The Journal of Trauma Studies in Education (JTSE) is an online open-access academic peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the generation of knowledge regarding mental health and well-being, with a focus on the impact of traumatic stress within the context of Pre K-12 and Postsecondary Education. The journal accepts manuscripts on a rolling basis from varying perspectives within education that critically explore the nature of trauma, as well as preventative and restorative approaches to trauma responses in all education stakeholders.
Upon publication articles are immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. All published articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License. All articles are permanently available online. The final version of articles may be posted to an institutional repository or to the author's own website as long as the article includes a link back to the original article posted on JTSE.
Trauma-informed approaches have become widely adopted in schools as a response to growing student mental and behavioral health needs. While these approaches have shifted educator responses from punitive discipline toward relational and supportive practices, they have often failed to address the structural and identity-based conditions that produce and exacerbate trauma, including racism, cultural invalidation, and inequitable access to resources. This special issue advances a Culturally Responsive, Anti-Racist, and Equitable (CARE) framework as a necessary evolution of trauma-informed education. Drawing on a diverse set of empirical and conceptual contributions, the articles collectively position trauma not only as an individual psychological experience but also as a response to systemic inequities embedded within school policies, practices, and power structures. This introduction synthesizes key themes across the issue, highlighting how CARE-oriented trauma-informed work requires structural reform, relational trust, shared power with students and families, and adult critical consciousness.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jerica Knox, Brooksie Sturdivant https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Culturally Responsive, Trauma-Informed Care for Newcomer Students
Culturally responsive service delivery is an essential component of trauma-informed schools. While there is clinical guidance, how culturally responsive care is operationalized in practice is not as well understood. The current paper provides practice-based insights into the application of culturally responsive, care in the context of eight school-based health centers (SBHCs). Unique student groups served by the SBHCs include newcomers and non-English speaking students. Using a research-practice partnership process, including a focus group and key informant interviews with clinicians, supervisors, and SBHC leadership, the paper provides descriptive information and case examples of practice elements related to different components of integrated behavioral health care in schools. These include: 1) engagement strategies for newcomers, 2) culturally responsive mental health identification practices, 3) adaptations to evidence-based trauma treatments, and 4) facilitative organization processes for engaging in culturally responsive care (e.g., training, multi-disciplinary workgroups, leadership support, workflow processes).
Copyright (c) 2026 Erum Nadeem, Vanesa Mora Ringle , Michelle Maddex, Efrain Michel, Hannah Peters, Erica Gomes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Iterative Process of Developing a School-Based Intervention to Take Actions Against Racism
Racism threatens the mental and physical health of students of color and may lead to re-occurring harm without intervention. We developed ‘Actions Against Racism’ professional development trainings using a trauma-informed racial socialization lens to provide educators with proactive strategies to disrupt the negative psychosocial developmental outcomes associated with racism. This paper describes the iterative process of developing this intervention through four phases over the course of four years. The primary takeaway from this work is that developing and implementing interventions to disrupt racism and promote healing must take into account the implementation context, with consideration to balancing the urgency of supporting students amidst the necessity of taking time to build trust and authentic commitment to disrupting racism among staff.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lindsay Poole, Danika Perry, Zumana Noor, Tia Barnes, Kim Graham, Danielle Hatchimonji, Kira Branch https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Integrating Race-Conscious Professional Development as a Trauma-Informed Practice
This qualitative study examines the influence of a race-conscious, trauma-informed professional development (TIPD) fellowship among Black educators serving majority-Black students. While research on trauma-informed education is expanding, little focuses on race-conscious PD for educators of racially marginalized students. In Spring 2023, four Black educators at a southeastern public charter high school participated in a trauma-informed fellowship grounded in racial awareness, culturally responsive pedagogy, and equity-centered approaches. The program included critical discourse groups, trauma-sensitive strategies, and reflective journaling. Preliminary findings highlight the development of a trauma-informed affinity group, critical reflection on internalized savior complexes, and personal self-discovery. Educators processed racial stress collectively and documented professional growth. This model fosters trauma-informed educators and enhances racial consciousness. Implications highlight the need for expanding race-conscious TIPD to include allyship training for non-Black educators and creating "third spaces" for Black students that could promote racial equity and empower students to challenge systemic inequities.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jasmine Haynes, Jessica Scott, Shantel Crosby, Kathryn Tillett, Alisia Collins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
MONARCH: Examining a Model for Middle Level and Secondary Trauma Informed Education
This study examines the MONARCH intervention model for trauma-informed teaching to understand the needs and experiences of school staff undergoing implementation. From 2023 to 2024, school staff from 12 public, middle and high schools in a large urban city participated in the MONARCH intervention. A subgroup of staff from each school participated in focus groups before and during the MONARCH implementation. Focus groups with teachers, support staff, and administrators were facilitated by project evaluators, recorded, transcribed, and coded for similar themes. Findings yielded numerous themes focused on challenges with policies for student behaviors, fostering school engagement, supporting the needs of Black and foster youth, and successes and barriers to the MONARCH model implementation. We discuss implications of these findings in regard to the use of trauma-informed school practice in middle and secondary school settings to increase healing and equitable practices for the most vulnerable student populations.
