The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

College of Education

IN HER OWN WORDS: (DE)MARGINALIZING BLACK IMMIGRANT GIRLHOOD

IN AN EMANCIPATORY LITERACY CLASSROOM

A Dissertation in

Curriculum and Instruction

by

Wideline Seraphin

© Wideline Seraphin

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May 2019

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The dissertation of Wideline Seraphin was reviewed and approved by the following:

Jeanine M. Staples Associate Professor of Education Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

Mark T. Kissling Assistant Professor of Education

Dana Stuchul Professor of Education

Esther Prins Professor of Education

Gwendolyn Lloyd Professor of Education Head of Graduate Program

* Signatures are on file in The Graduate School

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ABSTRACT

Black Haitian and Haitian American (H/HA) girls exist within multiple intersections that are not adequately addressed in Literacy Studies. This study offers theoretical and pedagogical insights on what it means to teach and study Black girls from transnational communities. The objective was to conceptualize a space which centered the intersectional lives of Black immigrant girls, and create emancipatory learning experiences in reading and writing instruction.

The research questions were: How do H/HA girls enrolled in HELP narrate their identities, place, and girlhood in autobiographical writing? In what ways do H/HA girls generate Discourses of race, place, and girlhood through discursive practices in HELP’s classroom? How do the institutional practices of HELP attempt to center the needs and talents of H/HA girls? How does

HELP reconfigure learning spaces?

This embedded case study examines two units for analysis: the literacies of five H/HA girls, and the institutional practices of the HELP program. New Literacy Studies, Black Feminist

Thought, and Critical Literacy construct the conceptual framework of the emancipatory literacy classroom. The methodology blends critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical race methodology (CRM) for language analysis, and an interdependent model of literacy for curricular design analysis. The methodology queries how Haitian students understand and engage power dynamics in their worlds, as well as how their literacies signal the racial, ethnic, and gendered ideologies they draw on as Black immigrant girls.

The girls generated autobiographical texts that mostly reproduced dominant Discourses of place, they negotiated their alignments to dominant Discourses of identities, and situated their girlhood in terms of their talents, agency and relationships. Grappling with race, place, and girlhood produced classroom discussions in which the girls supported each other, challenged

iv their peers to think differently, and exemplified vulnerability when bearing uncomfortable truths of themselves. HELP reconfigured learning spaces by functioning as an independent Black

Institution exercising decolonizing pedagogy congruent with the African diasporic traditions of literacy as liberation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... viii List of Figures ...... ix Acknowledgements ...... x Dedication ...... xii

CHAPTER 1. Miseducation of Black Girls ...... 1 Background and Context ...... 1 Problem Statement ...... 1 Purpose Statement and Research Questions ...... 2 Overview of Methodology ...... 2 Organization of Dissertation ...... 3 Critical Self-Reflection of Identity, Place, and Gender in Urban Schools ...... 5 “Serves You Right” ...... 9 Teacher-With-the-Funny-Sounding-Italian-Name ...... 13 Laughter ...... 14 Academic Texts and Implicit Messages ...... 15 “But I Tried So Hard…” ...... 16 Pedagogical Handcuffs ...... 20 Implication of Classroom Epiphanies on Study Design ...... 23 Researcher Bias ...... 24 Definitions of Key Terminology ...... 25 Discourse ...... 25 Dominant Discourse ...... 25 White Supremacist Patriarchy (WSP) Ideologies...... 25 Black ...... 27

CHAPTER 2. Conceptualizing an Emancipatory Literacy Classroom for Black Immigrant Girls ...... 28 Introduction ...... 28 The Old School: The “Great Divide” Debates ...... 29 Challenges to the Literacy Thesis ...... 32 The New School: Literacy as a Social Practice ...... 36 Critiques of the Sociocultural Perspective of Literacy Theory ...... 40 The Need for a Critical Sociocultural Approach to Literacy Theory ...... 42 Towards a Critical Literacy Pedagogy ...... 43 Literacy Theories by Black Women for Black Women ...... 45 Why Place Matters in Literacy Research of Black Immigrant Girls ...... 54 The Haitian Diasporic Experience to the US ...... 55 The Children of Haitian Immigrants ...... 56 Place as a Conceptual Framework ...... 58 Little Haiti: A Contested Place ...... 61 Rethinking the Research Paradigms for Haitian Youth ...... 63 Educational Attainment of Haitian Adolescents as Black Language-Minority Students ...... 64 Misrepresentations/Inadequate Access to Bilingual Education ...... 65

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Devaluation of Haitian Creole as a Linguistic Resource ...... 66 Racial and Ethnic Positioning of Haitian Adolescent Students ...... 67 Conclusion ...... 70

CHAPTER 3. Methodology ...... 73 Introduction ...... 73 Research Design Overview ...... 74 Embedded Case Study Research Methodology ...... 74 Analyzing Text and Talk Using Gee’s Outward Progression of Language Analysis ...... 75 Situated Meanings ...... 77 Discourse ...... 78 Social Languages ...... 78 Figured Worlds ...... 79 Critical Race Methodology ...... 79 Curricular Analysis of HELP ...... 81 Interdependent Model of Literacy ...... 81 Research Site: The Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project (HELP) ...... 85 Participants ...... 86 The Five Cases ...... 87 Journals (Writing) ...... 89 Interviews (Speaking) ...... 89 Multiple Discourses Represented in Literacy Events (Writing/Speaking) ...... 90 “What’s Hot?”/Class Participation (Reading/Listening/Speaking) ...... 90 Data Collection ...... 91 Morning Meetings ...... 92 Fitness ...... 93 Literacy ...... 93 Curriculum Guides, Novels, Short Stories, and Lesson Plans ...... 94 “What’s Hot?” ...... 94 Board Work ...... 95 Handouts ...... 95 Enrichment ...... 95 Computer Time ...... 95 End of Summer Showcase ...... 96 Field Notes ...... 96 Miscellaneous Pictures and Artwork ...... 96 Data Analysis and Synthesis ...... 97 Journals and Transcripts ...... 97 Ethical Considerations ...... 100 Limitations of the Study ...... 101 Data Quality and Trustworthiness ...... 101

CHAPTER 4. Writing Her Truths: When Black Girls Command the Pen ...... 103 Autobiographical Journaling at HELP ...... 103 Findings ...... 105 Dominant Discourses of Schools and Miami ...... 106 Schools ...... 106 Adherence to institutional protocol ...... 107 Drawing attention to interpersonal connections ...... 108 Miami ...... 110 Miami, the beautiful ...... 111

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Relationships and Resistance to Discourse of Black Diasporic Identities ...... 114 Family, Community, and Faith ...... 114 To be Black, Haitian, and American ...... 116 Who I am Now and Where I Want to Go ...... 121 Heart's Desires ...... 129 Conclusion ...... 133

CHAPTER 5. Speaking Her Truths: When Black Girls Take the Floor ...... 135 Introduction ...... 135 “Talking What’s Hot?” ...... 136 Findings ...... 138 Black Haitian Girls’ Diasporic Dreaming of Place ...... 138 Mapping Black Cultural Epistemologies and White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideologies ...... 141 Wrestling Black Girlhood from Patriarchy ...... 150 Conclusion ...... 164

CHAPTER 6. Learning Her Truths: “Don’t be the Fish that Can’t See the Water” ...... 166 Introduction ...... 166 Spirituality at HELP ...... 166 Chapter Overview ...... 167 Critical Perspectives of Institutions and Literacy Education ...... 168 Findings ...... 173 Morning Meetings ...... 175 “Correct” Education of the Diaspora, Vodou, and Haitian Communities...... 175 Noted Haitian Elder Urges Stories and Storytelling ...... 179 “Be that voice that supports another girl”...... 183 Teaching and learning at HELP ...... 187 A curriculum of Black feminist Haitian narratives ...... 188 Multimodality in Literacy Instruction ...... 194 Conclusion ...... 197

Chapter 7. Conclusion ...... 200 Recommendations for Literacy Instruction ...... 202 Implications and Recommendations for Literacy Research ...... 205 Immigrant Youth Literacies ...... 205 Global Black Feminist Perspectives in Literacy Studies ...... 207 Haitian Studies ...... 207 Researcher Reflections ...... 208

REFERENCES ...... 212

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LIST OF TABLES Page No. Table 3.1: The Interdependent Model of Critical Literary...... 83 Table 3.2: Rationale for Selection of Student Cases (Research Question 1 & 2) ...... 88 Table 3.3: Demographic details of the participants ...... 89 Table 3.4: Weekly Schedule (HELP Curriculum Guide, 2014) ...... 91 Table 3.5: Selection of Journal Prompts ...... 99 Table 4.1: Selection of Journal Prompts ...... 104 Table 5.1: Student-Selected “What’s Hot?” Media Texts ...... 138 Table 6.1: Data Analysis for HELP Program ...... 169 Table 6.2: Characterizing Independent Black Institutions ...... 172

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LIST OF FIGURES*

Figure 1: 4th Grade Student in Mismatched Shoes ...... 5 Figure 2: Note to Ms. Seraphin from Scarlet at the End of the School Year 2011-2012 ...... 5 Figure 3 “Your [sic] the reason I got a 3” ...... 18 Figure 4: Picture taken on 87th Street and NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL ...... 61 Figure 5: Danticat visits HELP July 2015 ...... 92 Figure 6: Danticat during morning lecture with students, (July 9, 2015) ...... 181 Figure 7: Board work after all-girl, “Pearl Girlz” morning session (July 21, 2015) ...... 185 Figure 8: Girls reciting portions of Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” (July 21, 2015) ...186 Figure 9: Board work of word association activity ...... 189 Figure 10: Footage of Interview with Papa Doc ...... 192 Figure 11: Self Activity ...... 194 Figure 12: Enrichment Block Capoeira with Master Mario ...... 195 Figure 13: Footage from HELP Filmmaking Workshop ...... 195 Figure 14: Sabrina in HELP Film ...... 195 Figure 15: Nadège in HELP End of Summer Showcase ...... 196 Figure 16: Folk Dance Routine for End of Summer Showcase ...... 196

*All photos are the author’s own work, except where otherwise stated.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It takes a village to raise a PhD. My successful completion of this project speaks to how incredible my village has been over the last seven years. First, I would like to thank my dissertation committee: Drs. Jeanine M. Staples (chair), Mark T. Kissling, Esther Prins, and

Dana Stuchul for your sharp eyes, nurturing dynamic, and overall excitement about my work.

You all have pushed me in different ways; it’s been so rewarding to see my scholarship evolve as a result.

A special thank you to my Blackedemic Crew, Jeremy T. Snipes, and Carl Darnell who model Black excellence in theory and practice. To my lifelong “day ones”, Casta Guillaume,

Carry Antenor, Ciara Harris, Guylene Presendieu, Natasha Noel, and Lisa Alcindor. Our girlhood aspirations are finally materializing. I am humbled by all of your greatness and the love you poured into me for decades. To my sorors of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Taronda S.

Gibbons and Tabatha M. Curry, I am forever grateful. To my partner, Samuel M. Davis, IV, my anchor in the storm, thank you. To my Penn State mentors, Dean Gary A. Abdullah, Dr. Donna

King, Brenda Martinez, and Dean Maria Schmidt, you all have shown me what it means to radically serve with care and love. I have learned so much.

I would also like to thank my family of scholars who refused to let me give up: Dr.

Beatrice Abiero, Dr. Pauli Badenhorst, Dr. Rebecca Bayek, Dr. Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, Dr.

Heather Bennett, Dr. Nyesha Black, Victoria Blackwell, Talia K. Carroll, Sara Cavallo, Dr.

Jenna Christian, Dr. Donna-Marie Cole-Malott, Dr. J. Marlena Edwards, Dr. Latoya Haynes-

Thoby, Dr. Jessica Henry, Lorraine Jones, Dr. Michelle Knotts, Hilario Lomeli, JD McCausland,

Carlos Medina, Dr. Cuthbert Rowland-Storm, Dr. Yukari Shinagawa, Dr. Anthony Starke, Anya

M. Wallace, Nakisha D. Whittington, and Mildred M. Williams.

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To Drs. Charlene Désir and Pamela Hall, your vision and dedication to the children of the

Haitian Dyaspora will have lasting impact for generations to come. Thank you for letting me share your vision, and trusting me to tell the story of HELP. Finally, to Antoinette, Lovely,

Nadège, Sabrina, and Venus, the world has no idea the power you possess. You all have made me a better teacher, scholar, and woman. Your aspirations and talents will help make the world a better place.

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DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to the women in my family whom I lost along the way. To my niece, Alex, I have been proud to be your aunt from the moment you were born. Though our time together was short, I will never forget the love you brought us all. To my Matante Blan, thank you for keeping your door open and creating some of the best family memories in your home. Lastly, I dedicate this dissertation to my mother, Marie Therese Jean. Your journey as a young immigrant woman to the United States was short of remarkable. As a mother, you broke your back so your children could stand. You never let me forget who I was and all I could accomplish. I am because you were. Though we didn’t make it to the finish line together, I carry your love with me forever.

