Jeanelle K. Hope
SAYS Research Fellow
Jeanelle K. Hope is a Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her current research examines how Afro-Asian solidarity manifests through grassroots organizing, art and cultural production, and digital activism. Jeanelle’s broader research interests include: Blacks in the West, social movements, transnational feminism, African American women’s history, Black girlhood, Black radicalism, and Black queer theory. Jeanelle’s work has been featured in Freedom’s Racial Frontier: African Americans in the Twentieth-Century West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018) and Voices of River City.
Takeaways from Working with SAYS: Working alongside the Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS) educators, poets, and warrior scholars over the last year has been a highlight of my tenure at the University of California, Davis. In working with the youth, I have further developed my own teaching pedagogy, learned so much about the different communities that comprise South Sacramento, and have witnessed SAYS youth lead movements around social and racial justice in the city. As a scholar-activist, working with Black girls and educators through SAYS has affirmed for me that it is possible to do meaningful community-engaged work. And most of all, the SAYS babies remind me to keep writing and spittin’ my truth!