Copyright (c) 2026 Shantel Crosby, Cheryl Somers, Angelique Day, Anthony Gomez, Tamarie Willis, Kathryn Tillett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Despite increased concerns for mental health among Black students and ongoing concerns related to severe disciplinary practices used with Black students, limited research has explored perspectives of how these issues may intersect to impact suicide risk. We recruited 13 professionals (3 administrators, 10 school counselors) in a southeastern state in the United States to complete focus group interviews examining beliefs and attitudes around racial disproportionality in mental health care access, referrals, and disciplinary practices. Thematic analysis revealed that while participants acknowledged efforts to address disparities for Black students, they identified urgent gaps in faculty training, culturally responsive practices, and comprehensive school-based mental health services. Framed by a Biopsychosocial Ecological Model and a Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) approach, findings highlight the structural inequities can contribute to mental health issues for Black students and call for policy, practice, and intervention strategies for reducing suicide risk in Black youth.
Copyright (c) 2026 Dana Griffin, Constance Lindsay, Marisa Marraccini, Telieha Middleton, Jay Mathis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Availability of effective, culturally responsive interventions is urgently needed to support immigrant and refugee youth resilience and mental health. Critical to successful scale-up efforts is evidence of barriers and facilitators to the implementation of multi-tier interventions that integrate cultural brokers into existing infrastructure. Data sources for this process evaluation included 10 interviews, two focus groups, and team meeting notes from 2021-2024. Modified grounded theory methods, reflective memos, and data triangulation generated a conceptual model that highlights the central role of cultivating trust and attending to power within and across partnering agencies during implementation of a manualized, evidence-informed, and community-engaged mental health intervention. This was especially important for cultural brokers, who are critical to the delivery of culturally responsive services yet vulnerable to marginalization and burnout. This novel conceptual model can inform future efforts to implement and scale culturally responsive interventions, sustain cultural brokers, and avoid replicating marginalizing power structures.
Copyright (c) 2026 Laura Soltani, MSW, LICSW, Johara Suleiman, MSW, LICSW, Jasmine Banegas, MA, MSW, LICSW, Hopewell R. Hodges, MA, Saida Abdi, PhD, MSW, LICSW, Mimi Choy-Brown, PhD, MSW https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This study examines North Carolina’s (NC) primary trauma-informed education (TIE) policy, SHLT-003, which governs school-based mental health plans in PK-12 education. Using culturally responsive, antiracist, equity-based, and trauma-informed (CARE-TIE) frameworks, qualitative analysis reveals that SHLT-003 is compliance-driven, emphasizing mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) without embedding equity and deeper culturally responsive or antiracist principles. While the policy acknowledges trauma sensitivity, it lacks explicit equity-based mandates and provides minimal guidance for district-level implementation, potentially reinforcing systemic disparities. Findings highlight the need for structural policy revisions to ensure consistent, equity-centered application across NC public schools. Recommendations include integrating culturally responsive language, antiracist frameworks, and accountability structures that uplift lived experiences, to enhance accessibility, inclusivity, and systemic transformation in trauma-informed education.