Alexandra Fevrier April 12, 1995-September 7, 2016

Evelyne Jean-Baptiste April 6, 1962-June 25, 2017

Marie Therese Jean December 27, 1952-July 29, 2017

CHAPTER 1

The Miseducation of Black Girls

Background and Context

This study is about Black immigrant girls in the US. Black girls are as diverse in as many ways as there are stars in the sky. They belong to multiple communities around the world, speak a variety of languages, and propel cultural and economic innovations. They each possess a unique rhythm when moving through the world. Despite these attributes, Black girls confront institutional structures that contribute their miseducation in US schools. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s

2015 report, Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected, demonstrated that, in urban schools all over the country, Black girls are more likely than their white peers to receive punitive zero-tolerance policies and experience sexual harassment and violence.

According to this report, Black girls are also on the fastest track of the school-to-prison pipeline.

Yet, they are largely erased from social justice-oriented school reform discourses.

Problem Statement

In this study, I focus on the ways in which literacy studies and literacy instruction contribute to the aforementioned systemic marginalization of Black girls in public schools. There are not enough literacy studies scholars who inquire about the dynamic intersectional identities and literacies embodied in Black girls from critical perspectives, and even fewer scholars who investigate the literacies of Black immigrant girls as transnational and linguistically diverse literate people. In terms of literacy instruction, reading and writing pedagogy lack culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012), critical approaches of cultural relevancy, and continues to alienate

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Black girls from transnational and culturally-rich literate communities.

Purpose Statement and Research Questions

The literacy classroom is a site of multiple power exchanges among students, curriculum, and educators. The purpose of this embedded case study is to seek out what can happen in a literacy classroom when those exchanges of power have the explicit objective of creating an emancipatory learning space and no longer work to marginalize the intersectional identities and literate lives of Black immigrant girls. This study asks “what happens when we reconfigure teaching and learning spaces with young Black immigrant girls specifically in mind?” This embedded case study focuses on research subjects that I worked with during the summer of 2015 in my role as a middle school literacy instructor at a culturally based and spiritually grounded out-of-school literacy program called the Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project (HELP) in

South Florida. The study is guided by three primary research questions:

1. How do Haitian and Haitian American (H/HA) girls narrate race, place, and girlhood in

autobiographical writing?

2. In what ways do Haitian and Haitian American (H/HA) girls generate Discourses of race,

place, and girlhood through discursive practices in HELP’s classroom?

3. How do the institutional practices of HELP attempt to center the needs and talents of

H/HA girls? How does HELP reconfigure learning spaces?

Overview of Methodology

As a researcher, I engaged Literacy Studies from the nexus of Black Feminist perspectives, New Literacy Studies (NLS), and Critical Literacies. Together, these three areas of

3 scholarship served as the theoretical framework for this study. I purposefully focused on the feminist works of African American women literacy scholars such as Elaine Richardson, Maisha

T. Fisher, and Jeanine M. Staples. Their literacy research has helped expand the theoretical framework of NLS to encompass the complexities of African Americans’ sociocultural and political lived experiences, and iterations of literacies in the United States. As literacy scholar, I contribute to this growing field of Black perspectives in Literacy Studies by developing the concept of Haitian youth literacies. Haitian youth literacies are the ways in which adolescents of

Haitian heritage use primary Discourses rooted in Haitian epistemologies to develop secondary

Discourses of race, gender, politics, sexuality, and power. Scholars can observe this development in their engagements with reading/writing, speaking/listening, body movements, and the arts.

As an embedded case study, the two units of analysis are five student participants and

HELP as an institution. For analysis, this study blends multiple strands of the critical paradigm:

Gee’s (2011) critical discourse analysis (CDA), Solόrzano & Yosso (2002) critical race methodology (CRM) for language analysis, Jank’s (2013) critical literacy-based interdependent model of literacy, and Fisher’s (2009) model of independent Black institutions (IBI) for curricular design analysis. This blended analytical framework queried the ways Haitian girls understood and engaged power dynamics in their worlds, as well as how their literacy events signaled the racial, ethnic, and gendered ideologies they drew on as Black immigrant girls.

Organization of Dissertation

In chapter 1, I engage in critical self-reflection with the use of Denzin’s (2014) interpretive autoethnographic tool of epiphanies to interrogate my own schooling experience as a young Haitian American girl, and then again as a Reading/Language Arts teacher in Miami-Dade

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County Public Schools. This critical self-reflection is important for two reasons. The first reason is to be transparent about how my own experiences as a Black immigrant girl and then as a teacher in urban schools has shaped the perspectives as literacy scholar and literacy educator.

The second reason for this exercise is to demonstrate the importance of examining intersectional identities, place, and gender as conceptual frames for inquiry into the literate lives of Black girls.

Chapter 2 walks through the theoretical frameworks that guided this study. Chapter 3 speaks directly to study design, research participants, research site, data collection, and data analysis. Chapters 4 answers the first research question and discusses findings. Specifically, chapter 4 details the ways in which the girls in the study use autobiographical writing in different journal writing exercises to map out their identities as Black Haitian girls. Chapter 5 answers the second research question by analyzing the recorded classroom discussions during the “What’s

Hot?” hour of the literacy block. The chapter reveals how discussions of popular culture media texts gave space for the participants to speak explicitly on their views of race, gender, and place as those factors relate to their literate lives. Chapter 6 is the final data chapter and answers the last research question. It interrogates the nature of HELP’s institutional practices and the ways it attempts to promote liberatory schooling experiences for the students enrolled in the program.

Chapter 7 concludes the study and provides recommendations for literacy scholars and practitioners to create inclusive practices that center Black girls in literacy classrooms.

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Critical Self-Reflection of Identity, Place, and Gender in Urban Schools

What I carry closest to me are my memories as a Haitian-

American adolescent, and as a reading and language arts teacher in

Miami, Florida. My memories frequent me; they are in the prideful swell of my chest when reliving my coronation as my high school’s

“Miss Miami Jackson” and being only the second Haitian- Figure 1 4th Grade Student in Mismatched American girl to achieve that at the time. They are also in the Shoes (Seraphin, 2012)

chuckles, randomly provoked by the memory of one of my students coming to class in mismatched shoes and frantically running back

home once he realized his mistake. They are in the love I felt when glancing at a letter a student gave me on the last day of school. The letter stated that I would be missed. I taped it to the wall above my

Figure 2 Note to Ms. Seraphin from desk. Scarlet at the End of School Year 2011- 2012 These memories also have the tendency to haunt me. I am

saddened by the flashback to middle school when a classmate “spoke Creole” by making primitive guttural noises to shame me for speaking a second language, and the year of collective tears from myself and my students when we endured the traumas of No Child Left Behind curricular policies and pedagogical impositions. I harbor the good and the bad of these distinctive moments in my life as “student” and as “teacher.” Because of these memories, my ideological framework as a researcher of Haitian immigrant students and their literacies will never be empirically objective—and I embrace that subjectivity.

I have chosen interpretative autoethnography as a critical self-reflective tool, first to be forthright about my positionality as Haitian-American literacy researcher, and second to trace the

6 impact of intersectional identities in my reciprocal roles as teacher and learner in Miami-Dade

County Public School district. As a research genre, autoethnography provides a space to foreground my memories in the classroom and unpack the ways in which those memories jarred and shaped my learning and teaching experiences. Ellis and Bochner (2003) define autoethnography as “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that allows multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (p. 739). Nieto (2013) also uses autobiographical techniques to theorize the importance of sociocultural perspectives in education, which pays special attention to the intersections of language, literacy, and culture.

Nieto maintains that critical introspection is important for understanding positioning. This is particularly important for scholar-educators of color, such as myself, whose “social class, ethnicity, native language, and discourse practices [are] the epitome of what are described in the

United States as [positioning one as] ‘at risk’, ‘disadvantaged’, and ‘culturally deprived’” (Nieto,

2013, p. 10). Therefore, my choice in using autoethnographic techniques was fueled by the desire to transgress these labels and unpack the racial, ethnic, gendered, and political discourses of power undergirding my memories.

I undertook the interpretive autoethnographic form of epiphany. Interpretive autoethnography does the work of revealing hidden features of the present as well as the past.

Denzin (2014) defines epiphanies as biographical projects that begin with personal history, “with the sting of childhood memory, with an event that lingers and remains in the person’s life story”

(p. 28). They are “the space where biography intersects with history, politics, and culture” (p.

28). Epiphanies are constructed by significant turning-point moments that leave permanent marks in a subject’s life; it is the work of the autoethnographer to “capture, probe, and render understandable problematic experience” (Denzin, 2014, p. 36). In doing the work of epiphany,

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“the interpreter always works outward from the epiphany to those sites where memory, history, structure, and performance intersect” (Denzin, 2014, p. 32).

In unpacking an epiphany, Denzin (2014) also explains that the discovery process begins when the ethnographer first locates the sting of memory. Denzin explains that, “once located, this moment is dramatically described, fashioned into a text to be performed. This moment is then surrounded by those cultural representations and voices that define the experience in question. These representations are contested [and] challenged” (p. 32). I locate my transgressions as a scholar-educator in these moments of challenging and contesting the dominant Discourse in my epiphanies. The rigorous excavation required by autoethnographic methods helped peel away the surface emotions of vulnerability and exposure, and helped me reflect on how racialized, gendered, and political discourses shape my desires to engage in research with Haitian students at the center. I transgress these Discourses by laying bare what made me cower and/or cringe in those marked memories as a student and as a teacher. I also transgress by reliving these memories, retelling them as narratives, and wrenching from them the contradictions and implicit Discourses of power and their impact on me as a girl and educator.

With that being said, I do not want this process to be misconstrued as an act of vanity or

‘academic venting.’ Rather, the goal is to have the reader understand events that have influenced the trajectory of this study and my position as a researcher in relation to Black Haitian and

Haitian-American girls.

An important point of emphasis in the construction and narration of the epiphany is that it cannot be construed as the absolute truth-telling of an event, in which the autoethnographer relays objective play-by-play accounts of what occurred. In the analysis of the epiphany, “the life story becomes an invention, a re-presentation, an historical object often ripped or torn out of its

8 contexts and recontextualized in the spaces and understandings of the story” (Denzin, 2014, p.

28). In “Criteria Against Ourselves,” Bochner (2000) helps clarify the intended usage of narrative in recounting lived experiences:

The purpose of self-narratives is to extract meaning from the experience rather than to

depict experience exactly as it was lived…The call of narrative is the inspiration to find

language adequate to the obscurity and darkness of experience. We narrate to make sense

of our experience over time. Thus, narrative is our means of fashioning experience into

language. (p. 270)

I adopt a poststructural reading of my relived and retold epiphanies because of the potential to push against the naturalized function of language and the opportunity to deconstruct the textual constructions in the language summoned to reconstruct lived experiences. With the application of poststructuralist approaches to interpretive autoethnography, language is further scrutinized as a representation of experience rather than a mirror of those experiences (Denzin, 2014). The poststructuralist lens conceptualizes the meanings of narratives as always in motion, inclusive, conflicting, and contradictory (Denzin, 2014). The deconstruction of narratives, at least in my analytical process, drew on the Foucauldian influence on discourse analysis of text, which disconstructs what is named “real” and “normal” and uncovers normalized practices and structures for their exercise in productive power disbursements (Peters & Burbules, 2004).

The following sections narrate two epiphanies, “Chalkduster” and “Handwriting-

Dakota,” denoted by bolded fonts. I selected two distinct fonts to differentiate the epiphanies.

While both epiphanies are told through my voice, the time, sensibility, and positionality shifts.

As a twelve-year-old girl, I observed, felt, and processed information quite differently than I would as a twenty-four-year-old woman; I felt it was important to denote those shifts in voice.

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The first epiphany occurred the very first time I encountered Haiti as a point of discussion in the formal academic space of a 6th grade geography class. The second epiphany occurred during my first year as a 4th and 5th grade Reading/Language Arts teacher in Miami,

Florida. Please note that the epiphanies contain cultural rhetoric and colloquialisms typical of

Miami youth of color. I have chosen to honor these oftentimes non-conventional language practices in my epiphanies. The Miami youth that I grew up with and taught are inculcated with rich linguistic diversity; standard American English is complemented and contested by Spanish,

Haitian Creole, and an array of patois from English-speaking Caribbean nations. I chose to honor these non-conforming language practices because as a researcher and a bilingual speaker, cultural rhetoric and colloquialisms do not signify deficiency or language deprivation, but rather they denote unique speech events in which these youths have signaled their creativity from their unique positioning in a global city. Throughout this autoethnographic paper, I will refer to students of color as “Black” and “Brown.” Black signals African American, Caribbean, and

African students, while Brown signals Latino/a and Asian students. I acknowledge the broadness of the terms and choose to operationalize the ways they can create a unifying thread when discussing students of color. As constructs, “Black” and “Brown” help me to center students of color; my intentions are not to erase the intersections and complexities of racial and ethnic identities of these student groups.

