Dreaming in C.O.L.O.R. and in R.H.Y.M.E.: Poetic Black Literacies for Artistic Activism and Liberatory Praxis

• In Event: Reimagining Inquiry Through Poetics, Comics, and Healing Arts

Abstract

Through the lens of Artistic Activism, this qualitative research study is an ethnography on liberatory praxis through spoken word poetry with Black students who live and attend public school in a predominately white suburban area of the Northeast United States. Considering spoken word as a literacy of Hip-Hop Pedagogy, I argue that students who engage out-of-school literary spaces are proponents of transformative pedagogy for their communities through artistic expression. Dreaming in C.O.L.O.R. (Curriculum Offering Literacies of the Oppressed and Radical) and in R.H.Y.M.E. (Relevant Hip-Hop Youth Methods of Education) demonstrates socio-political inquiry to discuss the ways in which spoken word serves as a vehicle for marginalized voices to become agents of change.

Author

• Imani J. Wallace, University of Massachusetts - Amherst