Hyper(in)visibility and the Crisis of Missing Black Girls in Monday’s Not Coming and When You Look Like Us

Missing Black girls in contemporary America—owing to intersectional marginalization and racial stereotyping—are often ironically rendered both invisible and hypervisible. By underscoring how missing Black girls not only face police apathy but also endure mediatized misnomers of delinquency, this essay outlines Black girls experiences of hyper(in)visibility within hegemonic white patriarchal settings. African American young adult novels by Black women writers, namely, Tiffany D. Jackson’s Monday’s Not Coming and Pamela N. Harris’ When You Look Like Us provide a powerful case in point by fictionalizing realistic instances of complacency and inaction of both law keepers and media houses toward the crisis of missing Black girls. This essay undertakes a narrative analysis of Jackson’s and Harris’ counterstories for exposing how systemic racism withholds resources essential for the speedy and safe rescue of missing Black girls. Further, it claims that negative labels associated with Black girls at once invisibilizes their susceptibility to harm and simultaneously denies them justice as minors. To substantiate its claims this essay employs the theoretical framework of racial (in)visibility wherein owing to the hypervisibility of negative stereotypes associated with Black womanhood, missing Black girls are often invisibilized and their pain and need for assistance is negated.