“Serves You Right”

My first encounter of Haiti in the classroom is seared onto my soul…

I attended an urban community middle school in da MIA (the airport code for Miami

International Airport, but it was cool enough that we used it to refer to Miami); it served a diverse population: Black, Caribbean, Latino/a and Asian students. We often clashed. “Zoes” (slang for

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Haitian and Haitian-Americans; originally derived from the infamous Haitian Zoe Pound gang of the late 1990s and early 2000s) were against “Yanks” (slang for Black, or African Americans with no apparent Caribbean background) and vice versa. Hence, my ethnicity was always on full display. It was broadcast within the school’s social sphere as a source of pride, tension, conflict, shame, friendship, kinship and/or entertainment. As was the case with everyone’s racial and ethnic identities; we were a mélange of skin colors, languages, cultural norms and identities—plate tectonics constantly rubbing, subducting,1 and drifting toward and away from each other.

Being Haitian was not out of the ordinary, and there was no place to hide with a name like

Wideline, which screams, “Man, that girl Haitian.” What trips me out is how whenever I’m not in

South Florida, my name becomes this wild exotic moniker which usually elicits [from white people], a “wow, that’s beautiful, what does it mean?” to a “wow, that's unusual/weird/strange/unique…” and everything in between. To anyone who’s Haitian, or anyone who’s ever lived around/worked with/dated Haitians, my name might as well be “Jennifer” or “Ashley,” because seriously, that’s how common it is in Haitian culture. Ha!

Anyways, being Haitian was nothing new, that is, except for inside the classroom. Our foolish, but so-important-at-the-time rivalries and turf wars were silenced at the teachers’ door

(alongside any acknowledgement that our cultural identities silently trailed in behind us).

Now, zoom to sixth grade, 7th period geography. I vividly remember my teacher, a meek, soft-spoken white woman with a funny- sounding-Italian-name. Almost all us, including myself, struggled to pronounce it, and often parodied its pronunciation. Our inability to pronounce her name with ease signified just how unfamiliar we were with her cultural orientations and vice versa.

She too, struggled with my name, as did all my teachers when they first saw it on paper; the gymnastics they performed trying to say it made me react in the same way as someone scraping

1 The action or process in plate tectonics of the edge of one crustal plate descending below the edge of another (Merriam-Webster, 2014)

11 their nails across the chalkboard! She was my teacher. I don’t think I had any real expectations for her to know me. Our names were a simple reminder of how alienated we were from each other.

My geography teacher- with-the funny-sounding-Italian-name often lost control of my class.

She was like a bad adaptation of the film “Dangerous Minds” (1995). Instead of being radically inspired and uplifted by the presence, smarts, and will of a beautiful middle-class white woman, our class of adolescent Black and Brown students attending a Title I urban Miami middle school often made a fool of this woman by thwarting most of her shaky attempts to teach us about the world outside of Miami, Florida.

On this particular day, we were reading about the Caribbean. And like every occasion, our teacher-with-the-funny-sounding-Italian-name asked for a volunteer to read the section on Haiti.

My hand, of course, shot up into the air with dart-like precision before she could even finish her request. As soon as my teacher-with-the funny-sounding-Italian-name said,

“Okay, go ahead Wideline,” my classmates audibly grumbled their annoyance and disapproval—I could hear and feel their eyes roll. “There she goes again…why she always so happy to read out loud? Why is she such an ‘Oreo’?

[Cue eye roll].”

But, guess what? I ain’t care. I was a proud smarty-pants…too proud by the standards of many of my “blakameyiken” classmates. Blakameyiken is the Haitian-Creole pronunciation of

Black American. Older Haitians would usually use it as a derogatory term to describe “Yanks.”

They were usually the ones who made fun of my name, my style of dress— particularly lack of cool brands— and my odd determination to be a nerd.

But I loved to flaunt my reading fluency. I loved reading out loud. I loved not stumbling over words. I loved changing my intonation to match the mood of the passage. I loved letting everyone else in the room know how big and bright my brain was. Reading out loud was an absolute pleasure, and for the first time I had the chance to read about my people—to flex my big and brilliant brain on something that I was undeniably proud of.

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I cleared my throat, squared my shoulders and positioned myself to project the introductory lines of the section designated for the island nation of Haiti…

(Some World Geography Book, 1999) Haiti Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

My voice, which was clear and well supported at the initial annunciation of the word ‘Haiti,’ was barely audible by the end of the sentence. I read the rest of the section—deflated. Worst of all, I could hear the snickers. The snickers only heightened, only confirmed, that a room full of my friends, associates, and ‘enemies,’ so to speak, had witnessed my humiliation. I can’t say I remember what else was in that passage; the rest of the page has been smothered by the memory of the ugliness and sting of its first sentence…

Twenty years later, that sentence has stayed with me. I often relived that moment and the feelings tied with this memory—the sneering of my classmates, the embarrassment, and the awakening to the crudely popular idea that the country of my parents, my heritage, was famous for being poor. This memory’s significance to me has changed over time. As an adolescent, I chalked it up to a lesson in pride; I was too boastful, too arrogant, and I was essentially “put in my place.” The message was: “serves you right, Haitian girl, for not staying in your lane.”

So, the question now is: What is there to say about my first curricular interplay with Haiti as an impoverished place in a formal academic space? In the spirit of excavating epiphany, what specifically made this a turning point in my conceptualization of myself as a Haitian-American girl and ultimately as a Haitian scholar-educator?

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Teacher-With-the-Funny-Sounding-Italian-Name

It’s important to note the ways in which interpretive autoethnography has shifted my analytical gaze. Before this excavating exercise, I had never considered the role my teacher-with- the-funny-sounding-Italian-name had in establishing classroom culture, or the impact this scene had on her understanding of student perceptions, experience, and curricular influence. In the classroom epiphany, my geography teacher is lodged in my memory as the teacher-with-the- funny-sounding-Italian-name. It’s been a process for me to convey the sort of racial, cultural, and class gaps I perceived as a 12-year-old girl in her class.

In that memory, my geography teacher-with the-funny-sounding-Italian name was silent.

She did not protect my sensibilities as a young Haitian girl reading about her country of origin as the “poorest of the poorest.” In retrospect, as an adult, I question whether my humiliation even registered with her. And if it did, did her silence stem from an uncertainty on how to address it?

Was she even aware of how my Haitian identity was a crucial part of my overall identity as a young Black girl in her class? More importantly, did she have a conceptualization of Haiti outside of what was proffered in the textbook? As a Social Studies educator, did her ideological frame of Haiti align with the dominant Discourses of Haiti—despite teaching in an urban community school with a large percentage of students with Haitian ancestry?

I will probably never know the answer to these questions since Ms. Uigliano (the funny- sounding-Italian name I struggled to say as a kid) no longer teaches at my former middle school and I have no way of contacting her. For me, she exists only in my classroom memory. However, these questions reveal a great deal about my approaches to curricular inquiry. I do not want to give the impression that I “blame” Ms. Uigliano for my humiliation and shame in this classroom epiphany. This epiphany helped make clear the ways teachers can be implicated in destructive

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Discourses for marginalized students in urban classrooms.

Laughter

It is important to note the ways in which silence and laughter maintain an equally embedded and symbiotic relationship in my classroom epiphany. The laughter of my

“blakameyiken” classmates, coupled with my geography teacher’s silence, reinforced a dominant

Discourse of Haiti as a nation of poverty. Implicit within this idea was the message that, as a result of its poverty, Haiti could only reasonably produce impoverished people. In addition, there was the implicit notion that if one was interested in learning about this country, one must first learn of its position as the beacon of abject poverty. The classroom epiphany highlights a missed opportunity to not only undo all of these notions about Haiti, but also to unite African diasporic experiences amongst the students of color present in the room. Laughter did the opposite. It functioned as a distancing strategy. It seemed to be a way for Black and Brown students to distance themselves from Haiti, another majority-Black impoverished place. The following year, when I travelled to Haiti for the first time, I was surprised to see the various shades of Black represented in the people I met, many of whom looked like my classmates. There was nothing more isolating than that experience than being laughed at. However, looking back, many of my classmates could have benefited from learning about the revolution narrative that also characterizes Haiti just as I did. Haiti was the first Black republic born from a successful slave revolt, defeating France’s Napoléon Bonaparte, and doing the unthinkable (Trouillot, 1995).

Haiti’s liberation was liberation for the African Diaspora.

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Academic Texts and Implicit Messages

Last, the actual text I read functions as an institutional tool. There is much to be said about an introductory academic text that references a particularly accomplished “third-world” nation by its economic disenfranchisement, rather than its rich historical legacy of resisting colonialism and empire. The resistance of the Haitian people—African descendants forming a republic through a successful slave revolt as well as being only the second colony in the Western

Hemisphere to accomplish such—was not mentioned. What was normalized in the text, and then confirmed and reasserted within the academic and social space by both silence and laughter, is that it is perfectly acceptable to characterize an entire country by its contemporary economic status. The text further normalized the idea that the island nation of Haiti must be first constructed as inadequate and undesired. Given an opportunity to feature the revolutionary spirit of “othered nations,” the textbook quickly delineated how far removed this majority Black country was from the children reading the textbook, most likely citizens of the wealthiest country in the western hemisphere.

The more I learned about Haiti and myself, the more I realized how that moment was representative of everything that I have endeavored to change about the educational experiences for Haitian students in the US. I was well into adulthood before I learned enough about Haiti to fully digest its dynamic foothold in history and its significance to the African Diaspora.

Exploring my classroom epiphany compelled me to reconceptualize the experience beyond the humiliation and shame I had harbored for years. I broadened the scope of my understanding of that moment by decentering myself in this memory, so as to make note of all the performers and objects, their roles in the memory, and the significance their performances had in conveying messages of disenfranchisement and power. This particular epiphany is significant because it

16 revealed the nature and enactment of power in Discourses about majority-Black places. A simple sentence from a standard world geography textbook set into motion an almost two-decades long journey through humiliation, shame, self-deprecation, resistance, and now, critical consciousness.

The next classroom epiphany details my first-year teaching as a 4th and 5th grade

Reading/Language Arts teacher in a Miami charter school. This time, I disentangle the experiences of witnessing and partaking in the trauma of a Black female student.

“But I Tried So Hard…”

I anticipated my first year as a teacher to be filled with energy and “groundbreaking” lessons that would captivate my students and motivate them to learn. My master's degree in African

American and African Diaspora Studies would be a newfound source of inspiration and my students would not only learn, but they would be empowered! Right on! Power to the People! Power to Black and Brown youth!

Right?

Wrong.

I was thoroughly unhappy my first year as a teacher. In saying this, I take into consideration all the usual suspects that contributed to this feeling: first year blues, classroom management struggles, and lack of resources. However, the heart of my discontent—the transformation of my teaching identity—is best understood when told through Takia’s fourth grade schooling experience. Her struggles throughout the year in our school’s intense test taking culture paralleled my struggles as a novice teacher within that very same context. Our juxtaposed stories extract the very personal effects of high stakes testing and its institutional messages on how to teach literacy to Black and Brown students from poor urban spaces.

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My initial contact with students’ abilities was through their baseline assessment scores. Our school’s leadership took an aggressive approach and administered baseline assessments of reading, writing, math and science during the first week of school; students were welcomed back with a massive practice FCAT2 test. The scores had indicated that Takia and the majority of her classmates were non-proficient readers and required intensive reading intervention. My perceptions about her abilities and her talents shifted in early November of that school year.

One random Friday, I assigned my class to write a story using the vocabulary words from the

Encyclopedia Brown mystery unit we had just read. To be honest, I did not anticipate that many of the students would complete the assignment. However, Takia was amongst the few who did. And after reading her page and a half story about the kidnapping disappearance of the math teacher next door,

I was visibly giddy. Takia had met the objectives of the assignment by using all the words correctly. In addition, her voice, creativity and imagination were undeniable. In my excitement, I shared Takia’s tale with the storied math teacher and we giggled about her wild take on the assignment. From that moment, I saw her differently and heightened what felt like an almost impossible mission of getting her and her classmates to perform proficiently on a test that never assessed what they were able to accomplish as young literate beings.

Takia was an inquisitive, cheerful, and engaged child. She wore her emotions on her sleeves, and I became accustomed to her peaks of excitement at starting a new task, her valleys of confusion, and her inevitable anguish when she did not receive a passing grade on the weekly assessment. This was not due to a lack of effort. Takia’s class was on the strong receiving end of interventions and

2 FCAT- Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. In 2011, the FCAT reading tests were reported on a 5-level tier system; a “1” represented the lowest level of proficiency and a “5” represented the highest level of proficiency. All students were required to score at least a “3” in order to pass the FCAT in reading, math, and science. Often times, intervention efforts focused intensely on level 2, “bubble students” who were on the cusp of proficiency. The 5- level tier system played a major role in determining a school’s overall grade, ranging from A to F.

18 remediation. As her teacher, I witnessed the rollercoaster ride of her reading for the test and I began to feel dishonorable. She was not performing well and I was not effective in bringing her numbers up. I wondered what good am I as a teacher if I cannot get my students to reach reading proficiency?

Every frown and grumble on her face meant that I, too, was unsuccessful. And for both of us, assessments became less about learning (and teaching), and more about personal worth and intelligence.

