Writing Is My Weapon: Cultural Wealth Within Syrian Refugee Family Literacies

• In Event: Liberating Literacies and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

Abstract

Pine and Hillard (1990) moves us from achievement gap and coin the term opportunity gap. Meanwhile, Ladson-Billings (2014) asks, “What happens when we get it right?” (p.vii). Aligning with this year’s AERA conference theme, “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action,” this study explores opportunities to equitable education when we get it right by shifting our lens to an asset model of the educational experiences of minoritized people. Drawing on the work of Yosso (2005), this work is acquired from a larger ethnographic longitudinal study that examines the community cultural wealth of six Syrian refugee families’ family literacy practices as they relate to literacy and education in the transglobal shift into the United States.

Author

• Christiana K. Kfouri, East Carolina University