This qualitative study examines how youth participants in an ongoing community-based literacy initiative sought to increase awareness of racial justice among residents of their subsidized housing community in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in summer 2020 and throughout the 2020–2021 academic year. We utilize theories of racial literacy and critical arts-based literacy to examine youths’ engagement in 44 weekly two-hour-long Zoom sessions of the literacy initiative held between June 2020 and June 2021. Specifically, we examine how youths designed, facilitated, and participated in critical arts-based literacy projects related to children's and young adult literature they chose to read focused on racial justice. Findings contribute new insights into youths’ enactments of racial literacy, possibilities for art-making to support youths’ racial literacy, and the urgent need for literacy instruction responsive to youths’ voices and dreams, particularly during times of crisis.
Baker-BellA. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge.
4.
BaroneT.EisnerE. (1997). Arts-based educational research. In JaegerR. M.BaroneT. (Eds.), Complementary methods for research in education (pp. 75–116). American Educational Research Association.
BroderickD. A. (2015). Art as inquiry: Cultivating critical arts-based practices in an early pre-service teacher education program. University of Pennsylvania.
CaraballoL.LozenskiB. D.LyiscottJ.MorrellE. (2017). YPAR And critical epistemologies: Rethinking education research. Review of Research in Education, 41, 311–336. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X16686948
12.
ChisholmJ. S.WhitmoreK. F. (2021). Critical arts-literacies in classrooms: Moving with abduction, imagination, and emotion across modalities. In PandyaJ. Z.MoraR. A.AlfordJ. H.GoldenN. A.de RoockR. S. (Eds.), The handbook of critical literacies (pp. 317–326). Routledge.
13.
ColesJ. A.de RoockR. S.MaloneH. L. S.MusserA. D. (2021). Critical literacy and abolition. In PandyaJ. Z.MoraR. A.AlfordJ. H.GoldenN. A.de RoockR. S. (Eds.), The handbook of critical literacies (pp. 363–372). Routledge.
EvansS. W. (2012). We march (S. W. Evans, Illus.). Square Fish.
16.
FinleyS. (2017). Critical arts-based inquiry: Performances of resistance politics. In DenzinL.LincolnY. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (pp. 561–575). Sage Publications.
17.
FisherM. T. (2009). Black literate lives: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Routledge.
18.
GardnerR. P. (2017). Unforgivable blackness: Visual rhetoric, reader response, and critical racial literacy. Children’s Literature in Education, 48(2), 119–133. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10583-016-9291-5
19.
Gaztambide-FernándezR.KraeheA. M.CarpenterB. S.II (2018). The arts as white property: An introduction to race, racism, and the arts in education. In KraeheA. M.Gaztambide-FernándezR.Carpenter IIB. S. (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of race and the arts in education (pp. 1–31). Palgrave Macmillan.
20.
GuinierL. (2004). From racial liberalism to racial literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-divergence dilemma. Journal of American History, 91(1), 92–118. https://doi.org/10.2307/3659616
21.
HaddixM. M. (2020). This is us: Discourses of community within and beyond literacy research. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 69(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336920937460
22.
Harste, J. C. (2014). Transmediation: What art affords our understanding of literacy. In P. J. Dunston, S. K. Fullerton, M. W. Cole, D. Herro, J. A. Malloy, P. M. Wilder, & K. N. Headley, (Eds.), 63rd yearbook of the literacy research association (pp. 88–103). Literacy Research Association.
23.
HorvatE. (2013). The beginner’s guide to doing qualitative research: How to get into the field, collect data, and write up your project. Teachers College Press.
24.
KraeheA. M.Gaztambide-FernándezR.CarpenterB. S.II (2018). The Palgrave handbook of race and the arts in education. Palgrave Macmillian.
25.
KraeheA. M.HermanD.Jr. (2020). Racial encounters, ruptures, and reckonings: Art curriculum futurity in the wake of BLM. Art Education, 73(5), 4–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2020.1789413
26.
Ladson-BillingsG. (2021). I’m here for the hard re-set: Post-pandemic pedagogy to preserve our culture. Equity and Excellence in Education, 54(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2020.1863883
LeavyP. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Publications.
29.
LewisJ.AydinA. (2013). March: Book one (N. Powell, Illus.). Top Shelf Productions.
30.
LoveB. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.
31.
