A Framework for Black Girl Transitions Across Space and Time: Sint Maarten as a Case Study

The purpose of this project was to examine whether there is a transitional period between Afro-Caribbean girlhood and woman/adulthood that is distinctly different from girlhood and from woman/adulthood. Herein I examine at what point in the lives of Afro-Caribbean girls, do they feel like they have entered adulthood. I also examine what kinds of media the girls find representative of this current stage of their lives. This dissertation is an extension of my master's thesis, which explored the ways in which Afro-Caribbean girls from the island of Sint Maarten narrate, navigate, and negotiate th... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Murrell, Ocqua Gerlyn
Dokumenttyp: Dissertation
Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
Verlag/Hrsg.: Virginia Tech
Schlagwörter: adulthood / Afro-Caribbean / Black girl / girlhood / Sint Maarten / temporality / transitions / transnational / womanhood
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27674069
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/10919/115491

The purpose of this project was to examine whether there is a transitional period between Afro-Caribbean girlhood and woman/adulthood that is distinctly different from girlhood and from woman/adulthood. Herein I examine at what point in the lives of Afro-Caribbean girls, do they feel like they have entered adulthood. I also examine what kinds of media the girls find representative of this current stage of their lives. This dissertation is an extension of my master's thesis, which explored the ways in which Afro-Caribbean girls from the island of Sint Maarten narrate, navigate, and negotiate their girlhood experiences. Speaking as a Black woman from Sint Maarten, I affirm that this project is important due to the lack of sociological scholarship surrounding Black girls in the Dutch West Indies. This project utilized a qualitative approach that involved self-selected research participant media and semi-structured audio and video recorded in-depth interviews with 5 out of the 9 girls who originally participated in the master's project. At the time of the interviews presented in this dissertation, the participants were 19 and 20 years old. I developed a transnational Black girlhood feminist framework which I use to analyze and interpret the interview data. This framework draws from and builds upon Black feminist theorizing, girlhood studies, and transnational feminisms. It demonstrates how traditional sociological theory such as life course theory, and studies on emerging adulthood and development do not account for the lives of Black girls from the Caribbean. The data reveal that there is a transitional period between girlhood and womanhood and adulthood, and how the girls experience this period is particular to their own lived experiences. The findings reveal that the overarching themes of this period are "it's complicated," and that the girls are claiming their agency. The research participant media indicate the overarching theme of this period of the girls' lives is what we are coming to know as a "soft girl ...