Refusals and rituals in sport: photo-elicitation of global Black girls' and women's joy and care.

INTRODUCTION

This paper presents four stories of Black women and girls taking up space in sport across global contexts, including Canada, Oman, Brazil, and Jamaica.

METHODS

Drawing on Black women's epistemologies and arts-based methodologies, we use collaborative storytelling and photo-elicitation to illustrate how Black women and girls move within and across sporting spaces, producing connections that reflect both shared global histories and distinct local experiences, a hallmark of Black diasporas.

RESULTS

Rather than positioning Black women's sporting experiences solely through narratives of exclusion and harm, this work foregrounds the generative practices through which joy, care, community, and meaning are created.

DISCUSSION: Through four stories and images, we challenge singular narratives of Blackness and instead highlight multiplicity as central to Black life. Black women's forms of ritual and refusal resist racialized and gendered constraints while asserting presence, self-definition, and alternative ways of being. This paper does not only tell, it shows how storytelling through visual inquiry opens space for readers to engage with Black women's experiences and how Black women athletes sustain intergenerational knowledge, belonging, and identity. We expand arts-based approaches in sport studies, extend visual storytelling methods, and advance understanding of global Black identity as lived through movement, connection, and multiplicity.