Black Adolescent Girls' Literacy and Language Practices in an Online Out-of-School Street Literature Book Club

• In Event: 35.077 - MTCC Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: 35.077-9 - "Laila's Wisdom": Exploring Black Girl Literacies and Youth Civic Development

Abstract

This qualitative inquiry examined the way six Black adolescent girls represented self in an out-of-school online street literature book club. Situated within Facebook and an urban public library, this study examined how Black adolescents represented self and made sense of and disrupted representations of Black girlhood through discussions of street literature texts mediated via digital technologies. Hip-hop feminist theory, new literacy studies, and reader response theory undergirded this study. Online discussions, field observations, focus group interviews, and a researcher journal were employed. Findings revealed that self-representations were influenced by (a) the use of multiple modalities (b) the collective Black girl experience (c) society’s neglect of Black girls (d) perspectives around personal traumatic experiences (d) social norms around literacy and language.

Author

• Delicia Tiera Greene, University at Albany - SUNY