Copyright (c) 2026 Raketa Ouedraogo-Thomas, Dr. Samantha Rummage Massey, Lesa M. King Bullins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Towards Racial Equity in Trauma-Informed Schools
Consensus regarding elements of a trauma-informed school (TIS), essential for promoting desired youth outcomes and racial equity is lacking. This study aimed to establish consensus on TIS intervention components and implementation strategies that are: 1) important for youth outcomes, 2) important for racial equity in outcomes, and 3) feasible to implement. We utilized a three-round Delphi survey, and recruited participants (n=49) with relevant TIS expertise. Participants provided importance and feasibility ratings on a set of TIS components and strategies (n=55) related to organizational/policy reforms, workforce professional development, and educational/clinical practices. Approximately 90% of components reached consensus on high importance for youth outcomes and racial equity. However, despite broad consensus on the importance of most components, fewer, approximately 50%, were viewed as highly feasible to implement in practice. Findings in relation to extant TIS literature, and implications for responding equitably to youths’ needs are discussed.
Copyright (c) 2026 Z. Ayotola Onipede, Tamar Kodish, Anna S. Lau https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Student voice has been largely absent in the trauma-informed schools movement. Student perspectives on trauma-informed approaches are particularly critical for students who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). BIPOC students consistently report more negative school experiences than their white peers, including negative school climate and lower levels of school equity and personal belonging. This article describes a youth participatory action research (YPAR) program with 18 BIPOC middle school students. We describe how YPAR was integrated with trauma-informed principles to engage student voice. We outline student-led research projects and results related to core features of trauma-informed schools. Finally, we describe how students used their findings to advocate for change within their schools. We conclude that YPAR presents a promising avenue through which school leaders and their partners can directly and meaningfully involve young people in the creation of trauma-informed schools.
Copyright (c) 2026 Stacy Overstreet, Jesse Chanin, Allisyn Swift, Samantha Francois https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
HEARTS is a whole-school, prevention and intervention approach that addresses trauma and chronic stress at the student, staff, and school organizational levels. HEARTS is guided by six core evidence-grounded principles: 1) understanding stress and trauma; 2) cultural humility and equity; 3) safety and predictability; 4) compassion and dependability; 5) empowerment and collaboration; and 6) resilience and social-emotional wellness. One feature that distinguishes HEARTS from other school-based trauma-informed approaches is the centrality of cultural humility and equity, emphasizing that if an approach or intervention is not socially and racially just, then it is not trauma-informed. Since 2008, HEARTS has integrated culturally responsive and anti-oppressive approaches across a variety of implementation models. This paper describes practice-based lessons learned and insights across these various implementation models with respect to moving the needle on anti-racist, socially just, trauma-informed practices.
Copyright (c) 2026 Martha Merchant, Nyasha Evans-Bonner, Stephanie Guinosso, Joyce Dorado, Hazel Benigno https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This article examines trauma-informed healing and multidimensional well-being as key to radically (re)imagining and critically co-creating liberatory futures in higher education. Utilizing a bricolage, critical arts-based methodology, this multi-study qualitative research explored the meta-research-question: How are higher education stakeholders radically (re)imagining liberatory, abolitionist, decolonizing, and queering futures within U.S. higher education and beyond? Emergent findings cast visions for humanizing and radically healing higher education futures and identified that trauma-informed healing and multidimensional well-being for individuals/collectives/ecologies are both strategies for sustaining radical imagination and critical creativity (RICC) praxis to engender those futures, as well as practices that are reciprocally sustained through RICC praxis. Because of the embodied and communal nature of RICC praxis, trauma-informed healing (i.e., repairing harms, restoring generative relationships with individuals, community, and ecologies) that is both interpersonal and intrapersonal is integral to the praxis of dismantling what is while simultaneously radically imagining and critically creating what can be.
