Abstract

Trauma-informed care and responses to trauma have been used as a research space within social sciences for some time. From a humanities lens, the ideas of trauma have been shared throughout many works of literature, notably African American authors’ written expression. This paper aims to share how trauma and traumatic experiences shape works of literature expressed by African American authors and the conversations that may ensue, in a college-level classroom setting. As expressed through the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, connections are made between the study and the literature often found within authorial exploration within an institution of higher education. Additionally, this paper shares methods, frames, and instructional moves that humanities professors may consider making with their own practices to share works of literature, authored by African American writers, and supports and services for students who are impacted by specific pieces of literature that have a measure of trauma within its pages.

The Get Lit. Literacy Workshop Model:

A Trauma-Informed Intervention Centering Diversity and Identity for African American Students within the Humanities

Background

The African American experience in the United States of America has been imbued by trauma and traumatic experiences (Alim et. al, 2008; Gluck et. al, 2021; Henderson et. al, 2021; Phipps & Thorne, 2019). Culturally, there have been significant studies and papers on the impact of various types of traumas, which substantiates the work done by researchers who explore the causes, effects, and solutions specific to trauma and traumatic experiences (Grills et. al, 2016; Henderson, 2015). Within many school settings, there are investigatory approaches taken by researchers and scholars that examine trauma and its impact on students (Boyraz, 2013; Blitz, 2016; Overstreet & Chafouleas, 2016; Stromberg, 2023).

Understanding the role that trauma plays on students is impactful and important; however, there is still a need in the field of higher education, in particular, to consider the ways educators in the humanities might be able to facilitate instruction for students to process trauma and traumatic experiences in a non-clinical, instructionally supportive manner. Students, particularly African American students in school settings, must be meaningfully engaged with the coursework content while, simultaneously, working towards an increased empathic, comprehensive reception from peers, instructors, counselors, and mental health experts; this duality comprises of relationally understanding particular students’ identities and uncovering some of the biases that instructors may possess for students, particularly those students who have been traditionally damaged by educational systems (Skiba et al, 2011; Wallace & Abel, 2021).

While content mastery is critical within the humanities classroom experience, hindrances may arise, which may seemingly cause some students to be unable to grasp key concepts shared by the instructor. To support students who are personally struggling in academic settings, in-class opportunities may be appropriate to ensure that students are retaining the information necessary for course completion and course comprehension (Jennings et al, 2013; Ungar, 2014; Holdsworth, Turner, & Scott-Young, 2018). In short, students who are suffering from trauma or traumatic experiences must have an opportunity to find ways to express their inner feelings in a supportive and meaningful way, especially to help build the aptitude that is necessary for higher education outputs, e.g., successful degree attainment (Dutro, 2011; Van Westrhenen & Fritz, 2014; Malchiodi, 2020).

As a cautionary piece to this work, readers are reminded that just exposing students to traumatic texts is not the same as teaching with a trauma-informed lens (Carello & Butler, 2014). It is not the intention of this paper to silo the student experience; however, it is the position of this work to help instructors within the humanities, especially within English coursework, to provide an opportunity for students to express themselves with clarity and sincerity and allow instructors to directly hear from students and connect them with the appropriate student-specific services that may be helpful to their overall achievement. It is clear that additional, practical support may be used to help students process their identities in an effort to identify and purposefully support students, especially students in crisis or historically ignored by educational institutions.

Brief History of ACE and Its Use in Post-Secondary Studies

This paper aims to briefly illustrate how traumatic experiences, especially those of African Americans, have shaped many experiences that have resulted into biases that have been formed that create barriers for student achievement and, frankly, mental health.  Moreover, while the African American experience within the United States is germane to only one particular racialized group in America, this paper, also, attempts to create foci around how others, might be able to derive the included strategies and resources to provide additional support to other students, even if the historical features of the trauma and traumatic experiences that Black Americans have historically endured are not corporately shared amongst other racialized groups.

