Shame and Love at Borderlands: Chinese Rural Students’ Narratives of Disidentification Under Deficit Gaze

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Aspiration and Community Wealth in Rural Places (Table 27)

Abstract

This is a narrative inquiry study that aims to understand Chinese rural students’ experience in a city high school. Using an expanded approach to critical literacy, this study explores how marginalized students liberate themselves by working within the dominant ideology to become more fully human. The researchers use the methodological process of “thinking with theory” for data analysis and their findings show that shame and love motivated Chinese rural students to disidentify with the dominant ideologies in this city school in their struggles to become more than who they are. This study argued that researchers in critical literacy need to submerge into students’ narratives of their affective experiences to understand literacy as critical “doings” toward social justice.

Authors

• Xuanya Zhou, University of Florida

• Angela M. Kohnen, University of Florida