Black Queer Youth Literacies as Maps of Resistance, Reclamation, and Revision in the Deep South

• In Event: (Re)Shaping Our Educational Futures Through Literacies of Resistance

Abstract

This study unpacks the everyday Black queer literacies (Blackburn, 2005; Johnson, 2017; Pritchard, 2016) of 8 Black adolescents attending a LGBTQ+-affirming high school in the Deep South as they (de)construct and revise identities, space, and texts amidst a sociopolitical and educational landscape marred by homophobic, racist, and xenophobic violence (GLAAD, 2023). This paper asks not only how sociohistorical context, geography, and identity impact the literacies of resistance employed by Black youth, but more notably – how might Black youth’s identities, experiences, and sensemaking shape schools as literacy spaces of queer-of-color reading (Dozono, 2023; Freire, 1987) and pro-Black futurity?
Aiming to trouble notions of what and who is possible within literacy classrooms and communities in the Deep South, this study attends specifically to the intersections (and impacts) of race, place, gender, and sexuality on Black Southern youth’s sensemaking and literacy practices. This critical ethnographic study (Weis & Fine, 2012) is informed by multifaceted theoretical/analytic frameworks that illuminate relationships between social identities, place, and power – Black geographies (Eaves, 2017; McKittrick, 2006), queer theory (Butler, 1999; Muñoz, 2019), and a Queer of Color critique (Brockenbrough, 2015; Ferguson, 2003). Using these theoretical orientations as a guide, this study builds on existing work within Black queer literacies (Johnson, 2017; Pritchard, 2016) as a means to interrogate limitations and possibilities within K-12 literacy spaces.
For this study, iterative and recursive data collection and analysis occurred over one school year (Agar, 2006). Data sources included interviews, focus groups, observations, and artifacts collected from participants, current media, and school/community spaces. This paper relies solely on youth interview transcripts, focus group recordings, and artifacts as a means of unpacking their (de)construction and revision of self as text (Pritchard, 2016; Reid, 2022; Van Asselt, 2022) and reclamation of space in their schooling experiences (Dozono, 2023). Analysis consisted of several rounds of coding, member-checks, and memo-writing in order to unpack how youth used written/drawn compositions, fashion, and language in their reading (Freire, 1987) of themselves and the world amidst a post-Trump 2.0 society.
Analysis reveals three ways participants employed Black queer literacy practices in their everyday schooling interactions as a means of resistance and affirmation. These practices – disidentification (Muñoz 1999), queer-of-color reading, and freedom dreaming as literacy performance (Blackburn, 2003; Kelley, 2002; Pritchard, 2016) – illuminated their deep understandings of place, power, and their multifaceted identities. Through these literacy practices, youth repeatedly demonstrated efforts to intentionally shift power in learning spaces as a means of survival, critique, and future-oriented reclamation of space.
With specific attention to queer (of color) sensibilities (Muńoz, 2013) and queer-of-color reading practices, this paper illuminates how sociopolitical contexts of the past, present, and imagined futures shape the Black queer youth’s meaning-making and collaborative world-building. Building upon existing scholarship and exploring the complexities of Blackness, queerness, transness, and belonging, this study offers insight into how we might better differentiate queer(ed) pedagogies to accommodate greater attention to place, space, and race.

Author

• shea wesley martin, The Ohio State University