Arguably, one of the most significant studies on trauma is the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, conducted by Kaiser Permanente from 1995-1997, (Felitti et al., 1998) has informed education policy and has influenced and justified the need for “trauma-informed” (TI) frameworks in schools across the nation, connecting the study more towards school settings. ACEs demonstrate the data collection and interpretation of many traumatic experiences associated with health risks, specifically in the areas of child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, spouse abuse, and other domains of psychology and sociology (Felitti, 1998).  While there are studies that caution the connection, it is clear that schools and school systems are informing school-based decisions through ACEs, making the connection between school and home clearly evident (Felitti et al., 2019).

Additionally, the ACEs study has produced multifarious amounts of written expression on the topic of trauma. Karatekin (2018) conducted a short-term, longitudinal study to examine whether ACEs could be a goal of this short-term longitudinal study was to examine whether Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) could be used to identify college students who may be susceptible for mental health problems and whether current level of stress mediates the relationship between ACEs and mental health. Zanotti et al. (2018) explore the questions from the ACEs study, which evolved into the ACEs Study Questionnaire, a measure used for assessing individuals’ self-reported experiences of childhood adversity, to examine test–retest reliability of the ACE-SQ in a sample of college athletes. Gresham and Karatekin (2023), from a lens of predictive analytics, example the role of ACEs in prognostic methods to consider the academic problems among college students. It is clear that ACEs and the situated work, specifically within college contexts, has been explored; however, this paper extends the field by situating ACEs within the classroom space, transitioning college students as more than subjects of studies but, rather, participants in processes to promote healthy habits of mind and identify students in crisis, brought on by traumatic experiences, for the sake of connecting those learners with supports within and outside of institutions of higher education.

Moreover, African Americans, particularly because of the vast amount of evidence that centers on disproportionality, have been markedly mistreated by schools and school systems for many years, particularly within higher education settings (Hines et al., 2022). American schools and school systems, to include all levels of educational attainment, were never intended for African American student bodies, and, since the end of segregation, approximately 70 years ago, schools and school systems have seemingly been attempting to retrofit policies and procedures to be more inclusive (Hannah-Jones & Watson, 2021). Historically, the exercise of ending segregation, particularly without a clear, focused plan of integration, has not been as successful as some would have expected, even within the areas of equity in how Black educators were paid to teach within school settings to how Black veterans faced barriers to utilize the GI Bill after participating in war to defend the United States of America at community colleges (Baltimore Sun, 2019; Leflar & Davis, 1953; Onkst, 1998)

Because of the lack of directionality, strategy, specificity, equity, and empathy, Black students were left seemingly abandoned in the abyss of public education systems that were not initially created to provide quality education and equitable access to resources (Wallace & Abel, 2021; Skiba, 2002). This paper aims to provide a practical intervention that may be used in the English coursework to combine trauma-informed practices with classroom instruction to support more African American students who must navigate their traumas from lived experiences, particularly within the context of educational institutions, that far too often introduces or reinforces traumatic occurrences that must be grappled with to address the harm that Black students, particularly, may be suffering from. Additionally, this is one method or tool to use to recognize the social-emotional work necessary to assist students in crisis who may need to be identified as needing support with personal and academic issues. This paper is not to suggest that Black students suffer from trauma or have more trauma than other racialized groups. This work should be used to individualize supports that may be utilized to facilitate connectedness to school resources, particularly the tools that many institutions of higher education have codified to facilitate help and healing to its students. Later, we share an organized method by which English instructors might be able to teach rich, inviting content while, simultaneously, healthily providing an environment for students to share their identities and diversities.

The classroom is a space wherein instruction, particularly within an integrated arts context, can be strengthened with personalized approaches and meaningful submissions made by students. One of the premises of many instructional frames, e.g., Universal Design for Learning (UDL), is to increase accessibility into a lesson for the enduring understanding of a particular topic. Teachers choose several ways in which, especially within English-language arts contexts, to present and represent materials for students. Making personal connections to texts is one of many ways teachers help students make meaning from what they are reading. Additionally, personalizing responses to prompts and inquiries that make connection to a text, typically proves to be useful in comprehension strategies, especially when considering African American literature.

