‘Something is Not Okay’: Bodily Expressions of Grief for Street-Involved Youth

Abstract

The experiences of grieving among street-involved youth are both highly visible and invisible. Their actions of living outside, engaging in money-making by approaching passersby, trading in and using drugs and alcohol, or simply hanging around in public spaces make them exposed and visible to the public. Yet, the stories that brought youth to the street and the scope of the losses they have sustained are hidden. Henry Giroux (2006, 175) describes the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as the new ‘biopolitics of disposability’ in that poor and racialised groups ‘not only have to fend for themselves in the face of life’s tragedies but are also supposed to do it without being seen by the dominant society’. This Photo Essay makes visible the bodily expressions of grief from participants in my doctoral research, Grieving Online, to create understanding into the profound losses and ways in which they cope.