The African American Folklorist for November. Dr. Patricia A. Turner
Interviewed & Published By: Lamont Jack Pearley
Dr. Patricia A. Turner stands as one of the most significant voices in contemporary African American folklore studies. Her scholarship reveals how Black communities use stories, whether whispered rumors, circulating legends, family sayings, stitched quilts, or everyday objects, to interpret their circumstances, navigate systems of power, and preserve their cultural memory. For decades, Dr. Turner has shown that folklore is not simply entertainment or myth; it is a critical framework through which Black people communicate truth, articulate fear, express resistance, and craft strategies for survival.
Across her influential body of work, including I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Whispers on the Color Line, Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies, Crafted Lives, and Trash Talk, Dr. Turner traces the ways race and representation shape the stories America tells about itself. Her research interrogates rumors that speak to medical mistrust, consumer fear, racialized violence, and state surveillance, illustrating how these narratives emerge from lived historical experiences. She reveals how Black communities use rumor and legend as cultural intelligence, tools for protecting themselves in environments where official narratives often obscure or deny the realities of racism.
Equally important is her work on African American material culture. Through her scholarship on quilts, quilting communities, dolls, figurines, and other cultural objects, Dr. Turner demonstrates how material traditions encode layered histories of migration, creativity, labor, gendered expression, and ancestral knowledge. Her analyses humanize makers, uncover the stories embedded in the objects they create, and challenge broader myths about authenticity, representation, and ownership within African American cultural production.
Dr. Turner’s career also models what it means to bridge scholarship, pedagogy, and leadership. As a professor and academic administrator, she has opened pathways for emerging scholars, particularly Black and Brown students, reminding them that their lived experiences, community knowledge, and intellectual passions have a rightful place in academia. Her mentorship and teaching illuminate the possibilities of folklore as a discipline that honors community voices while interrogating the structures that shape them.
In recognizing Dr. Patricia A. Turner, The African American Folklorist honors a scholar who has transformed the understanding of African American narrative traditions, cultural symbolism, and the politics of belief. Her work strengthens our commitment to documenting, affirming, and preserving Black experiences in all their complexity. Through her example, we are reminded that the stories we tell, and the stories we inherit, remain vital to our cultural continuity, our communal survival, and our ongoing struggle for truth.
