Black Girls Stay Lit: A literacy movement to empower black girls

By Dr. Tiffany Noelle, PhD Founder, Director & Chief Facilitator Dr. Tiffany Noelle. Provided Black Girls Stay Lit (BGSL), a Cincinnati-based in-person and virtual after-school/summer program, is a literacy movement to affirm, support and empower Black adolescent girls and gender-expansive youth.      Following in the Black literary tradition of using story in service of anti-racist education, social justice and Black joy, Black Girls Stay Lit is a literacy movement that uses critical explorations of select African American women’s literature/multimodal texts to interrupt systemic racism and systems that have historically marginalized Black girls. BGSL’s exclusive Liberatory Literacy model combines an evidence-based culturally/gender-specific approach to Black girls’ positive development with a focus on quality literacy instruction and practice that bolsters girls’ cognitive and social-emotional competencies.  Black Girls Stay Lit supports Black girls in connecting with themselves, each other, and caring adults through meaningful conversations around personally relevant, culturally-specific texts and topics that are not traditionally explored in high school classes. In weekly one-hour-long meetings, the program takes a deep dive into select African American women’s literature and texts—print, images, video, social media posts, lyrics, music, and other online media—and create some of our own.  Dr. Tiffany Noelle (nee, Hinton) is the founder, director...