Keepers of West-African Humanism and Healing: African -Centered Storytelling Praxis by Age in Chicago

My dissertation explores the interdependent connection between African oral tradition and traditional African healing strategies found in storytelling in Chicago. In examining a nonprofit based in Chicago that offers cultural education through political resistance oral narratives (i.e. storytelling), my research examines how storytelling can provide emotional and cultural edification for youth and older adults that experience mental, intellectual, spiritual and racial subjugation. My work builds on the work of George J. Sefa Dei, Kmt G. Shockley, Kofi Lomotey, Lifongo Vetinde, and Jean-Blaise Samou, in that it centers African cultural production and knowledge as the source and connection to African spiritualism, communalism, and humanism and thus African traditional healing. Lastly, it presents a structured framework for an African-centered storytelling praxis as a way towards re-Africanization and healing.