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Trauma Studies in Education https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Within higher education, specifically religiously affiliated institutions (RAIs), the voices and experiences of Black queer womxn are undervalued, scrutinized, and at risk. Black queer womxn constantly face a particular blend of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in these places—which may lead to religious trauma—and are punished for being our authentic selves. Our questions are “What are the experiences of Black queer womxn at a religiously affiliated institution?” and “How do Black queer womxn begin to heal from the racism, sexism, and homophobia present at RAIs?” We attempt to answer this question by using both the methodology of surrender and Sista Circle methodology, two radical practices that center Black womxn’s narratives. We believe that discussing our experiences in community will lead to greater healing and understanding of how we navigate our multiple oppressions at religiously affiliated institutions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Journal of Trauma Studies in Education https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Role of Spirituality in Healing from Sexual and Relationship Violence in Higher Education
In this article, we examine how radical healing grounded in spirituality can be transformative for college student survivors of sexual and relationship violence. We explore the history, challenges, and current dynamics that create tension and barriers for student survivors accessing religious or spiritual support in their healing journeys on campus. The paper includes two case studies describing the role of spirituality in healing for student survivors of color. We provide insights into practices and frameworks to empower practitioners, institutional leaders, and scholars to better support the needs of student survivors by incorporating spirituality into their work. Specifically, we discuss the importance of (a) encouraging students’ connection to nature and land, (b) offering trauma-informed yoga programs, (c) promoting community knowledge, and (d) creating supportive communal spaces.
What Indigenous Futurity Can Teach Us about Healing Sexual Violence for Minoritized Students in Higher Education
Critical scholars of sexual violence in higher education have highlighted the inequities and gaps that Minoritized students face in their search for support after experiencing violence on campus. As described by critical scholar Harris (2020), “healing often mitigates negative outcomes that stem from experiencing sexual assault” (pp. 249). In this article, I first explain the importance of understanding spatial geographies in the context of sexual violence for Minoritized survivors on university campuses. Second, I explore the concept of spatial futurity broadly, specifically Laura Harjo’s scholarship on Indigenous Futurity, as a guiding framework to transform experiences of violence into tools of action and healing. Finally, I discuss the healing experiences of Minoritized sexual violence survivors from a qualitative study that utilized Indigenous Research Methods and focused on Harjo’s concept of Emergence Geographies to explore research and practical implications for sexual violence response in higher education for Indigenous and other Minoritized students.
Exploring Radical Healing among Asian/American College Women Survivors of Sexual and Relationship Violence
Healing approaches for survivors of sexual and relationship violence (SRV) on college campuses often focus on individual symptom reduction and are often limited by traditional punitive responses to SRV. Such dominant approaches to supporting survivors overlook the cultural and communal needs of Asian/American (A/A) college women, who are often underrepresented in SRV research. Rooted in A/A women’s epistemologies, this study explores how A/A college women survivors engage in healing through culturally situated practices. Research collaborators engaged in Yum Chas and Rice Roundtables, two de/colonial and collectivist methods that drew upon a lineage of A/A ways of healing. Findings reveal how A/A women cultivate healing by re/embodying (a) food for the whole body, (b) solidarities with other A/A women, and (c) ancestral and intergenerational wisdom. This research underscores the need for higher education institutions to move beyond Western-centric, individualistic, and punitive models to support culturally resonant, systemic healing for A/A women survivors.
Sexual assault is an epidemic that disproportionately affects Black women. Yet, despite this reality, on a systemic level, healing after experiencing sexual assault is an issue of racial equity. Many scholars take a race-evasive, individualized, and psychological approach to healing that silence and eclipse the lived experiences of Black women. Therefore, this study acts as a counterstory to talk back to the narrative of “sameness” that pushes a White women pattern of healing and promotes the erasure of students who identify as Black ciswomen in the literature. The purpose of this basic qualitative study is to explore how Black college cis women engage in healing after experiences with sexual assault. The inquiry and data were approached and analyzed from a critical theoretical framework, specifically, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and Black Feminist Thought. Findings can inform scholars and education professionals to consider and center the healing needs of Black cis women.
