Date
5-20-2026
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Counselor Education and Supervision (PhD)
Chair
Lynn Bohecker
Keywords
Black men, narrative inquiry, African American Male Theory, south side of Chicago, caregiving, resilience
Disciplines
Counseling | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Diemer, Yakima, "The Narratives of Where Black Men on the South Side of Chicago Found Emotional Connection While Growing Up" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8348.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8348
Abstract
The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to explore and understand the lived experiences of Black men from the South Side of Chicago. This study explored, through storytelling, the life experiences of Black men from the South Side of Chicago regarding their emotional connectedness with their primary caregivers in addition to who they turned to, and what they turned to in order to feel a sense of support and connection if and when there were none. Participants for this study included Black men who were over the age of 25 and reported being raised on the South Side of Chicago before the age of 18. Participant recruitment was achieved through barbershops, hair salons, churches, places of worship, and community settings. Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with participants who met the full inclusion criteria. Data was coded and analyzed through the lens of Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional space narrative structure. Through the framework of Bush & Bush's African American Male Theory across the six narrative accounts, this study identified seven shared and common narrative threads amongst the study collaborators; the search for safety, the weight of fatherhood, emotional silence, early responsibility, affirmation and belonging, communities and institutions, and breaking generational patterns. The seven threads emerged to illuminate how the six collaborators came to understand themselves, their histories, and their emotional worlds. These threads do not stand alone, but braid across temporality, sociality, and place, shaping how each man learned to survive, hope, and imagine a different future which will be discussed in the study implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research.
