The Bridge Program: Recasting Blackness, fostering resilience and transformative resistance through narratives of success

This article presents the results of data of a qualitative research project conducted with African Canadian/Black students who participated in a post-secondary student retention program called The Bridge. The program was specifically designed to address the needs of Black students and to provide support programming to enhance their engagement and graduation rates. Three of the themes that emerged from the interviews and focus groups included: the importance of developing differing frames of Blackness; engaging in transformative resistance; and the importance of providing spaces for the students to engage with and explore multiple conceptions of Blackness and narratives of success.