I can recall my one feeble attempt to petition the use of an actual novel, The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street (Flake, 2007), rather than the basal readings, to teach a particular cluster of Reading standards. A successful, veteran teacher had privately suggested it when I asked what I could do to better engage my students. However, my principal was uncomfortable with the idea and reminded me of our professional obligations to follow the district pacing guides along with their ascribed reading materials. Deep down, I knew my veteran colleagues shut their doors and taught on their own terms with very little interference because they were getting results. Having no such track record of success, I did not have the gumption to subvert the district mandates, especially after revealing my contemplations of going rogue.

As the year went by, FCAT preparation only intensified. All instruction in non-tested content areas was suspended in order to kill and drill for the upcoming exam—a five-week period before testing, lovingly characterized as “crunch time.” During "crunch time,” more of my students became visibly rattled. Having been part of a generation in which test taking defined reading and language arts instruction, my students would often default to glazed, uninterested stares whenever it was time

Figure 3 “Your [sic] the to dissect a reading passage, paragraph by paragraph. Some protested reason I got a 3…thank you and Ill [sic] miss you…you with pleas and complaints about going over yet another packet. Miguel, a are the best” (Seraphin, 2012)

19 level 2 reading student, took a hard stance and refused to do any more test prep work. His mother called me shortly after his declaration to share that he had come home completely burned out from school. He had expressed to her a frustration about being overwhelmed with test preparation and restated that he did not want to continue. His mother was rightfully concerned about his anxiety levels. It had taken weeks to draw out Miguel—a natural skeptic—and foster a small excitement towards reading and writing. After his break from test preparation, his flickering interests towards reading never fully returned. Surprisingly, during an arts and crafts assignment where students created positive affirmations of passing the test the next week, Miguel’s creation was a colorful letter telling me not to worry about the FCAT and that they were prepared to pass the test. His artistic piece made me feel guilty; I had not considered the ways my anxiety over the FCAT manifested in my instruction and ultimately upped his stress levels as a student.

Ironically, the act of completing the test itself was anticlimactic; pressures leading up to April's testing week were released and teaching and learning became almost shiftless. Because the test was so intricately tied to the purpose of learning, once it was over, it was hard to foster authentic efforts in learning outside of its context.

It was the last week of school and I had just received the individualized reports for my fourth and fifth grade classes—my students anxiously waited to learn how they performed on the test. Takia was among the last to receive her score and with a bright smile, characteristic of Takia’s spirit, asked,

“How did I do, Ms. Seraphin?” I did not need to look at my computer screen to know that Takia had received a level one score, the lowest level of achievement on the FCAT. As gently as I could muster, I replied, “Takia, you got a one.” Immediately, Takia’s smile collapsed, she physically crumpled before me, and through obvious tears and sniffles, she quietly bemoaned, “A one? But I tried so hard…” And in that moment, I was speechless. I absolutely agreed with her. Takia had worked hard that year. Though she had many moments of frustration with reading, Takia kept working the entire year.

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For me, it was truly an inconsolable moment. We both knew the FCAT was the definitive marker for demonstrating that not only were you a “good reader,” but that you were a “smart” student and capable of doing well.

I was equally concerned for Scarlett, one of two students who had tested as proficient and passed. At the end of the school year, she wrote a letter thanking me for helping her get the passing

“3” on the reading exam. While I was deeply moved by the gesture, I felt that Scarlett’s talents went beyond the “3” designation. Scarlett was an incredibly intuitive and a critical thinker; she often made impressive connections with reading stories. But, up until that moment, Scarlett’s scores were usually on the margins of proficiency. As her teacher, I worried whether she would see the same notable potential that I saw in her, something that could not be quantified by the number “3.”

That year ended with none of my innovative teaching dreams coming true. My advanced degree in African American and African Diaspora Studies did not have a home in my classroom. My lows drowned out many of the highs, and the only thing I was truly grateful for was that the academic year was over. I feared for my job, convinced that my scores would get me fired. I was quite perplexed when the principal chose to renew my teaching contract. I left feeling dejected and disillusioned by what I could offer to my students; I felt like they were given a raw deal.

Pedagogical Handcuffs

As the Reading/Language arts teacher, I now was in a position of power and had 50 students under my charge. Perhaps the most jarring aspects of my first year of teaching were the pedagogical prescriptions and restrictions. In the classroom epiphany “But I Tried So Hard . . . ,”

I reflected on being told that it was my professional obligation to comply with district-mandated standards, pacing guides, and resources. Our district was regulated in such a way that each school week had been assigned a set of predetermined standards and benchmarks to be taught,

21 accompanied by readings and writing prompts that supported the prescribed standards. What’s most telling of this prescriptive framework is the irony that teaching from a novel in my reading class equated to non-compliance with district mandates.

The activity of “reading” was relegated to thick textbook anthologies with snippets and/or adaptations of children’s stories, test prep reading guides and booklets, and the daunting

“packet” of Xeroxed passages and test questions. It was a deadening enterprise. That year, my teaching legacy consisted mostly of imparting test-taking strategies such as reading passage questions before even starting the story, decoding and underlining key words in a question, using the margins to take notes, numbering paragraphs, and eliminating outlandish answer choices to increase a student’s probability to select the correct answer. In hindsight, I wish I had the courage and gall to participate in my colleagues’ transgressive acts of reclaiming my autonomy.

Instead, I complied with district mandates and struggled as a teacher.

I committed to our school-wide “search and destroy” reading strategy: I learned how to disaggregate student data and designed my intervention lessons accordingly. I grouped my students by ability and differentiated instruction based on their performance trajectory. I wanted to believe that if I committed to this system of instruction, I would be able to provide my students with quality instruction and give them a fair shot at passing the test. But what I mostly felt while performing these testing tasks was an incredible sense of automation. While I recognized the very unique personalities and quirks of my students, I did not feel empowered to experiment with my approach in ways that might engage and respond to those quirks. Instead, I completed weekly data reports, drafted intervention lesson plans, and conducted one on one

“data chats” with students.

There is no denying the implicit institutional messages emitted from the formal academic

22 space in which I taught. First, literacy was conceptualized in terms of “proficiency” and was quantified by a 5-tier system in which all students were assigned a number that defined their ability as young literate people. This quantified 5-tier system of literacy functioned as the most dominant and privileged form of literacy present in my classroom. Students had to adhere to the strict rules governing how they read and wrote stories. The objective of intervention pinpointed students that fell below standards in order to support their chances of success by state standards.

However, when a majority of students—as was the case with my students—failed to hit the manufactured marker of “proficiency,” at what point can we problematize the system’s overall conceptualization of literacy in the formal academic space? My colleagues and I worked tirelessly to provide interventions and move our students from one tier to the next, but to no avail. This was probably the greatest misuse of the very capable human resources in our school.

In terms of literacy instruction, institutional practices encouraged calculated, regimented routines to instruct low socioeconomic status3 Black and Brown students struggling with reading proficiency. “Evidence-based,” “data-driven” approaches were praised as “best practices” and every teacher received training on how to interpret their quarterly district assessments. Achieving literacy proficiency in the formal academic space activated a series of strictly regimented teaching practices that prioritized performance on state-mandated tests. I struggled in this space, a buoy adrift with no real anchor. I couldn’t access the pedagogical tools that affirmed me as a competent teaching professional, and I felt ill at ease implementing the mindless, standardized iterations of literacy. It has taken time and access to alternative theories of literacy and literacy instruction to finally forgive myself for the year I failed as a “reading proficiency” teacher.

3 Over 80% of our students at my charter school qualified for free or reduced lunch qualifying our school for Title I funds.

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Implication of Classroom Epiphanies on Study Design

Learning environments for Black and Brown children can be alienating and even hostile.

I know what it feels like to be ashamed of who you are and where you came from. I know what it feels like to be a part of a system that reminds students that they are not good enough. In both classroom epiphanies, the parallel theme was the traumas of Black girls who were not accepted and supported in the formal academic space. The messages were “you come from an inferior place, despite living in a vibrant community that indicates otherwise. Your ways of knowing the world—your literacies—are incompatible with what we value in schools.” Having students who are affirmed in their positionality as Black or Brown, and in my case, Haitian, requires that they be provided the tools to challenge and resist Discourses that overtly and covertly work to marginalize their experiences and offerings as young literate people.

As a literacy scholar, my classroom epiphanies convinced me that the standardized conceptualization of literacy, evidenced by my charter school’s approach, does not do the work of dismantling harmful racialized Discourses attributed to Black and Brown students in schools and society. Additionally, alternative conceptualizations and approaches to literacy are necessary in order to fully understand the unique ways Black and Brown students take up literacy to express themselves and make meaning of their sociocultural contexts. These epiphanies inspired and informed my desire to design a study in which I could critically inquire about the literacies of Black Haitian girls, and the multiple ways they enact literacies to make sense of their social worlds. As a researcher, I am particularly attuned to the role of the educator in their position of power to 1) link students to the social worlds presented texts and to their communities 2) have an understanding of dominant Discourses and 3) challenge those Discourses if they promote the marginalization of vulnerable students in their classrooms.

I was an active participant in the teaching and learning community at the research site. As

24 a literacy instructor, I was free to interpret the mission of the literacy program and generate a curriculum that mirrored the 27 students that occupied my classroom. This study is dedicated to inquiring about all the components of curriculum necessary for constructing an emancipatory literacy classroom. The central argument for this study is that Black immigrant girls, as transnational literate young people with intersectional identities, require emancipatory literacy instruction that is rooted in deep explorations of self, social structures and Discourses, and transformation.

Researcher Bias

I harbor a tremendous sense of cultural pride. My connection to Haiti’s empowering revolution narrative motivates me to disrupt and destroy the negative stigmas of my heritage.

Encouraging positive affirmations in my student participants may be in opposition to those who do not view their Haitian heritage or race as central to the formation of who they are. This creates a potential to influence or pressure students to center their Haitian identities in ways that may be inauthentic to their constructions of self. Additionally, I have sustained memories of my peers and myself being targets of bullying and violence. I must check the assumption that the

Haitian youth in my study experience similar traumas and the assumption that they are not ever the perpetuators of violence and trauma. My work with these students has challenged many of my preconceived notions of Haitian youth and given me much to think about in terms of how they interlace racial and ethnic identities, as well as the wide range of talents they evince in expressing those identities.

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Definitions of Key Terminology

Discourse

In this study, Capital “D” Discourse refers to "ways of being in the world; they are forms of life that integrates words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes" (Gee, 2001, p. 5260). Gee (2001) theorized that

"any socially useful definition of literacy must be couched in terms of the notion of Discourse," thus literacy must be understood as a "mastery of or fluent control over a secondary Discourse"

(p. 529). Gee (2001) posits that Discourse and literacy are inextricably linked, and, since there are many secondary Discourses, literacy is always plural, "literacies." People are fluent, as well as deficient, in many secondary Discourses.

Dominant Discourse

In this study, “dominant Discourses” refers to the words, acts, values, beliefs, and attitudes of whiteness. I frame these as the larger conversations that communities occupying the center engage in to make sense of their worlds and the worlds of communities displaced to the margins.

White Supremacist Patriarchy (WSP) Ideologies

White Supremacy Patriarchy (WSP) is a social construct that centers and affirms the well-being, feelings, wants, needs, and quality of life of white, moneyed, heterosexual, able- bodied, cisgender men, and to a lesser extent, white, moneyed, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender women (J. M. Staples, personal communication, May 2015). Those who do not fit

26 these specific social constructions, e.g. Black and Brown people, LGBTQ people, and/or poor

(white) people, are deemed “other.” As a social construct “the other” is subhuman and their well- being, feelings, wants, needs, and quality of life are subjugated to those in the center of society

(Steinberg & Kincheloe, 2001).

WSP is present in many structures/institutions that constitute American society, including healthcare, government policy, law, housing, education, policing, employment, and finances

(Bonilla-Silva, 2001). These structures, in turn, hinder the ability of the “others” to exist within a society at same levels of benefits, privileges, and security as those placed in the center. These structures are often violent, deliberate, efficient, and normalized in such a way that their existence is as commonplace as breathing in air. WSP identifies and then marks the “other” through language use as well. There is nothing inherently “standard” or “proper” about how people speak. Over hundreds of years, “standard” English has been weaponized as a tool to center the well-being, feelings, wants, needs, and quality of life of white men and white women.

So, the dichotomy between “proper” English and “colloquial” English is an exercise in otherizing the many ways in which people, Black or White, choose to communicate and make meaning of the world around them. We punish those who do not know or choose not to speak in strict adherence to dominant standards. Another function of the WSP is to dub linguistic identities of an entire group of people as “illiterate”; WSP implies that these language practices are not good enough and those who use them are inherently deficient of cognitive skills.

Language is a fluid as water and takes on many iterations among different people. The problem is that forma social spaces privilege only one way speaking. Because of WSP, those who do not engage language like those at the center suffer real consequences.

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Black

In this study, I operationalize the word “Black” to encompass the diverse diaspora of people of African descent. Too often, “Black” and “African American” are used interchangeably, which erases the multiplicity in language, culture, and experience of the African diaspora. In this context, “Black” incorporates transnational communities and recognizes how this multiplicity impacts the literacies of the immigrant girls in this study.