I took this photo in January 2022. At the time, I was a third-year doctoral student. My doctoral program, which was designed to have two-week, in-person residencies twice a year, had been fully remote/online since 2020. It was my first time back in southern California for residency since the COVID-19 lockdowns. I was anxious about traveling again, worried about everyone’s wellbeing, and worn out from the intertwined challenges of navigating a full-time doctoral program and a full-time job in higher education amid the unfolding pandemic. During the first week back on-campus for January residency, I felt like a clenched fist. During the weekend break between weeks one and two, a few cohort-members and I visited the Getty Museum for a study break. As I took this photo from a viewpoint overlooking the landscape, I felt a cool breeze on my face and realized that for the first time in a long time I felt a sense of peaceful relief — an unclenching. Standing at the Getty, one could not tell that wildfires had burned through this area just a few years before. Our natural relations (e.g., animals, plants, land, water, air) inspire me: Even after a devastating fire, they (re)grow. For me, they embody radical hope for radical healing. Now, as I reflect on the day I took this photo, wildfires are burning again in southern California. I find myself again worried about the wellbeing of people and our natural relations there as the fires rage on. The Getty Museum has been lauded during this current/ongoing fire for its fire-resistant design, protecting its valuable collections. Meanwhile, I am thinking about what is lost in these fires that isn’t prioritized like the Getty’s museum artifacts—lives, homes, ecologies, and more. These days, higher education in the US in many ways feels to me like it’s “on fire,” metaphorically (and not in a good way). Zero-sum, dominant logics tell us we must choose — we can’t save, protect, and/or heal everything. Whereas, abundant logics argue our flourishing is mutual, interdependent, and reciprocal (Kimmerer, 2024). To me, this photo represents both a promise and a challenge: How can we co-create hope and healing for liberated futures for education and beyond? Paraphrasing Arthur Ashe (a groundbreaking African American tennis player famously quoted as saying “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”), I believe it starts right where we are, with what we have, doing what we can, in this moment and the next one. Reference: Kimmerer, R. W. (2024). The serviceberry: Abundance and reciprocity in the natural world. Scribner.
Current research shows a clear relationship between trauma and health, yet the intersectionality of trauma, food insecurity, eating disorders, chronic diseases, and food relationships is minimally examined in counseling and family therapy scholarship. Though the academic environment is optimal for healing, interconnected trauma and health encounters, including those of marginalized students, are not well understood. A phenomenological study, therefore, examines how intergenerational trauma intersects with student-participants’ lived experiences of food insecurity, eating disorders, chronic diseases, and food relationships. Results indicate that intergenerational health, environment, food accessibility, imprinting, and food relationships influence how students utilize resources and protective factors in lived experiences. Interlineal factors also impact how students experience campus culture related to FI, EDs, CDs, and FRs, and the systemic racism endured by marginalized students when seeking help. Future implications for inclusive campus resources are discussed.
Grappling with Life After Loss as Educator Leaders
When a student dies, educators must cope with their own grief while supporting the grief of their surviving students. Educators have navigated student death for centuries, but today’s educators face new circumstances—gun-related violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly-common natural disasters—and persistent reminders of student death via 24-hour news cycles and social media feeds. Such experiences occur in the context of a Western propensity to dismiss grief as a distraction from production. Having few or no cultural habits to depend on, school leaders may lack the ability to effectively care for educators in the wake of a student’s death. Outlined herein is the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal project. Described in detail is the Life After Loss Tables: Educators Edition program, a set of practices that aim to rehumanize the educator grief healing process by hosting educators in a co-created supportive and regenerative space. Practical recommendations are outlined.
Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Trauma Studies in Education https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Racial Melancholia of Un-grieved Endings
Educational researchers are quick to intellectualize solutions to teacher attrition without feeling what is in front of us and within us: overwhelming, unmetabolized grief. Blending online ethnography with somatic and critical understandings of grief and trauma, this study seeks to understand teacher attrition as a felt sense of loss. Focusing on the stories of four teachers of color, I use the concept of racial melancholia to describe a liminal stage of grief and a distinct form of racialized trauma, as participants wrestle with their internal landscapes, administrative responses to their departure, and decisions to bid farewell, or not, to their students. I conclude with ways for educators, researchers, and leaders to affirm the grief of teachers of color and speculate how doing so can disrupt teacher attrition and compounded racialized grief in schools.
