“I Am the Universe” Toward a Reader Model that Centers Culture

• In Event: Emancipatory Pro-Black and Pro-Latinx Reading Research and Teaching

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Framework
“I am Haiti/I am the place where I/can live in the stars/I remember the nights/I am amazing/I am what I choose to be/I think I am the universe.” -Remi, age 8

This poem was written by Remi (pseudonym), after Author 1 read The Me I Choose to Be (Tarpley et al.,2021), which evoked Remi’s cultural memories of his homeland, Haiti. Remi's story exemplifies Author 1’s pro-Black, culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSPs) (Authors). CSPs strive to normalize rather than erase the ways of being of historically marginalized communities (Paris, 2021). Author 1 engages CSPs because he knows that cultural knowledge mediates cognitive reading processes (Burns et al., 2023). Illustrated through classroom examples of Remi’s story, this presentation shares the Cultural Sustenance View of Reading (CSVR), a reading model the Authors co-developed. We hope the CSVR helps imagine a present and a future where Black boys like Remi comprehensively matter (Carey, 2019).

Methods, Data Sources, and Analysis

Author 1 is part of a national study focused on the CSPs of high-performing teachers. For nine years, we have studied Author’s and others enactment of literacy CSPs. Humanizing, critical methodologies guide the research, considering how ways of knowing, being, and doing develop in structurally unjust spaces (Bhattacharya, 2017) during inductive, emergent data collection and analysis (Charmaz, 2017). Data collected includes 65 meeting transcripts, 200 hours of classroom observation, semistructured interviews, reflexive field notes, and extensive artifacts. Analysis involves constant dialogue as we co-examine emerging themes and patterns (Charmaz, 2017; San Pedro and Kinloch, 2017); patterns are “constantly compared” and triangulated (Corbin and Strauss, 2008). This approach has extended our collective ways of knowing and created space for us to co-learn and co-theorize.

Findings
This study has revealed many findings; how Author 1 fosters children's agency through African Diaspora literacies (Boutte et al., 2017); how he works with children to be in right relation with land/water, and how he normalizes multilingualism in everyday talk (Authors; Authors). These findings have likewise led to the co-development of the CSVR (Authors), to bridge gaps between the research on culturally mediated ways of reading and our study’s findings and dominant reading models (e.g., Gough & Tunmer, 1986 -Simple View of Reading).

Significance
Remi's story highlights what research shows—culture mediates reading development (Burns et al., 2023; Nasir et al. 2020; Rogoff 2003). However, dominant reading models negate the value of cultural knowledge and experiences in reading development. In contrast, the CSVR positions children within their cultural and linguistic ecological communities at the center of reading (Authors). Love (2019) declares, “for dark people, the very basic idea of mattering is sometimes hard to conceptualize” (p. 2). In forwarding this model and examples of Author 1’s pro-Black CSPs, we dream toward a future where Black and Brown cultures comprehensively matter (Bryan 2020; Carey 2019; Wynter-Hoyte, Boutte, and Bryan 2023).

Authors

• Roderick Peele, Northern Parkway School

• Kindel Turner Nash, Appalachian State University