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CHAPTER 2

Conceptualizing an Emancipatory Literacy Classroom for Black Immigrant Girls

Introduction

Conceptualizing an emancipatory teaching and learning literacy classroom that centered both Black immigrant girls and myself as their instructor was important in order to remain attentive to the implications of the Black girls' epiphanies of the previous chapter. This study operates from a theoretical framework which embraces literacy as a sociocultural practice embedded into the sociopolitical histories of marginalized communities. It breaks from the limiting binary of literate/illiterate and oral/written to recognize how the literacies of African descended people have been erased from the field of Literacy Studies and absent in secondary level literacy instruction.

The foundations of an emancipatory literacy classroom push against the universalist/autonomous model of literacy that grounds literacy instruction in traditional K-12 classrooms. This study engages New Literacy Studies, Black Feminist Thought, and Critical

Literacy as a critical sociocultural approach to literacy theory to conceptualize an emancipatory literacy classroom. New Literacy Studies functions to recognize the plurality of literacies within diverse communities and the role of primary and secondary Discourses in shaping those literacies. Black Feminist Thought anchors the intersectionality of Black immigrant girls and asks how their race and gender shapes who they are as literate people. Last, Critical Literacy as a theoretical framework discusses the ways in which literacy instruction can address issues of power, access, resources, and design in reading and writing instruction, alongside how to redesign classroom spaces so students have the tools to transform their worlds.

The first section of this chapter chronicles Literacy Studies as a field by unpacking the

29 major debates within literacy research and the emergence of the sociocultural turn in Literacy

Studies. The next section discusses how those debates have largely left out communities of the

African diaspora, and the work of Black women literacy scholars who infuse intersectional feminist perspectives into Literacy Studies to remedy the omission. The chapter then moves into a discussion of the need for critical literacy perspectives to work in conjunction with New

Literacy Studies. The following section traces how education scholars have traditionally studied

Haitian youth and outlines the 21st century perspectives that this study offers for those studying

Haitian students as transnational literate youth. The chapter ends with a discussion of why place is a necessary conceptual framework for studying immigrant youth such as Black Haitian and

Haitian-American girls.

The Old School: The “Great Divide” Debates

The “Great Divide” debate, an old Western argument that had a resurgence post-World

War II, is often linked to the field of anthropology. The debate asserts “that there are fundamental differences or ‘great divides’ in human intellect and cognition, differences tied to stages of civilization, grammatical elaboration, or racial social order” (Collins & Blot, 2003, p.

10). The implications of the “Great Divide” positioned “fundamental differences in human cognition and human social and cultural conditions...not to the differences in human nature or stages of civilization, but rather to literacy, as conceived as a ‘technology of intellect’” (Collins and Blot, 2003, p 10). Goody and Watts’ (1963) “Consequences of Literacy” and the subsequent

“literacy thesis”—an argument that Greek written alphabetic systems were the catalyst for logic, reasoning, historical objectivity, criticality, individuality, and ultimately Western advancement— continued this line of thinking. Their theoretical conceptualizations of literacy created major

30 methodological implications for literacy research in the last 50 years.

Goody and Watt (1963) established the groundwork for the literate “Great Divide” by premising oral “non-literate” cultures as homeostatic organizations. In homeostatic “non-literate” oral societies, “the whole content of social traditions, apart from the material inheritances, is held in memory” (Goody & Watt, 1963, p. 307). Because of this, language develops a close intimacy with the experiences of the community and is learned in face-to-face interactions with other community members. However, Goody and Watt found orality problematic because they saw memory as particularly subject to manipulation and imagined that this might stunt the growth of oral societies. They assert:

What continues to be social relevance is stored in the memory while the rest is usually

forgotten: and language—primarily vocabulary—is the effective medium of this crucial

process of social digestion and elimination which may be regarded as analogous to the

homeostatic organization of the human body by means of which it attempts to maintain

its present condition of life. (p. 307-308)

The consequences of homeostatic organization in oral cultures are that the “individual has little perception of the past except in terms of the present” (Goody & Watt, 1963, p. 310). Oral cultures are characterized as lacking the annals of literate societies. According to Goody and

Watt (1963), the consequence of not having such mechanisms are detailed as follows:

Myth and history merge into one: the elements in the cultural heritage which cease to

have contemporary relevance tend to be soon forgotten and transformed; and as the

individuals of each generation acquire their vocabulary, their genealogies, and their

myths, they are unaware that various words, proper-names and stories have dropped out,

or that others have changed their meanings or been replaced. (p. 311)

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The premise of “homeostatic” organization of oral cultures informs the construction of the binary between Western print cultures and oral cultures. Goody and Watt (1963) then build their homeostasis argument based on the following assumptions of heterogeneity of literate societies:

● History begins with language and writing. “Man’s biological evolution shades into

prehistory when he becomes a language-using animal; add writing and history proper

begins” (p. 304).

● A true sense of the past depends on permanent written records. “The greatness of the

past, then, depends upon a historical sensibility which can hardly operate without

permanent written records” (p. 311).

● Phonetic writing systems are more nuanced and can express individual thought. “Non-

phonetic writing, on the other hand, tends rather to record and reify only those items in

the cultural repertoire which the literate specialists have selected for written expression”

(p. 315).

● Writing is another form of dialogue, which transmits cultural orientations and “favors

awareness of inconsistency” (p. 326).

● Individuality is a valued trait. Literate societies give more to its members; more freedom

to support the individual, particularly in contrast to oral societies “In contrast to

homeostatic transmission of cultural ideas among non-literate peoples, literate societies

leave more to its members; less homogeneous in its cultural tradition, it gives more free

play to the individual” (p. 340).

● The invention of essay writing enabled the act of historical inquiry. “Literate societies, on

the other hand, cannot discard, absorb, or transmute the past in the same way [as oral

societies]. Instead, their members are faced with permanently recorded versions of the

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past and its beliefs; and because the past is thus set apart from the present, historical

inquiry becomes possible” (p. 344).

The first scholars to offer an alternative perspective outside the “Great Divide” framework for literacy were psychologists Scriber and Cole (1981) after an extensive research of the Liberian

Vai communities. Scriber and Cole described their findings as differing from the “Great Divide variety that look upon literacy as a key ingredient in the packet of social change which separates primitive from civilized, concrete from abstract, traditional from modern thought” (1981, p.235).

But instead, literacy best fits in the framework of practice, as demonstrated by the many contexts for reading and writing in Vai community. They concluded,

Literacy is not simply knowing how to read and write a particular script but applying this

knowledge for specific purposes in specific contexts of use. The nature of these practices,

including, of course, their technological aspects, will determine the kinds of skills

(“consequences”) associated with literacy. (Scribner & Cole, 1981, p. 236)

Scribner and Cole were the first to demonstrate that “specialized forms of reading and writing, both in school and out, have specialized and distinctive effects, even in an information age”

(Hull & Schultz, 2001, p. 583). Shortly after Scribner and Cole’s Psychology of Literacy (1980),

New Literacy Studies research such as Street’s Literacy in Theory and Practice (1984) drew a line in the sand challenging the literacy thesis. This generation of research plied and kneaded the binary of the “autonomous model” and the “sociocultural/ideological model” of literacy theory.

Challenges to the Literacy Thesis

What has been interesting are the ways in which researchers such as Brandt and Clinton

(2002), Collin (2013), and even Street (2014) have revisited and reworked the literacy thesis. In

33 one perspective, Collin (2013) suggests that “critics are right to object to the elements of technological determinism” (p. 27), in which “literacy causes change in the world,” but he also contends, “in [the] haste to avoid technological determinist thinking” (p. 28), researchers miss the productivity in engaging Goody’s larger claim that literacy has a role in the transformation of a society.

In keeping the baby with the bath water, Collin (2014) reworks Goody and Watts’ (1968) premise of literacy as a technological tool by applying the interaction model, which posits

“changes in literacy as conditions of, and conditional upon, changes in other domains” (p. 28).

By doing this, researchers can rightfully redress the problematic corollary between literacy and societal change, but can speak to the ways in which literacy and culture co-evolve and condition each other over tensions and time. Although Collin (2014) charges sociocultural researchers with cultural determinism, the process by which local folkways entirely dictate the uses of reading and writing, I question if the application of the interaction model to technological forms of literacy reads much differently from the sociocultural misstep of “porridge functionalism” where everything influences everything but in unspecified ways. I’m not quite convinced that detailing the multiple contradictions and crises of interconnected social spheres presents a more direct approach to linking literacy and cultural change. While these debates have confronted each other head on, it is still apparent that even in the most polarized of camps, it is possible to have a middle ground, as demonstrated by Collin and Street’s (2014) concession that both ideologies and technologies of literacy are inherent in the processes of cognition, workforce development, and assessment, and that sociocultural factors deserve foregrounding.

Theorists have also surveyed historical literacy practices of people of color to challenge notions of deficiency in print literacies and to establish well-documented print legacies that

34 counter the idea of people of color as mostly grounded in oral cultures. Greene (2001) points out that the development of literacy over time is not only affected by race, gender, class, ethnicity, etc., but that its history is particularly crafted to foreground dominant forms such as print texts.

Ultimately, this erasure constitutes the basis of pedagogical perspectives of deficiency among groups of color. Greene (2001) argues that the historical dimensions of literacy are skewed by

“narrow view[s] of literacy based on one geographical area, ethnic group, and time frame” (p.

236). Authors send out “clear, if unintended, messages as to what they feel constitutes ‘literacy’ and which groups they feel are worthy of study as ‘literates’” (p. 236).

Next, Graff (2001) challenges the “literacy myth” of the early 19th century democratic ideology of popular education, which claimed, “that literacy and schooling were required for economic survival” (p. 214). He demonstrates that “literacy was also used for order, cultural hegemony, work preparation, assimilation and adaptation, and instillation of pan-Protestant morality…high rates of literacy did not preclude contradictions or inequalities, regardless of rhetoric” (p. 211). Increased literacy did not overturn issues of economic inequality, gender inequality, racism, and xenophobia. “Public schooling was seen as necessary to help train a work force for the demands of a new economy,” so “habits of regularity, docility, punctuality, orderliness, and respect had to be learned” (p. 217). Graff posits, “The benefits of formal education usually went to those who already had an advantage in occupation or property” (p.

216). Literacy was understood as a social activity to reinforce the moral basis of societies and solidify Victorian American culture. This reading of Graff (2001) helps to articulate that, even at its earliest conception, literacy was never devoid of sociopolitical meanings and consequences. It was not an inherently liberating tool, but worked to confine working class, rural, poor whites.

The limitation of the text is that literacy is strictly understood as the ability to read and write.

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Moreover, McHenry and Heath (2001) contend, “the portrayal of African American culture as oral has become unrelenting and has pushed aside facts surrounding other language uses—especially those related to reading and writing throughout African American history” (p.

262). Their main argument is that “groups of African Americans, particularly those of the urban middle and upper classes, have firmly embraced and intensely practiced both reading and writing habits, forming reading clubs, supporting the press and publishing houses, and sponsoring public readings of imaginative literature” (p. 262-263). They argue the pedagogical consequences of monolithically labeling Black literacy culture as “oral” allows “the distancing and objectifying of

African Americans while reserving designations such as ‘literate’ for the ‘dominant culture’” (p.

263). They further posit, “The focus on African American orality has thus often implied an absence of reason and permanence, in contrast to the presence of these properties within literacy, and particular habits that surround the reading and writing of literature” (p. 263). This is a really important point because it urges me to rethink Haitian literacies as substantially oral.

Historically, Haiti also had a middle and upper class of Haitians that produced Haiti’s canon of literature. But McHenry and Heath (2001) present an argument that does raise some questions for me as well: Are reading and writing exclusively for the rich? Are print literacy skills seen as gateways to wealth and signifiers of intelligence and worth? And, if so, who establishes these entrees and keeps watch over them? Graff (2001) and McHenry and Heath (2001) all point to the link between strong reading and writing social activities located in higher social classes.

Despite all its problematic assumptions of literacy, the literacy thesis helped spur numerous discussions on how to theorize literacy as a human phenomenon. My inquiry has given me the language to name the model of literacy taken up by my school of employment: an autonomous model of Literacy. Our objective as an institution was to bring students to a

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“proficient” level of literacy which essentially meant enlisting them in tasks that required rigorous decoding skills with little to no attention paid to their sociocultural positionality as young Black and Brown literate beings in Miami, Florida. The goal for the year was to have students align with an oppressive standard of literacy that required conformity to decipher reading passages constructed by a dominant, universalist conceptualization of Literacy.

The New School: Literacy as a Social Practice

The most prominent contestation to the Goody and Watt (1963) literacy thesis is New

Literacy Studies (NLS). NLS is a relatively young field of study. In the early 1980s, Brian Street, who is credited as one of founding members of NLS, began publishing on the shifting theories of

Literacy and contested the dominant conceptual models of literacy. Prior to NLS, the major assumption framing theories of literacy had been the autonomous/universalist model:

This model assumes literacy is a single thing, with a big L and a single Y—

Literacy…readers are treated as though they are autonomous, as though they can be

separated from the society that gives meaning to their uses of literacy. (Street, 1993, p.

