The Dis/ability Affects of Literacy: The Joy and Pain of Reading at the Intersections

• In Event: Critical Understandings Through Identity: Building Bridges Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

We undertake an international parallel case-study analysis on the affects of literacy for dis/abled students from an explicitly intersectional perspective. Rather than highlight the unfolding joys literacy can entail, we explore the (un)happiness of literacy for the intersectional dis/abled student, how their humanity is defined and denied, and how they agentively respond. We draw from two critical ethnographic studies involving students from historically marginalized groups in the US and Singapore, both with identified dis/abilities. We found that these marginalized youth living at the intersections of disability, race, ethnicity, and other identity markers experience psychological, emotional, and spiritual dimensions due to literacies normalizations but also their own agentive affects and actions.

Authors

• David Isaac Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa

• Roberto Santiago de Roock, University of California - Santa Cruz