Unlearning Limited Grief Constructs

Advancing an Intersectional Grief Literacies Framework

Abstract

Though all humans endure bereavement and grief, the U.S. context is largely organized by race. Amid our racial reckoning climate, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021), rightly declared racism as a fundamental driver in health disparities. More specifically, race is a strong predictor of morbidity and life expectancy in the U.S. Hence, the CDC named racism a national public health crisis. Strikingly though, grief research tends to lack much-needed race, gender, or class specific analysis and resources. Instead, grief research often offers “neutral” resources that often fail to even mention race—let alone discuss how the intersectional impacts of racism, genderism, or classism influence morbidity and mortality. In unlearning limited grief constructs, this paper generates possibilities to acknowledge, assess, and build capacity for humane and transformative racial, gender, and class equity in grief research by offering an intersectional grief literacies theoretical framework.