82)

Similarly, new literacy theorist Colin Lankshear (1999) posited that the “autonomous model construes literacy as existing independently of specific contexts of social practice, having autonomy from material enactments of language…Accordingly literacy is seen as independent of an impartial toward trends and struggles in everyday life—a neutral variable” (p. 5). These scholars determined that, as a medium of study, literacy was a fixed notion devoid of cultural context and framed within a Western construct. James Collins (1995) argues that the autonomous or universalist model assumed “the literacy of the West was somehow exceptional to all other

37 literacies” (p. 76). By historically linking alphabetic literacy to unilinear cultural development, cultures with oral tradition were characterized as delayed and culturally inferior to western literate traditions. “Fundamental differences in human cognition and human cultural conditions were attributed not to differences in human nature or stages in civilization but rather to literacy, conceived as “technology of the intellect” (Collins, 1995). Proponents of the autonomous model, such as Goody and Watt (1963), argued that the ‘consequences’ of alphabetic literacy were

“basic transformations in the nature of knowledge and cultural tradition” (Collins, 1995).

Street (2001) argues that NLS, as an ideological model, extends and challenges the work of the “autonomous model” by including the sociocultural impact and structures of power that are present in literacy. Literacy studies with an autonomous model produce inquiries concentrated on “consequences of reading and writing for individual and cognitive processes” (p.

436-437) or “the functional operation of literacy within specific modern institutions” (p. 437).

He attributes this work to “educationalists, linguists, and psychologists [who] conceptualized literacy as a universal constant whose acquisition, once individual problems can be overcome by proper diagnosis and pedagogy, will lead to higher cognitive skills, improved logical thinking, critical inquiry and self-conscious reflection” (p. 437).

The shift in the dominant literacy perspective came with the ethnographic research of sociocultural linguists such as Dell Hymes and Shirley Brice Heath. Heath’s (1983) Ways with

Words was a major ethnographic study of language patterns and effects within community, home, and school settings across distinct social groups (Lankshear, 1999). Her work, alongside that of Brian Street (1984) and James Paul Gee (1989), helped propel a “social turn” in literacy studies. The major tenets for New Literacy Studies understood to be a sociocultural practice and endeavors such as reading and writing are understood in the context of the social, cultural,

38 political, economic, historical thought and experiences to which they are integral (Lankshear,

1999). The social turn then gave rise to inquiry that studied various types of practices. Street utilized the concept of literacy events—a term first coined by Heath (1983) to refer to any event in which reading and/or writing has a role—and expounded upon it. He also coined the term

“literacy practice (1984).” A literary practice not only refers to the event itself but also to the conceptions of reading and writing processes that people hold when they are engaged in the event (Street, 1993). Street argued that these two concepts within a framework of an ideological model make it possible to go out and start doing comparative research as well as organizing programs and developing curricula in more socially-conscious and explicit ways (p. 83).

The sociocultural perspective of literacy shifted the emphasis of literacy studies from analysis of individualized cognitive processes to analysis of Discourses. Gee (2001) theorized that, “any socially useful definition of literacy must be couched in terms of the notion of

Discourse,” thus literacy must be understood as a “mastery of or fluent control over a secondary

Discourse” (p. 529). Capital “D” Discourse refers to “ways of being in the world; they are forms of life that integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (Gee, 2001, p. 5260). Gee (2011) classifies

Discourses as primary and secondary. Primary Discourses are encountered early in life and give us “our initial and often enduring sense of self and sets the foundation of our culturally specific vernacular language...the language in which we speak and act as ‘everyday people’ (p. 38).

Secondary Discourses, on the other hand, are acquired and developed over time by our interactions in the public sphere. “They are acquired within institutions that are part and parcel of wider communities, whether these be religious groups, community organizations, schools, businesses, or governments” (Gee, 2011, p.38). Discourse and literacy are inextricably linked.

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Simply put, literacy is understood as “what people do with reading, writing, and texts in real world contexts and why they do it” (Perry, 2012, p. 54).

The research implications for an ideological model of literacy allow for a “rich field of inquiry into the naturalization of culture and power, and the relationships of institutions and ideologies of communication in the contemporary world” (Street, 2001, p. 437). Street describes the contributors to the ideological model: linguistics and anthropology. Admittedly, sociolinguists define “context” and “discourse” narrowly, but NLS gives these terms broader definitions. The key terms— “literacy events,” “literacy practices,” and “communicative practices”—have been essential in understanding social conditions and contexts of literacy, and also the function of power in literacy. Street (2001) undoes the great divide between “literate” and “oral” by stating “the concept of oral/literate practices provides us with a unit of study that enables more precise cross-cultural comparisons” (p. 436) and that both co-exist within the culture in a form of a continuum, rather than opposition. Oral communities have demonstrated the same bend toward “literate” cultures (Street, 2001).

NLS scholars have also interpreted the effect that the autonomous/universalist model has had on education. On the surface level, traditional “Literacy” has meant mastering decoding and encoding skills, entailing cognitive capacities involved in “cracking the alphabetic code”: word formation, phonics, grammar, and comprehension (Lankshear, 1999). The idea was that, once a student is “Literate,” he or she would have the building blocks for doing productive things and accessing meanings. They would be equipped to digest the curriculum and use their skills to further their success in life. Additionally, Literacy framed by the autonomous/universalist model engages in a restrictive dichotomy that labels as deficient students who do not and cannot perform literacy by Western standards, and decentralizes them in their own learning experiences.

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Using Foucault’s framework of power, Collins (1995) explains, “literacy becomes a crucial part of normalizing power, whereby deviations from the norms are defined as deficiencies and disabilities” (p. 83). The apolitical, “neutral” autonomous/universalist model establishes a standard of Literacy as a fixed practice, subordinating students who cannot immediately perform to these standards.

Critiques of the Sociocultural Perspective of Literacy Theory

While this study is anchored in the sociocultural perspective of literacy, it is important to note the limitations of NLS and literacy as social practice. First, scholars have contended with problems with the expanded definition of literacy. In an overview of the major theories of sociocultural theories of literacy, Perry (2012) notes, “given these wide definitions of literacy...one legitimate critique of this perspectives is that literacy can be so broadly defined as to be meaningless” (Perry, 2012, p. 64). This can create instances where any form of communication or thinking can be classified as literacy (Perry, 2012). In 1996, the New London

Group (1996) developed the theory of mulitiliteracies— “a different kind of pedagogy, one in which language and other modes of meaning are dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to achieve various cultural purposes” (p. 64). Their focus as a group was on the real-world contexts in which people practiced literacy, and their work extended the notion of literacy as a social practice to include multimodality (Perry, 2012).

Scholars of multiliteracies critique “the overemphasis on written forms of meaning-making and neglect of other modes of representation” (Perry, 2012, p. 58). “Due to emphasis on literacy events,” Perry (2012) explains, “those who work within this framework of literacy as social practice tend to focus on print and written texts” (p. 54).

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Other critiques of NLS and sociocultural literacy theories have highlighted the difficulty for these theories to speak across multiple contexts because of the methodology's deep excavation into a particular context (Perry, 2012, p. 65). Brandt and Clinton (2002) call to task the reactionary motivations behind the social practice perspective by questioning its intense preoccupation with local literacies at the expense of exploring how global factors manipulate and shape local literacies. Brandt and Clinton (2002) call for a study of literacies that doesn’t isolate local communities, but instead explores the ways in which literacy practices are not constructed in opposition to the global, social structures, and technology. Thus, Brandt and Clinton use the tacit great divide in social practice perspectives to discuss the ways literacies, particularly through the medium of objects, have the “ability to travel, integrate, and endure” and are trans- contextualized through these objects (p. 338). Their assumption regarding the portability and interconnectedness of local and global literacies by way of objects is an intriguing one because it recognizes the ever-evolving ways in which societies, even those in the most remote places, are constantly in contact and conversation with each other.

Brandt and Clinton’s (2002) discussion of material dimensions of literacy and “its capacity to connect, mediate, represent, and hold together multiple interests” (p. 355) conceptualize transnational literacy events as cultural products of literacy that is transmitted and coexists in both the sending and receiving country. Transnationalism is defined by Laguerre

(1998) “as the ability of immigrants to influence and participate in the political, social, and civil processes in both the sending and receiving countries” (p. 187). I can’t help but wonder how those objects carry, sustain, and interact with transnational literacy events. My own research with

Haitian students in Miami, Florida who have access to objects imported from Haiti and transplanted into their homes, raises questions about these artifacts. I wonder how the artifacts

42 carry with them, and interplay with, the cultural legacy of Haiti, and I wonder about the ways in which those students are connecting to the presence of these objects.

The Need for a Critical Sociocultural Approach to Literacy Theory

Literacy as sociocultural practice, particularly NLS, provides a foundational approach to literacy that acknowledges how identities and context impact practices. However, as a theory, it is not sufficient to unpack how the subjectivities of a particular community influences their literacies and practices, and play out in both micro and macro power structures. As Lewis &

Moje (2003) point out,

The limits of sociocultural research as it is currently conceived is that it does not

adequately explain how subjects are produced through language and discourse...its focus

on individuals thinking in different contexts to accomplish activities in practical settings

does not account for the production of subject through discourses that regulate practices

and rationalize actions and events. (p. 1980)

Critical literacy theory centers the literacies of historically marginalized students to examine the relationship between their histories, sociopolitical contexts, intersectional identities, and institutionalized power structures. While most mainstream sociocultural theories of literacy

“offer great potential for examining the microprocesses of power, agency, and identity building”

(Lewis & Moje, 2003, p. 1992), they fall short in connecting these processes to larger systems of power. A core focal point for critical theory is the analysis of power and how it manifests in different social structures. A critical perspective understands, “Power does not reside only in macro-structures; but rather is produced in and through individuals as they constituted in larger systems of power and as they participate in and reproduce those systems” (Lewis & Moje, 2003,

43 p. 1980). Lewis and Moje (2003) proposed “applying critical social theories to develop sociocultural perspectives that explicitly articulate the dynamic and dialogic power relationships between the social and individual, the global, and the local and the intuitional and the everyday”

(p. 1992). Critical sociocultural literacy theory does so “by examining relationships of power, identity, and agency…and the ways in which these elements shape learning and the production of knowledge” (p. 1980).

Literacy research with immigrant Black girls, who embody transnational literacies and the literacy practices of multiple communities of the Diaspora, requires a critical sociocultural approach that leans into the principles of critical theory. For Black immigrant communities, such as Haitians, it is vital to understand how histories of xenophobia, stigmatization, and exclusion tie into the literacies of their community. Critical approaches to literacy theory engage students from Black immigrant backgrounds in ways traditional conceptualizations of curriculum and literacy instruction have not, and, in some ways, cannot.

Towards a Critical Literacy Pedagogy

As an active participant at HELP, it was important to consider how to incorporate critical pedagogy into my classroom practices. NCLB and CCSS are modern reiterations of classical curriculum theory, which champions social efficiency (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman,

1995). Research demonstrates that these policies are essentially ill-equipped to recognize and capitalize on the ever-evolving nature of literacy (Morrell, 2008; Shelton & Altwerger, 2014).

The reality of NCLB’s legacy has been state accountability systems that produced inflated results; widespread cheating to meet annual targets; a curriculum with less time for history, science, and the arts; teaching to the test; and meager academic gains on the National

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Educational Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (Ravitch, 2010). Sadly, the student population who bore the brunt of NCLB and its subsequent policies failures were often the children who were intended to benefit from them. The streamlining and narrowing of curriculum and literacy instruction worked to further isolate non-majority, poor, Black and Brown students.

My work as a researcher and as the literacy instructor for 27 Black immigrant girls and boys at the HELP program was to situate my classroom in opposition the testing culture and curriculum in traditional secondary literacy classrooms.

For this reason, I advocate for a critical literacy pedagogy in the classroom to ignite literacy instruction that restores multiple definitions of literacy and encourages teachers and students to speak critically of power, privilege, representations, and various forms of oppressions. As a research paradigm, critical theory “challenges the biased nature of all knowledge, specifically knowledge that was transmitted via dominant institutions such as schools and the media” (Morrell, 2009, p. 97). The principles of critical theory encourage a meaningful gaze on social conditions that deconstruct the biases of dominant institutions but also couch them in historical processes that have contributed to those conditions. Freire’s (1970)

Pedagogy of the Oppressed often influences such pedagogical re-imaginings for literacy theorists.

In Morrell’s (2009) study, critical theory and pedagogy were used to dismantle the concepts of achievement and performance within literacy instruction. The central claim is that the “achievement gap” and the move towards standardized testing of literacy alienate students whose talents reside outside of the framework used to assess and evaluate literacy performance and achievement (Morell, 2009). Morrell engaged students in culturally relevant research projects to demonstrate the ways in which the same students, burdened by low expectations of

45 high literacy attainment, were able to engage in sophisticated levels of historicity and critical reflection, and alter the discourse surrounding their abilities.

Students became storytellers, researchers, teachers, historians, and activists by investigating social issues within their communities and then thinking through solutions to solve them. By presenting their lived experiences as data to community stakeholders, students in both projects became social theory scholars, able to articulate the interconnectivity of their lived experiences and the roles of schools in promoting social inequality. Morrell also highlighted the potential of multimodality in critical literacy instruction; students engaged in narrative writing, created art works and film, and used hip-hop and fictional texts to reference their realities.

