Fashioning My Garden of Solace: A Black Feminist Autoethnography

Through the lens of Black feminist autoethnography and (auto)biographical narrative, this article makes an impactful contribution to postcolonial feminist thought, fashion and cultural studies. I consider the significance of fashion and material culture as sociopolitical strategies of presence that offer an unparalleled understanding of my unique lived experience as a Ghanaian-Cameroonian-American Black woman. By exploring the intergenerational legacy of how my mother and I actively navigate the dichotomy of hypervisible, yet unseen, this article further considers the emancipatory potential and underacknowledged legacy of Black women’s contributions to aesthetic and visual culture through embodied activism located within the practice of horticulture and gardening, alongside self-fashioned identity.