65 - Becoming Hwehwemudua (The Measuring Stick): Black Women Storytellers in Evaluation

Abstract Information: Ayi Kwei Armah is a Ghanian writer best known for his creative storytelling centered on Black and African identities. His novels have provided rich allegory to describe the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, colonization across Africa, and the expansion of western empire. Through his rich storytelling, one can gain a deep understanding of political contexts that shape our everyday lived experiences. We, a group of Black women evaluators, were trained by formal and informal modes of storytelling before we learned anything about being evaluators. Like Ayi Kwei Armah, we are in a continuous learning journey to connect our creative writing with innovative evaluation methods. Our experiences as storytellers, poets, playwrights, academics, and travel writers have led us to develop translatable storytelling skills into our evaluation work. In this panel, we will share our experiences learning, developing, and evolving techniques of visionary writing, imagineering, photovoice stories, and other creative writing tools for evaluation. We have used these forms of storytelling to align organizations properly with their goals of transformation - particularly when addressing issues of racial equity and justice in an evolving political climate. While supporting these organizations' transformation, we also create space for us, as Black women storytellers, to become Hwehwemudua, the measuring stick indicating excellence and superior quality for evaluating for equity.

Relevance Statement: From Thomas Jefferson to J. Marian Sims to John Hopkins Hospital, Black women’s bodies have been used against their wills for procreation, experimentation, and even, in Henrietta Lacks’ case, innovating global health practice at the expense of her own livelihood. As scholars and activists throughoutFrances E. W. Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, Monique and Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw have brought to the forefront the challenges of being in a racialized gender class, little has been done to secure and solidify Black women’s liberatory status in the future. Black women’s voices need to become more standardized in the evaluation canon. Storytelling evaluation is culturally rooted and Black women in collective spaces develop storytelling skills by working in community with one another.