According to Morrell (2009), critical research “can help us to identify quality teaching in literacy classrooms even as it helps us to refine (or even redefine) our notions of curricula, pedagogy, literacy and achievement” (p. 97).

As a pedagogical framework, critical literacy contains possibilities of pushing teachers and students to think critically of power, language, and representations in naturalized texts. In order to ensure that attention is paid to the sociocultural approach to literacy while upholding critical perspectives, I advocate for a critical sociocultural literacy approach. A critical sociocultural approach to literacy can expand the scope of research concerning Haitian students by supporting inquiry into ways students are making meaning, expressing, and/or communicating their positionality as racialized, gendered, immigrant young people.

Literacy Theories by Black Women for Black Women

Admittedly, I would be remiss not to point out that white scholars have authored the majority of seminal NLS and critical texts. It would be a disservice not to investigate the ways in

46 which African American women literacists—women working from similar intersections of marginalization as myself—impact, expound upon, and redirect Literacy Studies.

I have purposefully focused on the works of African American women such as Elaine

Richardson, Maisha T. Fisher, and Jeanine M. Staples, whose literacy research has expanded the theoretical framework of NLS to encompass African Americans’ specific sociocultural and political lived experiences, and iterations of literacy in the United States. The overview of literacy studies helped me connect to the sociocultural embrace of NLS. But there is still much to learn from literacists who theorize from similar margins as myself. Their work not only provides theoretical grounding for studying literacies of students of the African Diaspora, but also has implications for literacy education and the ways in which Reading/Language Arts (RELA) educators inform their teaching practices and make use of the divergent ways Black students engage literacy.

Richardson (2008) accesses NLS, sociolinguistics, and rhetoric and composition to generate her concept of African American literacy. She broadly defines African American literacy as the ability of people of African descent to “accurately read their experiences of being in the world of others and to act on this knowledge in a manner beneficial for self-preservation, economic, spiritual, and cultural uplift” (p. 340). Through an overview of literature, close examinations of her students’ written artifacts, interviews, and personal accounts as an educator,

Richardson is able to illustrate the Black discourse styles (also referred to as Black rhetorical features) that African American students experiment with within academic settings. What's important to note early on is that Richardson's (1995; 2000) discussion of Black rhetorical features in African American student writing is framed in understanding the uniqueness of how students make use of these features. This approach does not engage a deficiency or remediation

47 approach, which is often the response when students use nonconventional evocation of their voice in academic writing.

In a study centering on the academic personas acquired by two African American

Vernacular English (AAVE)-oriented beginning writers, Richardson (1995) explored the degree to which literacy experiences (home and school) affect students’ lives. She gauged this range by their speech in informal settings and the style they employed in academic tasks. The study maintained: 1) AAVE-oriented students prefer to employ Black rhetorical patterns in their writing, 2) students’ meaning is suppressed by the constructions of the narrowly defined academic essay, and 3) the distinct learning and language styles of AAVE-oriented students must be tapped in order to form a union between the discourse patterns of academia and the discourse patterns of AAVE-oriented students. Richardson includes notable studies to build on her understanding of AAVE in academic writing: 1) Noonan-Wagner’s (1981) study which suggests that Black discourse style is maintained and transmitted by the linguistic and cultural traditions of the church, 2) Visor’s (1987) study that argued AAVE-oriented students’ writing evinces

“cultural contextualization features,” and 3) AAVE-oriented students “insert narrative into written expository text and sometimes use it to carry the main point” (Ball as cited in

Richardson, 1995, p. 5). Additional Black rhetorical features highlighted by Richardson (2000) that are pertinent for my theoretical understanding of Black discourse styles are listed as follows:

“rhythmic, dramatic, evocative language; reference to color-race-ethnicity; use of proverbs, aphorisms, Biblical verses; sermonic tone; direct address-conversational tone; cultural references; ethnolinguistic idioms; verbal inventiveness; and cultural values-community consciousness” (p. 6).

Richardson’s (2000) study of Black students’ literacy experiences offers a conceptual

48 framework in Black discourse styles to incorporate into my study of Haitian students’ literacies.

They include the concept of cultural ideographic use of language. Richardson defines this as the

“invocation of crucial concepts in a cultural groups’ shared historical experience “which serve to trip the sacred register of Black experiences,” (p. 6). The second Black rhetorical feature is the revision of “freedom as literacy” (Richardson, 1995, p. 6), which is historically linked to

“illiterate” slaves seeking liberation by attaining print literacy skills. I argue that, applied to a modern context, the freedom-as-literacy theoretical concept speaks to the linking of freedom with the ability to read and write the world you live in as a person of color.

As slow as literacy research has been in recognizing the marginalization of African

American and African descended students, it has been even slower in recognizing the exclusively marginalizing experiences of Black girls (Richardson, 2002; 2009). Black girls and women occupy a unique matrix of oppression; a phenomenon in which their racialized position as Black is compounded and complicated by the gendered positionality of girlhood and womanhood

(Collins, 2008). Crenshaw (1990) was crucial in pointing out how the marginalization of women of color, particularly with regards to sexual violence, was a result of “intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend[ed] not to be represented within the discourses of either feminism or antiracism” (pp. 1243-1244). Her work on the intersections of race and gender highlighted “the need to account for the multiple grounds of identity when considering how the social world is constructed” (Crenshaw, 1990, p. 1245). In efforts to center

Black girl literacies, Richardson’s inquiries build off Crenshaw’s (1990) concept of intersectionality and probes the epistemological groundings in which adolescent Black girls choose to be literate.

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Richardson’s (2002; 2009) feminist perspective on African American female4 literacies defines them as “vernacular resistance arts and cultural productions that are created to carve out free spaces in oppressive locations such as classrooms, the streets, and workplaces” (p. 678).

African American girls’ literacies “refer[s] to the constellation of African American cultural identities, social locations, and social practices that influence the ways members of this discourse group make meaning and assert themselves socio-politically in subordinate as well as official contexts” (Richardson, 2009, p. 755).

African American language and literacy traditions are dynamic and fluid cultural matrices from which revolutionary life- and culture-sustaining ideas and practices can be fashioned (Richardson, 2002). Richardson (2002) also points out that these literacies are

“communicated through storytelling, conscious manipulation of silence and speech, code/style shifting, and signifying, among other verbal and nonverbal performances” (p. 680). Particularly for Black girls, mother tongue literacies—defined as the language mothers transmit to their children, facilitates “how we know what we know” (p. 677)—are disadvantaged in the classroom and often need to be negotiated by students. She concludes that, “rather than being a barrier to literacy achievement, Black girls’ language practices, knowledges and understandings can be, and have been, used advantageously to help Black [girls] in their literacy experiences at school”

(Richardson, 2002, p. 698). What’s useful in Richardson’s work is that she names the very particular Black discourse styles that Black girls utilize to disrupt white supremacist patriarchy when engaging in literacy practices.

4 “African American female literacies” is the language that Elaine Richardson uses to describe the literacies of young Black girls. However, the term “female” is problematic in that its use can sometimes denote inferiority or contempt (Brown, para. 14). Therefore, from this point on, girl and/or woman will replace Richardson’s use of “female”.

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Richardson’s (2008) work is vital in theorizing African American literacies and employing sociocultural perspectives to speak to the lived experiences of Black youth and the deliberate acts of resistance and affirmation present in their literacy practices. Her work explicitly details the iterations of Black discourse style, providing scholars such as myself with units of analysis to interrogate literacies of Black and Brown students. Richardson also demonstrates how traditional academic spaces marginalize the literacies of Black youth by penalizing Black discourse styles that resist dominant conventions. African American Literacies and African American Girl/Woman Literacies further the urgency for dismantling formal academic spaces, as they currently exist.

However, Richardson’s studies are confined to traditional academic spaces, creating a dynamic where she interrogates the suppressions of African American women, and not so much how they thrive. With my proposed study of Haitian youth literacies, I extend Richardson’s conversation by inquiring into the iterations of African American literacies in academic spaces that not only support their literacy practices, but also actively cultivate them. I am curious as to how these literacies proliferated in a setting not bounded by institutional restrictions. I also build on Richardson’s work by complicating her theory of African American literacies by studying students with linguistic identities that aren’t solely tied to the English language. This creates opportunities to consider the ways Black discourse styles incorporate multiple languages during instances of resistance and/or affirmation. What are the types of phrases, sayings, and colloquialisms that students evoke, and under what circumstances, when activating their linguistic connections to their Haitian heritage? Special considerations must also be made when discussing young Haitian girl literacies and forms of resistance in patriarchal Haitian cultural contexts. Overall, Richardson lays the groundwork for theorizing Diasporic contexts in literacy

51 research.

The next foundation step in constructing an emancipatory literacy classroom is investigating mechanisms by which African Americans created spaces specifically designed to nurture their literacies and specific literacy practices. Fisher’s (2009), Black Literate Lives:

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives is grounded in understanding the varied nature of literacy and how literacy has been especially critical in empowering people of African descent.

In this work, Fisher aims to examine how people of African descent have employed literate practices to create and sustain independent institutions in the United States. She highlights these institutions’ focus on the production and preservation of written and spoken works while generating a discourse of self-reliance among Black people (p. 3). Black Literate Lives wrestles with two concepts germane to African American literacy: 1) the freedom-through-literacy trope employed similarly in Richardson (1995), and 2) Independent Black Institutions (IBI). Both ideas frame the ways in which literacy among African Americans emerges and is sustained.

In theorizing Black literate lives, Fisher (2009) argues that “early Black literacy practices were not solely carried out for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment, but they were political acts that could be considered early forms of institution building” (p. 13-14). Using research from Lee

(1992) and Peterson (1995), Fisher (2009) drives the point that the term “institution” needs to be broken from its reputation as “bureaucratic and reposition[ed] as a catalyst for subaltern groups to establish far-reaching forums for organization around specific purposes and goals” (p. 14).

Fisher’s emphasis on Independent Black Institutions (IBI) is rooted in the historical denial of access to equitable educational opportunities. For that reason, Fisher investigates “unexpected sources of Black literate traditions in the twenty-first century in out-of-school and school settings” (p. 3). Thus, IBIs are not necessarily framed as tangible buildings, but places where

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Africans in the US historically congregated to share teachings, with literacy at the vehicle of these teachings.

Fisher (2009) works to build a theory of African American literacy with a major focus on how literacy and activism inform each other in the lives of African Americans. The major principles in Fisher’s (2009) theory of Black literate lives are that: 1) Black literacy is historically rooted in the freedom through literacy trope—learning to read and write were understood by the enslaved as gateways towards reclaiming their humanity, 2) Black literacy encompasses a wide range of texts so as to negate the historical tendency to exclude orality as a legitimate form of literacy, 3) community and self-determination are consistent motifs in scholarship and recovery work of Black readers, writers, and speakers. Fisher’s conceptualization of Black literacy theory aligns with Richardson’s framework of African

American literacies in that they both engage in literacy as freedom tropes, underscore the important political nature of Black literacies, and emphasize the resistive and critical nature of

Black literacy events. This work helps fill a very specific focus, somewhat unexplored in the conceptualization of literacy using an NLS theoretical framework.

Last, I consider work with marginalized groups by Staples (2012; 2011). This research underscores the importance of the actualization of critical consciousness through the use of media texts and popular culture narratives (PCN), both of which contribute to development of literacies in young people. Staples (2011) notes the objective of her work is to focus “particularly on the ways marginalized individuals and groups’ converging identities (such as race, gender, age, religious affiliation, and socioeconomic status) intersect and are mediated via their literate lives and in relationships to popular culture narratives, particularly in modern times” (p. 80).

In an action research study, Staples (2012) looked at how one African American male

53 student, who was labeled as “severely disengaged” (p. 57), engages the PCN The Shawshank

Redemption (1994) to critically situate the lives of young urban Black men in the city. Staples uses Critical Race Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis as conceptual and analytical tools, respectively, to inquire into “David’s” race and gendered consciousness throughout his literacy practices. This study concludes that his engagements with PCNs after school “helped him to make deep sense of the world he perceived in PCNs, and more importantly, the world he navigated as a ‘nigga’— a potentially negatively raced and gendered individual in the world”

(Staples, 2012, p. 70).

Staples (2012) argues that students’ “race and gender consciousness speak to and intermingle with intellectual work and literate abilities” (p. 55) when formal academic spaces permit the centering of their voices. This is especially true when students critically engage PCNs as sociocultural texts that are “integral to daily life and, and therefore integral to the literate experiences and endeavors” (p. 56). She argues that “attention to such work and consciousness provides valuable information about the aptitude, sensitivities, and motivations of students who are labeled ‘disengaged’ and/or socially challenged in multiple contexts” (p. 55). The study found that students were able to engage in critical literacy projects and produce intellectual work from their collective literacy practices, literacy practices that are usually deemed beyond their capabilities as Black students in traditionally sanctioned school spaces.

