Iqra: African American Muslim Girls Reading and Writing for Social Justice

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Writing and Literacies SIG Roundtable 1. Critical Media Literacy and Democracy: Toward a Renewed Education System

Abstract

In this study, the researcher explores the role of literacy—specifically writing in the lives of Muslim girls who used writing as a sociopolitical tool when participating in a literacy collaborative grounded in Islamic principles and writing for social change. Employing methods of intertextual analysis grounded within a qualitative study, the researcher examined: (a) What social issues do African American Muslim girls choose to write within broadside poetry? (b) How do these self-selected social issues relate to their identities? Findings show girls most frequently wrote about issues related to (a) war and violence and (b) the abuse, violence, and mistreatment of women and girls. Writing was also a means to make sense of and critically shape their multiple identities.

Author

• Gholnecsar E. Muhammad, Georgia State University