Unveiling our Scars (2018)

Narrated through spoken word poetry, Unveiling our Scars is a short film and layered account (Ronai, 1995; Scott, 2017) weaving back and forth between reflections about the past and present, and exploring Black masculine identity through the lens of intimate relationships. Situating personal lived experiences within broader conversations about Black masculinity and cultural stereotypes, this narrative short film autoethnographically analyzes how my performance of self, within the context of intimate relationships, supports and challenges the canonical and contemporary hegemonic scripting of Black men as bodies that lack the capability to be emotionally vulnerable and possessing a limited range of emotions (Boylorn, 2017; Neal, 2013; White, 2011). Undergirded by a Black masculine theoretical framework, this film complicates the narrow emotional scripting of Black men and advocates for what communication scholar and Black masculine theorist, Ronald L. Jackson (2007), describes as the adoption of a model of Black masculinity that embraces a spectrum of performative possibilities.