From the Middle Passage to Black Lives Matter: Ancestral Writing as a Pedagogy of Hope

In this narrative rooted in autoethnography, the author juxtaposes her personal story with that of international stories of resistance to oppression and calls on educators to include children’s personal stories as critical pedagogy to honor their funds of knowledge and foster their historical consciousness. With a focus on eighteenth-century freedom fighter Nanny of the Maroons, From the Middle Passage to Black Lives Matter emphasizes the historical connections between Indigenous people worldwide who have harnessed their ancestral roots to disrupt cultural hegemony. The book emphasizes the imaginative and radical assertions of the enduring resistance of the formerly colonized, going back to the era of slavery through to the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter, and calls for a radical shift in the global curriculum to include these stories.

Storytelling is acknowledged as an intergenerational teaching methodology rooted in Indigenous Epistemology which serves to honor our common humanity. The essential message of the text is conveyed through the socio-educational and cultural interventions that are asserted as transformational pedagogy that will serve to elevate students’ voices and promote their academic achievement. This book bears witness to the ways in which the history and sociocultural background of Indigenous people have been ignored and at times rendered invisible or inconsequential, and offers innovative strategies to correct history and write Indigenous people into the literature with creativity and sensitivity. From the Middle Passage to Black Lives Matter is a narrative of social justice that seeks to raise the reader’s historical consciousness and provide authentic strategies to decolonize the global curriculum.