During the COVID-19 global pandemic, many teachers, especially Teachers of Color, have had to navigate a disproportionate amount of grief with little to no institutional support. This reinforced the importance of developing spaces within schools where teachers and students can learn how to metabolize their grief—to better understand it, recognize it, and listen to how their bodies respond to it. In this article, I share how a group of ninth-grade Teachers of Color participated in interdisciplinary teaching to create a collective space for grief with their. Utilizing the Filipino cultural practice of talk story, called kuwentuhan, they shared reflections on their experience. Findings highlight love and radical joy as humanizing elements stemming from their collective grief, as well as suggest that grief, love, and radical joy are aspects of wellness that should be acknowledged and nourished to allow for Teachers of Color to sustain their wellness alongside their students.
Responding to a general recognition that teachers are often ill-prepared to address the intersections of healing, literacy learning, and grief, this paper offers an overview of classroom practices and curricula that support the co-creation of containers of safety for students to explore grief while building academic literacies. Acknowledgment that grief with layers of trauma can often be a subtext of classroom life requires that teachers consider and adopt suitable manners of healing-centered and trauma-informed instruction. Drawing on the voices of students and on fifteen years of experience working with embodiment practices in the classroom, this article provides descriptions of tangible approaches and curricula that organically weave together agentive healing literacies with academic literacies.
This study examines the application of strategies to foster elementary students’ emotional literacy to heal from traumas. Drawing from theories on colonialism, grief, and mindfulness, curriculum was developed to support students in navigating and processing grief and anger in the classroom. Blending autoethnography, portraiture, and decolonizing methods, a self- portrait was created to present the findings from the 2013-2014 study. Findings highlight the use of mindfulness strategies to develop curriculum to support students in processing grief and anger.
Visions of Intergenerational Grief Work as Education for Liberation
There is no teaching and learning untouched by grief, and any classroom concerned with love must also be concerned with loss. Education for liberation requires the study, struggle, and praxis of grief. In the spirit of communion with the reader, we each offer story – along with our own analysis of how we understand the importance of the story – as an invitation to encourage our readers to conjure their own stories and analyses. Our process of writing included therapeutic, virtual healing sessions where we curated space and conversation to explore and share our own grief, each other’s grief, our shared and distinct experiences, and how we each think about and experience grief as a liberatory teacher. These sessions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for the emerging themes: The value and necessity of intergenerational villages of grief healing, the relations within these villages, and grief work as education for liberation.
If We Aren’t Grieving, We Aren’t Healing
In this paper I explore the multifaceted and politicized nature of grief, arguing that grief is a powerful practice for healing from trauma. To situate grief as a missing, yet necessary, ingredient in the trauma-healing nexus I turn to my own experiences, offering a testimonio of my own journey alongside grief, specifically from March to December 2020—the months leading up to my first semester as a tenure-track professor. In sharing this testimonio, I challenge the landscape of education which often pathologizes emotionality and decenters the body, particularly for People of Color, and instead offer an example of what learning to be in an embodied relationship to grief looked like for me as a Latina woman, educator, and scholar. I end with extrapolating the practices that nurtured my relationship to grief and how I incorporated them into my pedagogy in order to make space for grief in my classroom.
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.
This reflection attempts to make sense of the ecological wisdoms embedded within Morrison’s Song of Solomon and their implications toward an embodied Apocalyptic Education (2020). Particularly, the depictions of characters within the novel uncover an angst, uniquely illustrative of our experiences as hated people, while also placing emotional pressure on readers to think outside of civilization, toward healing, new ways of existing, even toward flight. Central to these pathways lie the significance of grief: grief as a function of consciousness raising, as a cultural tool toward re-memory, and grief as a communal endeavor toward flight.