a Crown: Centering Black Girlhood in Schools
CH27. I am Not My Hair
Vignette: Covered Girls
Book Review: I’m Enough
IV. “We want to turn victims into survivors – and survivors into thrivers” – Tarana Burke
Vignette: Mirror, Mirror
CH28. Voice Activation and Volume Control in the Workplace
Vignette: Black Girls Say #Me Too
V. “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” – Angela Davis
CH29. When She is the Only One: High Achieving Black Girls in Suburban Schools
CH30. Liminal and Limitless: Black Girls in Independent Schools
Vignette: A Black Woman Who Attended a Predominantly White School Returns to Teach Black Girls in Predominantly White Schools
Book Review: A Good Kind of Trouble
VI. “Dreamkeepers” – Gloria Ladson Billings
CH31. Mrs. Ruby Middleton Forsythe (Miss Ruby): The Power of Sankofa
Vignette: • A Black Woman′s Reflections on the Road I Made While Walking:Remarks from My Retirement Ceremony
Book Review: Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement
CONNECTING
I. “Such As I Am, A Precious Gift” – Zora Neale Hurston
CH32. Black Girls Got it Goin’ On
Vignette: Black Girls Are Precious Gifts: Educators Don′t Be Kryptonite
Vignette: Dear Mr. Guillen
Vignette: So you Wanted to See the Wizard
CH33. Learning to Listen to Her: Psychological Verve with Black Girls
Vignette: Creating Safe Spaces for Black Queer Girls
Vignette: Being a Trans Black Girl
II. #1000Black Girl Books – Marley Dias
CH34. Selecting and Using BACE (Blackcentric, Authentic, and Culturally Engaging) Books: She Looks Like Me
CH35. Hair Representation Matters: Selecting Children’s Books for Black Girls
Book Review: The Night Is Yours
CH36. Teaching Reading to Beautiful and Brilliant and Black Girls: Building a Strong Culture of Engagement
Book Review: Children of Blood and Bones
III. “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing” – Audre Lorde
CH37. Black Girl Sisterhood as Resilience And Resistance
CH38. Respect Black Girls: Prioritize, Embrace and Value
CH39. Understanding the Intersecting Identities of Black Girls
Vignette: Just Educational Ecosystems for Black Girls: Educators, here are 8 ways you can support Black Muslim Girls during the School year
Vignette: The Skin I’m in
CH40. #Student As Sign Maker: Curating Classrooms For Identity Development
Vignette: Beautiful, Brilliant, Black and Deaf
CH41. Black Men Teaching Beautiful and Brilliant Black Girls: Resisting Patriarchal and Sexist Socializations
Vignette: Paragon Project: The Transformative Power of Hip Hop Education To Save Lives
Vignette: I Wish You Believed in Magic
CH42. Black Girl Magic: Beauty, Brilliance, and Coming to Voice in the Classroom
IV. “Perseverance is my motto” -Madam C. J. Walker
CH43. Listen to Her!: Black Girls Constructing Activist Identities in a School-Based Leadership Program
Vignette: Black Girls as Leaders
CH44. When You Imagine a Scientist, Technologist, Engineer, Artist or Mathematician, Imagine A Black Girl
Book Review: Slay
Vignette: Did I Even Matter?
CH45. Developing an Ethics of Engaging Black Girls in Digital Spaces
CH46. A Matter of Media: Cultural Appropriation and Expectations of Black Girls
CH47. 'Catch This Magic”: How Schools Get in the Way of Gifted Black Girls
V. “Be thankful that you′ve been given that gift because [Black] girls are amazing” – Kobe Bryant
Vignette: Black Girls Own Their Future
Book Review: Juneteenth – For Mazie
Vignette:Love Letter to My Dazzling, Darling Daughters
Vignette: Love letter
Vignette: Lioness to Bee: A Love Letter to the Pride!
Vignette: Anyia
VI. “We Will Fight Till the Last of Us Falls in the Battlefield” – Nana Yaa Asanatewaa, Queenmother of Ejisu in the Ashanti Empire, Ghana
Vignette: A Mother of the Movement Speaks Out
CH48. Motherwork as Pedagogy
Vignette: Jenga: The Game Single Mothers Play in the World of Academia
Vignette: Black Girl Fears Motherhood
Vignette: Dear Bayje
Vignette: A Love Letter to My Daughter Alyse
Vignette: Diamonds: Black, Beautiful, Brilliant

Shemariah J. Arki identifies as an educator, an activist, and an organizer. Currently serving as a professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and as the interim director of the Center for Pan-African Culture, both at Kent State University, she is an intersectional feminist scholar with expert knowledge and skills to develop, implement, facilitate, and evaluate curricula that promote institutional equity, communication, and access for traditionally marginalized students and families. Dr. Arki received a graduate certificate from the Penn Equity Institute for Doctoral Students from the Center for The Study of Race & Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also been a certified federal equal employment opportunity investigator since 2017.Serving as the founder and program director of the Ellipsis Institute for Womxn of Color in the Academy and as an auto/ethnographic researcher and creative nonfiction writer, her work centers cultural epistemologies and the construction of a #Black Comma Feminist pedagogy.She has authored several academic and creative publications that center the lived experiences of womxn of color in education. As a public intellectual, she consistently ensures that education should be free and compulsory to all through her participation, organizing, and mobilizing of diverse constituents. A proud Clevelander and mom of Solomon Tafari and Malcom Saadiq, Shemariah enjoys traveling, yoga, and making memories with family and friends.