Brief Overview of Literary Texts Associated with Traumatic Experiences

Readers and researchers will find a clear connection of African American authors contributing to the canon of trauma-informed literature. For example, in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the text allows readers to experience the traumatic tension resulting from grappling with hypermasculinity, sexual repression, homophobia, and a litany of other issues that reveal David’s, the protagonist of the novel, internal conflicts, and unfortunate, unhappy ending, namely his unfortunate need to contemplate his male lover’s execution and his mental models of loss (Baldwin, 2016; Patell, 2011).  Additionally, Alice Walker, another African American author, writes about, similarly to Baldwin, about bisexuality, rape, pseudo-incestuous acts, and physical abuse in the work The Color Purple, which would later go on to win both the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction (Walker, 1982).

Walker’s novel reveals so many themes associated with trauma that even the cinematic and theatrical representations illuminate the complexity, tenseness, and trauma connected with the original literary piece (Boutan, 2011; Paredez, 2018). In the novel, Celie, the main character, is, more than once, beaten and raped by her stepfather and, until it is later revealed in the novel, the man that Celie’s mother married was not, in fact, her biological father. Even with that note, Celie’s life, which essentially begins with some of the most striking traumas created in the onset of a novel, transitions from even more despair when her rapist-stepfather arranges her marriage to Albert, identified only as Mister throughout the novel. Mister continues her physical and sexual abuse throughout their marriage until Celie finds the bravery and courage to depart from rural Georgia and find her new life in Tennessee, with the help of her once bisexual lover, Shug Avery.

Additionally, when reading Their Eyes Are Watching God, a teacher may ask students to make a personal connection to the scene wherein Janie’s grandmother insists Janie, a sixteen-year-old girl, marry Logan Killicks, the wealthy, older farmer. While students may not initially comprehend the trauma associated with a minor, i.e., a teenage girl, being essentially made to marry an older man, solely because of his financial stability, in a pseudo-arranged marriage, teachers may find ways to access a student’s essential knowledge or enduring understanding specific to the idea of making a life decision that one truly does not want to make and the characterizing trauma that may result as a consequence of those types of decisions.

Last, in James McBride’s The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, audiences are introduced to a personal narrative centered on a Jewish, Polish, White woman, who, although embodying differing identities, is discarded by her father, an Orthodox Jewish store-owner and rabbi, who sexually abuses Ruth throughout her childhood. Ruth chooses to leave her oppressive setting in the South and venture towards New York, wherein she marries Dennis, a Black man. One might delineate wherein all the trauma and subsequent triumphs, based on McBride and his siblings, successes as accomplished adults, in spite of the severe poverty they faced in New York. Although Ruth is not African American, her children, who subscribe to that cultural group, have to navigate a world wherein their mother’s traumatic experiences are, seemingly, vicariously visited on them, especially because of Ruth’s White relatives sitting shiva and disowning her because of her choices to marry outside of her cultural group (McBride, 2006).

Professors may attempt to reinforce the skill of indirect characterization by asking students: what motivates Janie to marry Logan? Why is Janie’s grandmother so influential to her? Have you ever been influenced to do something by a grandparent or an elder relative?  These three questions, seemingly complementary scaffolded, and working in concert, help students to understand the motivation of decision-making, specific to the protagonist of the story. Student-readers may not immediately see how characters in fictional novels are motivated, unless they can, simultaneously, see how they would be motivated within the same or similar situation somehow. Additionally, in a synthesis activity, instructors may want to use two or more works, i.e. Giovanni’s Room, The Color Purple, to explore the potential risk factors of one’s hidden bisexual proclivities and discuss the ways in which hiding one’s authentic self may result in even more mental damage (Tschantret, 2020). Additionally, readers, along with the knowledgeable facilitation of an instructor, may wish to explore the constructs of poverty and self-displacement when considering the thrust of McBride’s work, and how a parent’s upbringing and subsequent decisions impact her children, and the issues or harms that may come as a result of such choices and consequences.

Trauma-informed practices, much like trauma-informed schools, provide an additional lens by which educators and students might process both understanding and emotion in a productive, inclusive, and useful way. Ultimately, the opportunity, not to simply relive and revive hurtful past traumas but, rather, to use one’s traumatic experiences for the benefit of achieving content goals while, at the same time, identifying, much like child find, and supporting students who may have experienced traumatic experiences in and out of school. The relevance of this study is salient because more now than ever, there are unprecedented issues that have occurred, e.g., the global pandemic, record numbers of absenteeism, and other educational concerns that may be having deeper social-emotional impacts than what we can realize now. If educators, thinking with a dual-capacity approach, understand students’ pathologies while, at the same time, ensuring content mastery stays within the forefront of the instructional day.

