Dare She Produce Her Own Literacy Space? Black Feminine Expression and Self-Created Literacy Spaces

• In Event: 46.086 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 46.086-11 - Dare the School Alone Work Toward Social Justice? (Re)Imagining Community-Based Spaces as Sites for Critical Education

Abstract

Objectives:
The purpose of this presentation is to unveil the ways in which Black women and girls participate in the production of Self-Created Literacy Spaces. The presenter describes how critical literate practices are developed, and examines how Black women and girls have historically and continue presently to participate in the production of literate space through a continuum of Black feminine expression.

Perspectives or Theoretical Framework:
Informed by an intersection of postmodern Black geographies (McKittrick, 2006; 2011), sociocritical literacies (Gutierrez, 2008), critical imagination (Royster, 2001), and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethics (Duncombe, 2008) this paper is situated within a collective framework of “DIY Spatial Literacy Practice.” The presenter locates evidence of critical practice within academic settings that sustain multiple identities, cultures, and literacies, while engaging discourse about power. She also identifies “imaginative spaces” and “chosen spaces” as community-based sites in which participants can imagine new futures and choose to participate in a literacy space, versus being forced to participate in one. She argues that Black women and girls have modeled DIY Spatial Literacy Practice, as they have and continue to produce their own literate spaces throughout time.

Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry:
A conceptual qualitative literature review and theoretical framework.

Data sources, Evidences, or Objects, or Materials:
Through an analysis of extant literature, the presenter has thematically grouped various literacy spaces in her literature review. In the theoretical framework portion of the paper, she examines how Black women and girls have produced their own literacy spaces throughout time.

Results/Substantiated Conclusions or Warrants for Arguments/Points of View:
Literacy as a social practice, when situated in community-based spaces, enables participants to authentically develop literate practices that supersede a functional, skills-based demonstration of literacy. While there is ample research on the ways in which young people write in reconfigured academic settings (Camangian, 2013; Campano et al., 2013; Fisher, 2007; Haddix & Sealy-Ruiz, 2012; Ife, 2012; Kinloch, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 2014; Morrell, 2011; Pacheco, 2009; Paris, 2012) and community-based settings (Hull et al., 2010; Brown, 2013; Green, 2013; Gutierrez, 2008; Jackson, 2014), few studies have explored how people produce their own spaces in which to practice and develop critical literacy. Even fewer studies have examined the literate practices of Black females and how they produce their own literacy spaces (Evans-Winters, 2011; Muhammad, 2012; Winn, 2011).

Scientific or Scholarly Significance:
Academic settings, with their final say of appropriate literate practice, stifle Black feminine expression. While Black girls in 21st century classrooms are provided opportunities to gain functional literacy, they rarely have opportunities to engage literacy practices that are rooted in healing or empowerment from racism, quite possibly because the racialized and gendered experiences of Black females are largely invisible factors in academic settings. This presentation, offers new possibilities for critical literate practice, conceived as Self-Created Literacy Spaces.

Author

• Fahima Ife, University of Wisconsin - Madison