Abstract
Coates (2015:63), a Black father raising his son in New York City, whose words from Between the World and Me have been cited throughout this volume, remembers growing up in Baltimore, watching television as a young Black boy, and asking himself, “What did the people whose images were once beamed into my living room have that I did not?”. Representations are powerful: what we see on television or on the big screen shapes our worlds, our minds, our realities; it shows us what is possible, what we can dream about, and who we can become.
What we don’t see, we assume can’t be. What a destructive assumption.
(Octavia Butler, in Russel 2017:6)
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Notes
- 1.
Non-published, fictional piece of writing based on his real life that he shared with me and that he agreed I use here.
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Gallais, C. (2023). Imagining (New) Fathers. In: Fatherhood and Masculinities. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34132-8_6
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