2025 Essays

Embodying Belonging: Gesture, Dress, and Diasporic Family Communication in Educational Spaces

Scales-Blowe, Krista

This paper explores how gesture, dress, and other embodied practices serve as powerful forms of communication and cultural transmission among Black diasporic families in educational spaces. Drawing from linguistic anthropology, cultural psychology, Black feminist theory, and spirituality in education, the paper argues that schools often misread or pathologize embodied expressions rooted in cultural identity. Using a reflexive and interdisciplinary approach, the study illuminates how bodily literacy—such as tone, posture, and dress—functions as a method of meaning-making, resistance, and care. It calls for educators to develop an “embodied literacy” that recognizes the body as a valid site of knowledge. By re-centering embodied communication in the classroom, this work advocates for educational practices that affirm rather than alienate students and families whose cultural languages are written on the body.