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Invisibly Neon™️
An ongoing research and creative framework by Jasmine Gabrielle Washington




Before I am anything else, I am the daughter of a single mother. That identity was given to me before I had the language to understand it—before I understood race, gender, class, or who I might become. I’ve spent my life watching that identity shape how single parents and their children are perceived, and…how we learn to perceive ourselves.

I am the daughter, granddaughter, great-great-granddaughter, niece, cousin, and friend of single parents, specifically Black single mothers. This research comes from my lived experience and from witnessing how care circulates through families and generations.
Single parents need care that circulates back to them. 

So do their children. 

Period.

This project, Invisibly Neon™️ describes how I felt and sometimes still feel: visible, present, and shaped by something that remains unseen. The project has evolved beyond a case study of single parenthood into a theory I’m developing around a condition of perception. It brings a deeply personal perspective to a story so often framed through deficit.

I’m interested in the psychological, emotional, and social cost of an identity that can precede everything else, while asking: What’s working? Who/What makes things work? And what does it cost to keep making things work? I want to look closely at the many ways families create, sustain, and circulate care beyond the narratives that define them by what they lack.

I’m deep in the research phase now, having conversations with single parents and their children and beginning to map the networks of care around them, and listening and learning from perspectives beyond my own. The project will first take shape through my MFA capstone and thesis in Spring 2027, then expand into a film and book that I envision as a resource and archived network of care.

If you’re a single parent or the child of a single parent, I’m looking for people interested in contributing to the research.
Click here for the Interest Form