The Struggle to be Literate: Denial of Literacy and Limitations of Perception

• In Event: Roundtable Session V
  In Roundtable Session: Students' Literacy Perspectives and Acts of Resistance

Abstract

This paper examines the literate life of Isaiah (pseudonym), a seven-year-old boy labeled a “struggling reader.” Despite his talents in writing, chess, and athletics, Isaiah faces systemic marginalization and criminalization in schools, including expulsion from preschool. Through an analysis that places Isaiah's experiences in conversation with narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives, this paper explores the persistent denial of Black literacy and the enduring consequences of racialized perceptions of literacy.

Author

• CoCo Massengale, Utah State University