In the next section, readers will learn about the conceptualization of methodology that may be used to shape the instructional support that professors might be able to use with students. Additionally, readers will learn the instructional implications of this paper’s proposed intervention to ensure that college students are offered opportunities to utilize, within a classroom setting, supports through curricula aimed at uncovering trauma, enhancing mental health, and utilizing supports to ensure that students are provided the deeper supports necessary to ensure that college instructors, students, and support counselors and staff are operating in concert to promote a holistic approach or student achievement, both in academic, i.e., coursework, and non-academic, i.e., personal, authentic spaces.

Concept of Methodology

The following methodology is a conceptualization to English professors of how college-level students may engage with literature, through a trauma-informed lens. Here is the suggested process by which we theorize the method, in a task analysis frame, to ensure that readers clearly understand the process that may be followed to ensure that students have a holistic experience to learn and gain personalized support in the college setting (Promann & Zhang, 2015).

First, before the group arrives, the facilitator would post three flip chart pages for diverse responses to a text. The facilitator would label one sheet Text-to-Self Connections, one sheet How this Text Makes Me Feel, and the third sheet is labeled How I’m Able to Cope as a Result of this text. The facilitator would place journals in each participant’s seat so that they could make notes as they listened to the passages. Then, students write after the text is read.

Second, the facilitator would provide a brief introduction to who the facilitators are and what the study is about. Afterward, the facilitator explains that those included in this written expression process are not trying to evaluate or judge any one person’s opinions or experiences, but rather to capture the thinking of underrepresented women who suffer from trauma. The lead facilitator will ask if there are any questions before we begin. They will answer questions and then begin with the facilitation questions.

Next, the lead facilitator would read a short story or excerpt of African American literature that deals with traumatic events specific to the African American community. They would instruct participants to make notes they want to discuss as they listen to the excerpt or short story. Then they would instruct participants to write freely for five minutes after the story has been read. The second facilitator would invite participants to take five minutes to write a response on all of the flipcharts they would feel comfortable responding to. After participants have responded, we will review and discuss the responses on the flip chart. They could also read a portion or all of their notes and free writes. Finally, the facilitators will thank participants for their time. They would let the participants know we expect to have the data compiled and analyzed and a draft report in the near future.

This process is filled with formative assessment methods to obtain participant feedback regarding their attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs of using relevant African American literary works to make text-to-self connections as it pertain to trauma (Watson, 2019). Depending on the forum, participants will be gathered using African American female college students and participants from the community who are over age 18. This process would be reader-centered and rooted in the phenomenological theory of literature, reader-response, where a direct link would be maintained between the author of a text and the mind of the reader. An intersectional approach is necessary to determine how the reader responds to a text (Iser, 2022). The literary works in this context would have an intentional modality in which the author’s consciousness is relayed to the reader.

Theoretical Framing

The rationale for using the phenomenological approach to literature in this proposed project is to bring together the mind of the reader with the mind of the author in reference to the issues of race and trauma. This approach would be accomplished via a reading focus group where participants would engage in excerpts from six African American literary works related to trauma:

• Black, Daniel. Perfect Peace. St. Press, 2010. A child is born to a family of sons and is traumatized by his mother who raises him as a girl for the first eight years of his life. When she strips him of his feminine identity, he must learn how to live as a boy and embrace manhood.
• Campbell, Bebe Moore. 72-Hour Hold. Random House, Inc. 2005. Keri seeks for support as she tries to get mental health care for her daughter Trina who suffers with bipolar disorder.
• Dash, Leon. Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America. Basic Books, 1996. Rosa Lee, a woman who lives in urban Washington D.C., explains to journalist Leon Dash the various traumatic experiences she has undergone in order to survive.
• Fountain, John W. True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity. Perseus Books, 2003. Well-noted correspondent, John W. Fountain, wrote a compelling memoir as he tried to cope with poverty in Chicago. He becomes a teenage father, college dropout, and welfare recipient, but he is sustained by his faith in God.
• Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson before Dying. Alfred A. Knof, Inc. 1993. Sentenced to the death for a crime he did not commit, the main character, Jefferson, is taught the true meaning of manhood by teacher, Grant Wiggins, before he is executed.
• Montgomery, Yeve. Excerpts from Blue Fusion. Blue Johnson must cope with witnessing her mother’s death as a child. She uses music and spirituality as alternative forms of therapy.

