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Marcia Dinkins, Ph.D. is a 2026 graduate of the PhD Program in Leadership and Change at Antioch University.

Marcia Dinkins at her Dissertation Defense.

From L-R: Dr. Debby Flickinger, Committee Member, Dr. Diane Richard-Allerdyce, Committee Chair Dr. Nancy Boxill, Committee Member.

Dissertation Committee

  • Diane Richard-Allerdyce, PhD, Committee Chair
  • Nancy Boxill, PhD, Committee Member
  • Debby Flickinger, PhD, Committee Member

Keywords

Black feminist trauma-informed literary analysis, Soulforger archetype, Black girlhood, cultural memory, fairy tale retellings, storytelling as scholarship, trauma-informed methodology, trauma-informed approaches, Mari’Ella: A Black Cinderella, Sola and the Seven Wise Women, Ayendé and the In-Between

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

This dissertation reimagines Cinderella, Snow White, and Alice in Wonderland through a Black feminist, healing-centered lens to examine how Black girls and women have been erased, misrepresented, and silenced within dominant literary traditions. Through creative retellings, cultural remembrance, and critical analysis, it introduces the Soulforger, a new archetype and methodological figure who refuses erasure, reshapes silence, and forges meaning out of rupture and scar. Developed uniquely within this study, Black Feminist Trauma-Informed Literary Analysis merges Black feminist theory with transformative approaches, material culture, and embodied knowledge to position storytelling as both scholarship and transformation. The retellings—Mari’Ella: A Black Cinderella, Sola and the Seven Wise Women (Snow White), and Ayendé and the In-Between (Alice in Wonderland)—are narrated from the perspectives of Black girls navigating silence, shapeshifting, and survival. Mari’Ella, dedicated to the author’s grandmother, who described herself as a “Black Cinderella,” honors the resilience, memory, and quiet strength passed through generations. Sola emphasizes wisdom, collective care, and resistance as an alternative to isolation, while Ayendé journeys through the liminal and in-between spaces of identity, voice, and power. Together, these retellings resist canonical erasure by claiming fairy tales as sites where Black girlhood is not only visible but also transformative. Sacred objects and rituals, such as the Black baby doll in Mari’Ella, operate as symbolic threads of inheritance and ancestral memory, grounding Black girlhood as a living archive. A memoir section, rooted in the author’s relationship with her grandmother, illuminates the intergenerational rituals that preserved a story without words, holding silence as both a wound and a witness. By reframing fairy tales as cultural texts that reflect both harm and healing, this work contributes to Black feminist literary studies by introducing the Soulforger as a new literary and theoretical figure. It demonstrates that creative storytelling is not only a legitimate scholarly method but also a practice of liberation. Ultimately, this dissertation affirms that Black girls and women are not peripheral characters in others’ stories; they are creators and claimants of their own myths, memories, and survival. This dissertation is available in open access AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

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Marcia Dinkins

ORCID iD: #0009-0001-4657-3985

Bishop Marcia Dinkins, Ph.D., is a prophetic scholar, preacher, and movement leader whose work insists on voice, visibility, and presence for those long rendered unseen. She teaches, organizes, and writes from the conviction that Black women and girls are not absent or inarticulate, but have been systematically excluded. Her work is about claiming existence where there was erasure and naming presence where there was silence.

She is the Founder of Black Women for Change and the Founder and Executive Director of the Black Appalachian Coalition (BLAC), leading justice-centered work at the intersections of environmental, economic, and healing justice. Through organizing, storytelling, policy engagement, and spiritual accompaniment, she builds spaces where Black women and communities are fully articulated and whole.

A published author, Bishop Dinkins wrote This Is My Black for her granddaughter after she was bullied because of her albinism. What began as a personal act of love became a declaration of affirmation and resistance, naming Black girlhood as sacred, worthy, and visible.

She earned her Ph.D. in Leadership and Change with a groundbreaking dissertation, Not Everyone Had Glass Slippers. The work claims a place for Black girls in the fairy-tale canon without glass slippers that never fit, without mirrors that refuse to call us the fairest, and without the downward spiral into chaos that Wonderland demands. Through the Soulforger Archetype, Bishop Dinkins names how Black girls and women survive rupture by forging meaning, voice, and authorship from silence, scars, and refusal. Soulforging is the sacred act of becoming whole in stories never meant to hold us.

The dissertation is also a tribute to her late grandmother, Mary, who called herself a Black Cinderella a truth-teller whose life bore witness to resilience without rescue.

Currently a Doctor of Ministry candidate, Bishop Dinkins’ theological work expands this vision through Bonewitness, Soulquilting, and the Theology of Afterbirth, affirming that healing is not optional—it is holy work.

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