A Tool for Supporting Racial Literacy: Diverse YAL and Racialized Reader Response

• In Event: Researching for Repair: Enacting Critical Frameworks When Analyzing Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Objective
This study used a racialized reader response (RRR) framework (Borsheim Black & Sarigianides, 2019) to encourage student reflection and writing about race in relation to young adult literature (YAL), themselves, and the world. The study took place over one semester at a large university in a YAL course. Fifteen students spent 11 weeks using the RRR framework (see Table 1 for guiding questions) to reflect on six diverse YA books students chose from a book list.

Analytic Framework
This study utilizes racial literacy as an analytic frame. Racial literacy, as defined by Sealey-Ruiz (2021a) is “a skill and practice by which individuals can probe the existence of racism and examine the effects of race and institutionalized systems on their experiences” (p. 2). The emphasis of racial literacy as both a theory and skill (Sealey-Ruiz, 2021a, 2021b) helped me think of the components of racial literacy development (see figure 1) as tools PST need. Through this study, I analyzed where, if at all, student’s writing reflected components of racial literacy development and where students needed more scaffolding. Racial literacy as an analytic frame helped me understand if students were practicing racial literacy as a skill in their explicit writing about race and racism.

Methods
Based on Sealey-Ruiz’s (2022, 2021ab, 2020), six components of racial literacy development, I used five of the six components outlined in Figure 1 as a priori codes to read through student’s writing. To account for spaces where student’s writing didn’t align with Sealey-Ruiz’s (2020) model, I used Mullet’s (2018) critical discourse analysis (CDA) model to take up questions of power within a selected discourse by examining internal relations, “or patterns, words, and linguistic devices that represent power relations, social context… or speakers’ positionalities” (p. 124). I wanted to understand the words, patterns, and linguistic turns students were using to write about race, racism, and inequity in the novels they were reading but also in relation to themselves and the reflections they offered about how the texts connect to the world around them.

Data
Data sources were copies of students’ weekly racialized reader responses. 15 students composed 11 responses each..

Results
The findings from this study show how students’ accessed several components of racial literacy throughout the semester through their writing. Moments of disconnection in their reading facilitated critical reflection and they wrote about how developing historical literacy deepened their text connections. Students showed a consistent pattern of drawing connections between the novels they read in class to instances of local or global oppression. Findings also indicate that while students explicitly wrote about their own racial identities they simultaneously used othering language when writing about BIPOC protagonists. Findings show students identified instances of racism, privilege, and pointed to oppression in the novels; however they often used problematic linguistic turns in their reflections.

Significance
Implications of the study are how the RRR framework can be used as a tool to facilitate reflection and racial literacy development; however, students need additional scaffolding to engage with all components of racial literacy.

Author

• Arianna Banack, University of South Florida