Journeys Toward Textual Relevance: Male Readers of Color and the Significance of Malcolm X and Harry Potter

Sciurba, Katie

doi:10.1177/1086296x17718323

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Like Abby Johnson, I am a White woman with children who identify themselves as "Black," as "mixed," and in reference to their specific ethnic backgrounds. For the last 20 years, beginning before I had my own children, my research and professional experiences have centered on my concerns about how young Black people (and other youth of color) are seen and treated in educational and literacy contexts (e.g., Sciurba, 2014Sciurba, , 2017, and I have critically examined how race-based hate is intertwined with policing (Sciurba, 2020).…”

Section: Positionality Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Youth Poetry of 2020 and Reimagined Literacies

Sciurba

2021

Journal of Literacy Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In response to anti-Black policing in 2020 that led to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Black children and teens turned to poetry as a means to channel their self-described terror, rage, pain, horror, tiredness, and need for change. Reminiscent of the poetry of the Black Arts Movement and works published in The Black Panther newspaper, these poems, many of which call for a “revolution,” are reflective of young people’s critical engagements with the world and the word. With critical literacy as a framework, I engage in critical discourse analysis to determine how the young poets reimagine literacy as they protest anti-Black policing and racism. By focusing on young people’s own grassroots literacy initiatives, which call for the reimagination of blackness and whiteness, and demand truth, justice, and reimagined futures, I demonstrate how educators can reimagine literacy practices to center students’ criticalities and prioritize racial justice.

show abstract

Section: Positionality Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Youth Poetry of 2020 and Reimagined Literacies

Sciurba

2021

Journal of Literacy Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, diverse student populations benefit from curriculum materials where they can see their lives reflected and where they can step into worlds entirely different than their own (Bishop, 1990;Lee & Smith, 1999;Peterson, 2014;Sciurba, 2017;Tatum, 2005). Such materials include young adult literature that highlights relevant youth issues, offering a textual space to interrogate personal experiences, surrounding communities, and society (Francois, 2013;Boston & Baxley, 2007;Frankel et al, 2018;Groenke et al, 2015;Ivey & Johnston, 2013;Polleck, 2010).…”

Section: Literacy Instruction For Diverse and Urban Adolescentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Literacy Leadership: Examining One Principal’s Vision and Practice

Francois

2021

Education and Urban Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

School leadership research offers prescriptions for strong instructional and culturally relevant leadership for diverse and urban adolescent populations, yet little evidence describes how school principals impact adolescents’ in-school reading experiences. This qualitative inquiry sought to understand how one urban secondary principal perceived and enacted his role in a school’s effort to teach reading. It also investigated how staff and students perceived his actions. Framed by sociocultural perspectives of reading and a distributed leadership perspective, data analysis revealed that the principal made time and nurtured relationships to grow teacher capacity, support and participate in independent reading, and attend to individual readers and teachers. This study affirms the importance of context in shaping urban adolescents’ reading experiences and raises implications for the urban school principal’s role in their literacy instruction.

show abstract

“…Although I include critiques of Whitewash in this examination, it is crucial that-even when guiding discussion-educators ultimately turn to children to learn how they experience stories about the wrongness of whiteness and learn how they do-and do not-construct textual relevance (Sciurba, 2014(Sciurba, /2015(Sciurba, , 2017. My son expressed that Whitewash made him "mad and happy"-mad, because of what the White boys do to the Black girl.…”

Section: Possibilities For Future Research On Race and Picture Booksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Depicting Hate: Picture Books and the Realities of White Supremacist Crime and Violence

Sciurba

2020

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background/Context Since the 2016 presidential election, hate-based speech, crime, and violence have been on the rise in the United States, (re)creating a need for adults to engage children in dialogue related to white supremacy as it exists today, instead of framing it as a problem that ended with the civil rights movement. Following an incident of racist vandalism at her home, the author of this article (a White mother) conducted a search for picture books that could serve as vehicles to discuss race-based hate and whiteness with children like her young Black son. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study draws upon Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Critical Multicultural Analysis to explore the emancipatory possibilities of literacy education. Given that children's literature has the potential to engage young readers in transactions that promote critical literacy, this study focuses on the following research questions: 1) To what extent do picture books set in a post-civil-rights era United States address explicit and physical acts of white supremacy or hate directed against Black people's bodies, families, or properties? 2) How might such picture books aid parents, educators, and other adults in their attempts to raise children's awareness about white supremacy/hate? Research Design The first part of this article, which documents the author's search for children's picture books about explicit and physical acts of white supremacy/hate, utilizes first person narrative. The second part of this article consists of a multimodal content analysis of five texts, all meeting the following criteria: 1) written and illustrated in picture book format, 2) include child characters, 3) set in the United States, 4) set in a post-civil-rights era, 5) include an incident of white supremacist crime or violence (a physical act directed toward a person or property), 6) depict/address an incident directed against a Black individual or group. Conclusions/Recommendations Findings of this study point to the need for more picture books that challenge whiteness in its overt and covert forms, particularly in contemporary contexts, in order to provide children with opportunities to engage critically with current issues that have emerged in this heightened era of white supremacy and hate-based crime and violence. The picture books that do address white supremacy, in its current manifestation, tend to include stories about White police killing and shooting Black individuals and the protests that follow such incidents. Yet these stories, as well as one about an incident in which a group of White gang members physically attack two Black children (Ntozake Shange's Whitewash), are not equal in their level of explicitness about what occurs, their identifications of the White perpetrators involved in what happens, or their demonstrations of how the incidents are rooted in white supremacy. Accordingly, educators and other adults will often need to fill in significant “truth gaps” in order to raise children's social consciousness related to whiteness and racism. One of the primary recommendations presented in this piece is to accompany these picture books and picture books like them with discussion questions related to the stories that are and are not told in the texts, as well as to facilitate conversation with children related to power and agency as exhibited by the Black characters. Most important, educators and other adults should remain cognizant of the fact that, while books like the ones in this examination may help to address traumas and help facilitate testimony related to race-based hate, children should have opportunities to construct and express their own understandings of textual relevance on this topic.

show abstract

Journeys Toward Textual Relevance: Male Readers of Color and the Significance of Malcolm X and Harry Potter

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

Black Youth Poetry of 2020 and Reimagined Literacies

Black Youth Poetry of 2020 and Reimagined Literacies

Urban Literacy Leadership: Examining One Principal’s Vision and Practice

Depicting Hate: Picture Books and the Realities of White Supremacist Crime and Violence

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About