“To My Girls in Therapy, See Imma Tell You This fo Free . . .”: Black Millennial Women Speaking Truth to Power in and across the Digital Landscape

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes the ways that Black millennial women have come to acknowledge the role of voice and to recognize the sociolinguistic traumas that they experience in and outside of digital spaces. The lived experiences of Black millennial women within the digital landscape are best viewed via the standpoint of constructivism, where individuals make meaning and come to knowledge of the world through their public and private communicative practices (Hancock 2015). The author shares findings from six ethnographic interviews carried out through a pilot study with Black millennial women. The interviews centered the thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and ideologies of these millennials about their social media use in relation to themes of language, race, culture, identity, and health. Black millennial women come to know their experiences on- and off-line as real because of the collective and individual stories that they live. They realize that the reconciliatory space of “being” a Black millennial woman within the context of the digital landscape has sociocultural implications and consequences. Based on what was shared by participants, it’s clear that they live through systems of oppression that reproduce practices of marginalization, silence, and erasure. To counter this, they embrace and reproduce narratives of resilience that remain pervasive in cultural and subcultural locales of their lives while also “speaking truth to power” where they work to confront their pain via radical digital self-care practices.