African Immigrant Youth Demonstrating Rightful Literary Presence Through Sport

• In Event: Vice-Presidential Session. African Immigrant Youth: Schooling, Education, and Civic Engagement in the African Diaspora

Abstract

Given complex contexts of migration of African immigrant youth (Zong & Batalova, 2014) and narrow definitions of literacy instruction, there is an urgent need to identify critical literacy and language practices that extend youth’s identities and identifications (see for ex., Pandya, 2019; Smith, 2019). We thus share approaches informed by our participatory, design-based literacy collaboration with researchers, African immigrant youth, and teachers in the U.S. Midwest.

Our broader project involved 18, 60- to 75-minute online literacy sessions in which African immigrant youth identified, designed, and shared recommendations for critical literacy research and teaching. We found that in talking back to popularized anti-Black and anti-immigrant narratives, youth sought to engage self-selected topics extending their racial, ethnic, and geographic transnational identities – such as viewing and making anime, participating in African dance, preparing a communal meal, and discussing and playing soccer.

We focus on how Diandre, with family from Uganda, navigated conversation with peers and adult collaborators about sport, including soccer, in ways that affirmed, contextualized, evoked, and historicized his already-present critical literacy practices and identity (Authors, 2021). We frame Diandre’s literacy interactions through the lens of “rightful literary presence,” extending Squire and Darling (2013) and Calabrese Barton, Kim, and Tan’s (2020) conceptual framing of “rightful presence” to underscore how researchers, teachers, and community educators may make known and invite in literacy practices, identities and identifications of Black African immigrant youth. We discuss findings and implications for setting and sharing the teaching and learning space; evoking and affirming youth’s identifications; and inviting youth to participate in teaching and learning on youth’s terms -- toward envisioning research, curricular, and teaching stances that necessarily affirm Black African immigrant youth and envision more just and equitable research and teaching contexts.

Authors

• Joel E. Berends, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Vaughn W.M. Watson, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Alecia D. Beymer, University of Cincinnati
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Elizabeth Reine Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author