I'm brown and I'm bright: Using collective storying to disrupt the white‐centering of successful girlhood

Eunice Gaerlan and Yael Cameron

Gender, Work and Organization, 2025, vol. 32, issue 3, 999-1017

Abstract: What might it mean to reimagine brown‐girl‐as‐failure to brown‐girl‐as‐success? This article draws on findings from an empirical research study of academically successful teenage girls from Aotearoa New Zealand. In this paper we focus on what it means to be an intelligent and successful young brown woman in the context of the contemporary white‐centering of meritocratic success, and the oppressive narrative that brown girls are not bright. Using a creative methodology, Laurel Richardson's collective storying and Patricia Leavy's fiction‐based research, the paper engages in forms of creative analytic practice and new knowledge representation, which prioritize authentic voice and understanding of the young women participants' lived experiences. Collective stories were used in the study to challenge existing public discourses of girls and success, including the white‐centering of such depictions, and to create narratives that participants could identify with, particularly those that were often unspoken but widely experienced. Using collective stories in the study offered a space of resonance with participants who could engage with the stories during the research process and contribute to their (re)storying. The interplay between the theoretics of methodological creativity and the symbolic violence of a colonial positioning of successful girlhood offers a novel contribution to girlhood studies. Through collective storying and a further interweaving of poetic voice, the disruption of the narrative of deficit offers remembering and revalidation of brown success.

Date: 2025
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