Focused groups, which are inherently different from traditional conceptions of focus groups, can help to capitalize on communication between participants and the facilitator and will become central to helping answer the question of why people behave in certain ways. Focused groups, in this case, provide instructors with rich insights and contextual data, illuminating realities that are defined in a group process; these groups are focused or created based upon a myriad of factors. One of the factors may be based upon homogeneity. For instance, there are some readings within this workshop model that may lend themselves to have only Black females join to discuss some of the sensitive content. Additionally, there may be a need to focus a specific group on a particular idea, based upon certain measures of cultural or social capital (Bourdieu, 2018). While traditional focus groups help meaningfully share the dynamic effects of interaction on expressed beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and feelings, the focused groups that may be utilized within these workshops may lend themselves to reimagining how students are selected and offered a space within these settings to find academic growth and personalized healing (Akyıldız and Ahmed, 2021).

Two facilitators would lead the group with the main facilitator directing the focus group, and the co-facilitator taking detailed notes. Empathy is also extremely important in facilitating focus groups where establishing a strong rapport with participants is key to obtaining high-quality information (Fernandez-Quintanilla, 2020). The location of the focus group is designed to place participants in a location where they should feel comfortable expressing candor. The session may last approximately one hour. The session is designed for the participants to listen to the excerpts of the readings. Then they would journal their initial responses to the text. Structured and unstructured questions and probes are developed to help guide the discussions and to ensure consistency across groups.

Structured and unstructured questions are preliminarily analyzed using a simple grounded theory approach aimed at generating, confirming, and modifying the themes and their proposed matching to the integrated theories (Urquhart, 2023). The participants’, who may be of any meaningful composition or recruitment process, responses to the structured and unstructured questions are recorded through notes. The responses to the journaling are anonymously collected to determine major themes in their response to African American literary works centered on trauma.

Conclusion

This paper examines African Americans’ relationship with trauma specifically how researchers and scholars have analyzed trauma’s impact on students. However, this paper focuses on higher education and how professors in the area of the humanities could facilitate instruction so that students discuss trauma in an academic setting. Students must have the opportunity to express their emotions with the support of their professors. This will allow them to have the wherewithal to excel in higher education. While it is beneficial to expose students to texts that center on trauma, it is important to teach with a Trauma-Informed (TI) lens. This paper created a focus around how marginalized groups would develop strategies and tools that offer support.

The work utilizes the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) Study to address trauma of adults who had traumatic experiences in the first eighteen years of their life. The ACES Study rationalized the need for TI frameworks in an academic setting. When trying to determine an adult’s acquaintance with ACES, the ACES Study Questionnaire is used. Although this paper acknowledged the ACES Study findings on trauma for college students by other scholars, this paper does not seek to examine students as subjects. It views students as participants that are practicing habits of the mind. Through a healthy discourse and with the assistance of a clinical therapist, students in crisis can be identified. African American students tend to be overlooked in a higher education setting. This TI instruction with the use of humanities may address some of the trauma that African Americans experience. This work examines how African American literature can be used when participating in TI instruction.

The methodology for the reading focus group is conceptualized for English professors to implement in their courses. Professors would use lead phrases that would allow students to respond to the excerpts read during the session. After the excerpt has been read, students will free-write for several minutes to express their initial thoughts about the text. Students are free to share any of their responses to the texts with the group. It is important to show empathy when conducting a focus group, so that students feel comfortable sharing their experiences with the group.

The Get Lit Literacy Workshop Model could lead to reading focus groups for other marginalized groups such as Latinx, LGBTQIA+, and women. This will allow members of these groups to share their experiences with trauma as it pertains to their experiences as a minority not only in this country, but in the higher education setting. Again, it is not the intention of this TI instruction to exclude any individual. This paper expresses the foundation for what can expand for others to heal, grow, and learn.

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