Title: How Broken English Made Me Whole
Description: This critical ethnographic study investigated an afterschool Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) space that seeks to develop New Literacies and academic literacies in urban youth between the ages of 13-19. Utilizing a sociocultural lens, which asserts that literacy is a social practice (Gee, 1991), I examined the racial and literate identities of research participants who self-identify as Black and explored the potential of this participatory space to develop their literate identities and to broaden their critical meta-awareness. My findings suggest that prioritizing the Social Dimension of literacy is urgent for Black students in the classroom, that culturally sustaining literacies can have a powerful iterative relationship with academic literacies in the classroom, and that YPAR instruction must more intentionally attend to the role of literacy in youth qualitative inquiry.