Lessons on Literacy and Resistance from Brazil, Cuba and Oakland

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Global Cases of Gender Based and Feminist Movements

Abstract

54% of adults in the United States read below a sixth-grade level, meaning they cannot understand complex sentences, yet they are expected to navigate the continuously developing world. Literacy is a problem that crosses racial, national, religious boundaries. However, a defining characteristic of illiteracy in capitalist society is class. Previous research has consistently demonstrated a strong relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy attainment, showing that educational access, school funding disparities, labor precarity, and neighborhood inequality shape literacy outcomes across the life course. Furthermore, health literacy is interrelated with health outcomes. This mixed-methods comparative study examines how literacy shapes maternal health outcomes in Brazil, Cuba, and Oakland, California, situating both within broader political and economic structures. These regions were specifically selected due to their observable history of revolutionary praxis and critical literacy. The analyses of the critical literacy efforts in these regions will then be applied to Ladera Heights, California for the design of a literacy lab serving Black birthing persons in the community. The following chapters will be framed through a Marxist lens of critical knowledge production – instructional, curricular, and synthesis of knowledge production.

Author

• Keomi Barksdale, California State Univ-Dominguez Hills