Staging Black Girl Utopias

This performative text places in conversation the work of Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT), a practice of black girlhood celebration, with Robin M. Boylorn's Sweetwater. Both SOLHOT's archive of original poetry, movement, and music and Boylorn's Sweetwater document the power and potential of listening to and being transformed by black women and girls' truths. Building on the legacy of black feminist writing traditions, this piece celebrates brilliant women and girls who testify to their lives, the labor of writing and creating (sometimes alone and sometimes collectively), and ourselves as critical witnesses to the people, rural spaces, and imaginations that have grown us up.