LovelessN. (2019). How to make art at the end of the world: A manifesto for research-creation. Duke University Press.
32.
LuttrellW. (2010). Qualitative educational research: Readings in reflexive methodology and transformative practice. Routledge.
33.
MacCannD. (2013). White supremacy in children’s literature: Characterizations of African Americans, 1830–1900. Routledge.
34.
MagoonK. (2014). How it went down. Henry Holt and Company.
35.
MarcianoJ.PeraltaL. M.LeeJ. S.RosemurgyH.HollowayL.BassJ. (2020). Centering community: Enacting culturally responsive-sustaining YPAR during COVID-19. Journal for Multicultural Education, 14(2), 163–175. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-04-2020-0026
36.
MarcianoJ.WatsonV. (2021). “This is America”: Examining artifactual literacies as austere love across contexts of schools and everyday use. The Urban Review, 53(2), 334–353. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00564-0
37.
McArthurS.MuhammadG. (2022). Pens down, don’t shoot: An analysis of how black young women use language to fight back. Urban Education, 57(5), 751–778. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085919893734
38.
MirraN.GarciaA.MorrellE. (2016). Doing youth participatory action research: Transforming inquiry with researchers, educators, and students. Taylor & Francis.
39.
MuhammadG. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.
40.
OtoR.RombalskiA.GrinnageJ. (2022). The role of racial literacy in US K–12 education research: A review of the literature. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 26(1), 94–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2022.2047635
41.
PandyaJ. Z.MoraR. A.AlfordJ. H.GoldenN. A.de RoockR. S. (2021). Introduction to the handbook of critical literacies: The current state of critical literacy around the world. In PandyaJ. Z.MoraR. A.AlfordJ. H.GoldenN. A.de RoockR. S. (Eds.), The handbook of critical literacies (pp. 3–9). Routledge.
42.
PinkneyA. D. (2010). Sit in: How four friends stood up by sitting down (B. Pinkney, Illus.). Little, Brown and Company.
43.
Price-DennisD.Sealey-RuizY. (2021). Advancing racial literacies in teacher education: Activism for equity in digital spaces. Teachers College Press.
44.
Price-DennisD.TouloukianC.MooreT.Harlan EllerK.FuD. (2022). Pedagogies of possibility: Exploring culturally responsive education during COVID-19. JustLit Project, Teachers College, Columbia University.
45.
ReynoldsJ.KendiI. X. (2020). Stamped: Racism, antiracism, and you: A remix of the National Book Award–winning Stamped from the beginning. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
46.
ReynoldsJ.KielyB. (2015). All American boys. Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
47.
RhodesJ. P. (2018). Ghost boys. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
48.
RichmondG.ChoC.GallagherH. A.HeY.PetchauerE. (2020). The critical need for pause in the COVID-19 era. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(4), 375–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487120938888
49.
RogersR.MosleyM. (2008). A critical discourse analysis of racial literacy in teacher education. Linguistics and Education, 19(2), 107–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2008.02.002
50.
SaldañaJ. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage.
51.
SciurbaK. (2021). Black youth poetry of 2020 and reimagined literacies. Journal of Literacy Research, 53(4), 516–538. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X2110522
ThomsonJ.DaviesB. (2019). Becoming with art differently: Entangling matter, thought and love. Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, 19(6), 399–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708619830123
57.
TravisS.Gaztambide-FernándezR. (2018). Histories of race and racism in the arts in education: Colonialisms, subjectivities, and cultural resistances. In KraeheA. M.Gaztambide-FernándezR.Carpenter IIB. S. (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of race and the arts in education (pp. 35–43). Palgrave Macmillan.
WeatherfordC. B. (2007). Freedom on the menu: The Greensboro sit-ins (J. Lagarrigue, Illus.). Puffin Books.
62.
WhiteA. M. (2019). Exploring the possibilities and tensions of visual responses to literature. In WhitelawK. J. (Ed.), Arts-based teaching and learning in the literacy classroom: Cultivating a critical aesthetic practice (pp. 98–120). Routledge.
63.
WhitelawJ. (2019). Arts-based teaching and learning in the literacy classroom: Cultivating a critical aesthetic practice. Routledge.
64.
WinterJ. (2015). Lillian’s right to vote: A celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (S. W. Evans, Illus.). Anne Schwartz Books.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
