“I Write With Intent”: Writing as a Black Feminist Research Method and Route to Intimacy

Abstract

Writing is widely accepted as an appropriate tool for qualitative research, yet the question of how the entanglement of researchers’ politics and positionalities inform the use of this method has been understudied. In this article, we tackle that gap in the extant literature through an improvisational inquiry extending from a Black feminist’s written material. We begin by underscoring the generally purposeful nature of Black women’s writing. Then, we illuminate the connection between Black women’s purposeful practice of writing and the relational, community-building aims of Black feminist research. Broadly, we endeavor to right the wrongful erasure of Black women’s epistemologies by highlighting the concomitant affordances of writing as an instrument for Black feminist-oriented research and as an apparatus for cultivating intimacy with oneself and others (for instance, one’s loved ones) in the context of qualitative inquiry.