“I Do It For My Hood”: Deconstructing Disparaging Narratives on Black Family Engagement by Interweaving Autoethnographic Reflections of Black Underground Families with Godfather of Harlem, Seasons 1-2

Historical research on Black children’s literature discloses a duality and code-switching between youth and adult readers that abridge the gap between multivalent texts (Capshaw-Smith, 2004). American racism infringed on Black parents’ desires to insulate Black children from racialized narratives that accelerated racial awareness and social maturity (Berrey, 2009). Literacy became indispensable in Black family engagement with youth and adults reading multivalent texts to stimulate a racial literacy that informed racial landscapes (Duane & Capshaw, 2017) or hush harbors. Scholars have extensively discussed the systemic barriers that limit Black mobility (Kruse, 2005; Rothstein, 2017) and strengthen dismissive tropes and disparaging narratives about Black family engagement and literacy (Franklin, 2007), explicitly regarding families that operate underground (Venkatesh, 2009). Conjuring up the animal trickster, Brer Rabbit, who embodied comedic diversion, cultural commentary, and social critiques (Earl, 2003), radiates the deviations of Black underground families through the trickster motif (Leslie, 1997; McKinney, 1989) and reinterprets the Epix drama series Godfather of Harlem (Brancato et al., 2019) by reexamining the family engagement and literacy practices of Black characters in the show. I primarily focus on Bumpy, the drama’s protagonist, to expand traditional notions of family engagement and literacy and ramify my autoethnographic reflections, observations, and interactions with Black underground families in an early childhood education setting.

Godfather of Harlem illuminates a cultural grounding and pedagogical relevance that educators can use to deconstruct disparaging narratives on Black family engagement (Billingsley, 1992), inform the literacy practices of Black underground youth (Smitherman, 1994), and interrupt the stereotypical belief that Black criminality becomes tantamount to (un)engagement and illiteracy (Alexander, 2020; Henning, 2001; Morris et al., 2018). Contemporarily, the trickster motif counters the denigrating narratives associated with Black families and renegotiates the ethical boundaries and moral parameters in an underground economy (Venkatesh, 2009). As a result, this study disrupts binary thinking and traditional notions of family engagement and literacy, narrows the literary gap between Antebellum Black culture and Black popular culture, and synthesizes autoethnographic reflections, observations, and interactions with Black underground families with insights garnered from Godfather of Harlem.