Staples (2011) has also been diligent in placing African American women at the center of literacy studies, and ushers in the third wave of NLS, which recognizes Black women immediately. “The Revelation(s) of Asher Levi: An Iconographic Literacy Event as a Tool for the Exploration of Fragmented Selves in New Literacies Studies after 9/11” (Staples, 2011) investigates how African American women in an urban area employ “new literacies in the

54 teaching/learning spaces of their personal lives to explore and respond to stories in post 9/11 popular culture narratives” (p. 79). She utilizes endarkened feminist epistemologies “to understand the ways members’ racialized and gendered identities intersected a collective spiritual epistemological framework for knowing, action and leadership” (p. 83). The study eventually uncovered the ways collective voices of Black women coalesce in response to trauma to form coalitions, affinity, and political kinships (Staples, 2011). The implications of this study highlighted the ways NLS engages African American women, and the potential and possibilities of NLS when diligently applied to marginal groups such as African American women.

Why Place Matters in Literacy Research of Black Immigrant Girls

As one of the oldest countries in the Western Hemisphere, second only to the United

States of America, the island nation of Haiti is a place known for achieving the “unthinkable” as the first Black republic born from a successful slave revolt (Trouillot, 1995). It also carries the legacy of imperialism, despotism, corruption, colorism, and poverty as a postcolonial state. That history and its embedded meanings follow the Haitian Diaspora and influences the context of reception for nearly 1.1 million individuals who were either born in Haiti or reported Haitian ancestry in the US (Schultz & Batalova, 2017). The largest concentrations of Haitian immigrants between 2011-2015 were found in “the metropolitan areas of greater Miami, New York, Boston, and Orlando areas,” which “accounted for 74 percent of Haitians in the United States” (Schultz

& Batalova, 2017, Distribution by State and Key Cities). The South Florida counties (Miami-

Dade, FL; Broward County, FL; Kings County, NY; and Palm Beach County, FL) are home to the greatest US populations of Haitian immigrants; they account for approximately 44% of the total Haitian population in the United States (Schultz & Batalova, 2017).

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Haitians’ racial and ethnic identities have a long history of racism and xenophobia in

Miami. In understanding how the girls in this study navigate Miami as a place, it’s equally important to understand how the place had been socially constructed to exclude and actively marginalize Haitian immigrants. These obstacles notwithstanding, Haitian immigrants have been able to carve out space in a hostile city and leave cultural imprints in the prominent Haitian enclave of Little Haiti. As newer generations of Haitian Americans continue to shape the social landscape of South Florida, it is also important to note how those shifts manifest in places and contribute to the community’s transnational literacy practices.

The Haitian Diasporic Experience to the US

Haitian migration to the United States can traced back to the early 19th century but really took hold in the modern era in the 1960s. Migrants from Haiti began arriving in larger numbers following the collapse of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in the late 1980s (Seraphin,

2013). In 1981, President Reagan marked Haitian refugees fleeing the island as being unauthorized immigrants who posed a “serious national problem detrimental to the United

States” (Shell-Weiss, 2009, p. 212). While Congress passed the Indochina Migration and

Refugee Assistance Act and the Cuban Refugee Act of 1966 to provide preferential treatment and federal loans and subsidies to Cuban and Vietnamese immigrants fleeing communist regimes, Haitian immigrants and refugees did not receive the same level of support in their attempts to settle in the US. Haitian refugees who were able to make it on shore were detained at

Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida. They had limited access to Creole interpreters or legal aid to assist in their cases. Although the National Council of Churches and Miami’s Haitian

Refugee Center sued and won on behalf of Haitians receiving refugee rights, the Florida district

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INS deported many of the 3,000 Haitians who assumed their protection. Only 1% of their cases were referred to the high commissioner (Stepick, 1982).

The interdiction policies of Haitian refugee vessels by the US Coast Guard, the high rate of incarceration of undocumented Haitians who made it to U.S. shores, and high disapproval rates of political asylum reinforced the notion that “no other immigrant group suffered more U.S. government prejudice and discrimination than Haitians” (A. Stepick, C.D. Stepick, Eugene,

Teed, Labiessiere, 2001, p. 236-237). In addition, the global AIDS epidemic impacted the context of reception for Haitian migrants . “In the United States, AIDS [had] been labeled an

“African” or “Haitian” disease” (Gilman, 1987 p. 100) and Haiti was the only country signaled out with the Center for Disease Control’s high-risk group designation, the 4H: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians (Gilman, 1987). This designation “compounded already existing stereotypes about Haitians, adding to the existing list of negative labels, such as

‘boat people,’ ‘voodoo worshipers,’ and ‘illiterate.’ Haitian immigrants were portrayed as illegal aliens with AIDS who were incarcerated in concentration camps” (Santana & Dandy, 2000, p.

162). The combination of the aforementioned events created a highly prejudicial social climate that made acculturation particularly difficult for Haitian immigrants (Seraphin, 2013).

The Children of Haitian Immigrants

The hurdles placed before Haitian settlement in the United States has had lasting impacts on the mobility of their communities. Alongside racially discriminatory immigration policies, stereotypes, and difficulty entering the labor market, Haitian students struggle to achieve at the same levels of Asian and Latino/a students. Ironically, though “both Haitian students and their parents have high and stable educational aspirations” (Stepick, et al., 2001, p. 254), only a small

57 number of Haitian students achieve those aspirations. Portes and Rumbaut (2014) explain, “As with Mexicans, this hostile environment, coupled with the modest education and economic resources of most Haitians, has given rise to an impoverished ethnic community that functions more as a trap than as a platform for upward mobility” (p. 214). Because the children of Black immigrants cannot opt out of their ethnic and racial identities, and cannot opt out of the prejudices and discrimination associated with these differences, they experience “a barrier in the path of occupational mobility and social acceptance. Immigrant children’s ethnic identities, their aspirations, and their academic performance are affected accordingly” (Portes& Rumbaut, 2014, p. 380). Research has shown that, in relations to other immigrant peer groups, “Haitians have the lowest levels of academic achievement, and achievement appeared to decline as students advanced through high school” (Stepick et al., 2001, p. 261). Almost 48% of Haitian student participants at the age of 14 reported in the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) that “they expected to suffer discrimination, no matter how much education they acquired”

(Portes & Rumbaut, 2014, p. 381). As mentioned earlier, Haitian communities are concentrated in urban centers. Immigrant youths from poorer backgrounds are also exposed to a triple educational handicap that hinders upward mobility: low-status families, weaker co-ethnic communities, and poorer schools. Diminished educational opportunities because of widespread discrimination and targeted governmental action left Haitian communities “generally weak and lacking the resources to provide entrepreneurial opportunities for adult immigrants or educational training for their children” (Portes& Rumbaut, 2014, p. 286).

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Place as a Conceptual Framework

Miami is a transnational global city, which acts as a conduit for Haitian literacy practices.

Place as a theoretical framework is an important and useful discussion, as it will help establish the sociocultural context occupied by Haitian girls in this study. I have used Gruenewald (2003) and Cresswell’s (2004) framework of place as sociologically constructed to inform my inquiry.

In this framework, Gruenewald (2003) posits, “Being aware of social places as cultural products requires that we bring them into our awareness for conscious reflection and unpack their particular cultural meanings” (p. 626-627). Cresswell (2004) defines meanings of place as “the way we experience that place and the meanings we ascribe to it” (p. 30). According to Cresswell

(2004) these meanings are “produced by the media, politicians, and by the people who live there” (p. 30). Moreover, Cresswell explains that, in critical geography, to say a place is socially constructed means, “to say that it is within the human power to change it” (p. 30).

Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem on our Minds (2010) explores the importance of place to the development of literacies of urban youth. The study was an inquiry into “how youth literacy practices are influenced by a politics of place that is connected to local histories, discourses, and lived experiences” (p. 6). In many ways, Miami’s growing issues of gentrification— displacement of Black and Latinx communities, increased cost of living, and the

“whitetification” of historically Black and Brown urban places— parallel Kinloch’s Harlem context, a critical site for critical youth Literacies. Kinloch argues that the

youth are aware of the narratives of place by local residents just as much as they are

aware of the changes occurring within and throughout local urban communities and the

ways in which they, themselves are negatively positioned within a discourse of spatial

transformation. (p. 179)

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Kinloch also argues that “community change greatly impacts the literacy lives of youth in- and out-of-school” (p. 183). From her study with high school students, teachers, and community organizers in Harlem, Kinloch (2010) advocates for new literate traditions in which various literacy classroom assignments center Black urban youth by engaging their meanings, values, and representations of place. Ultimately, “teachers can collaborate with students to examine text- based, local, and/or global communities as a way to stimulate critical capacities, that in turn, can support students’ educational advancement” (Kinloch, 2010, p.187). Therefore, my preoccupation with “place” as a unit of inquiry in this study aims to understand how the participants note and engage in markedly Black/Haitian spaces from their perspectives as Black immigrant girls, and they ways they position themselves in relation to those historically significant cultural places.

In thinking through my attachments and longings for Miami, I have come to conceptualize the city as home. Cresswell (2004) explains the home metaphor as an “exemplary kind of place where people feel a sense of attachment and rootedness. Home, more than anywhere else, is seen as a center of meaning and a field of care…home is where you can be yourself” (p. 24). Miami as ‘home’ feels like sunshine and almost stifling humidity. Miami as

‘home’ smells like plantains, rice and beans, and stewed chicken. Miami as ‘home’ looks like palm trees nestled into concrete, blue and red Haitian flags draped on cars and painted on storefronts, and the bright floral colors of the Caribbean splashed throughout the northeast region of the city. Miami as ‘home’ sounds like Spanish and Haitian Creole fusing together in public spaces. When I land at the airport, I wait for the lilting of the two languages throughout the terminals to signal that I have indeed arrived. Miami as ‘home’ sounds like Kompa music blaring from car stereos and people sharing stories and gossip in loud, animated Haitian interjections.

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My experiences in the city of Miami inform my perspective and my conceptualization of

‘Miami as home.’ However, it is important that I articulate, as a researcher studying Haitian youth, that I am connected to the city of Miami for all of its ethnic and cultural affordances— affordances that create a sense of attachment and deep rootedness. I am never too far from the sights, sounds, and celebrations of my parents’ homeland, and I am able to activate all facets of my identity: Black Haitian American intellectual woman, daughter, granddaughter, sister, and aunt. The city of Miami has been first in helping me to understand the functions of race, ethnicity, and culture. Moving away from the Haitian cultural context of Miami has made me realize just how much those cultural institutions were a part of my epistemological grounding of

‘home.’ It’s one of the few places in the country where I do not have to explain my name; it fits perfectly well within the seams of Miami’s social sphere.

Both sites that I have chosen to investigate have gone through these sorts of re- construction. However, Cresswell points out that political geographer Robert Sack and philosopher of place J.E. Malpas warn that place cannot be reduced to social constructions.

Sacks (as cited in Cresswell, 2004), warns:

Place’s role in the human world runs a lot deeper than [social processes that construct

place]—it is a force that cannot be reduced to the social, the natural, or the cultural. It is,

rather, a phenomenon that brings these worlds together and, indeed, in part produced

them. (p.31)

As people, we knead a geographical local to manifest multiple representation of ourselves.

Gruenewald’s (2003) foundations of place also work to show the interconnectedness of the different dimensions of place: phenomenological, sociologically constructed, ideological, political and ecological. Miami has a combination of place-making dimensions that contribute to

61 the larger structures of Miami as place. The scope of this project is to investigate one aspect of a rather complex setting. Little Haiti is a crucial site of acculturation for Haitian and Haitian-

American immigrants. Their struggles against racially motivated interdiction and immigration policies and the subsequent difficulties carving out an existence in Miami are very much a part of my research sites. As Gruenewald (2003) warns, an uncritical assessment of these places would reduce them to cultural tourist spots without any real understanding of how people have made their imprint in Miami.

Little Haiti: A Contested Place

Figure 4 (Seraphin, 2015) Picture taken on 87th Street and NE 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL

Projections of Haitian immigrants as illegal “boat people” have shaped the early experiences of Haitian immigrants and created hostile acculturation environments (Seraphin,

2013). However, Little Haiti and its significance to the city of Miami have shifted in the past ten years, with events in the past year highlighting intense resistance of Haitian immigrants to the gentrifying efforts of Miami Design District developers and gallery owners.

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Geographically, Little Haiti has multiple meanings for the residents who live in its newly recognized neighborhood borders. The naming of a place is closely linked to the identity and experiences constructed on the place. By November of 2014, The Northeast 2nd Partnership

(NE2P) an entity of the Little Haiti Small Business Association, focused on revitalizing the area

(Miami Herald, 2014). Citing the gentrification of neighboring Black and Latino neighborhoods of Overtown, Midtown and Wynwood, NE2P Director, Joann Milord rationalizes her organization’s philosophy in an OP-ED:

It is inevitable that this change will happen in Little Haiti… Little Haiti has the potential

to be the ultimate authentic Haitian cultural experience. Therefore, preparation is key to

surviving the change and capitalizing on the growth of tourism in Miami. In other words,

NE2P is attempting to revitalize the area while preserving authentic Haitian culture, art

and history — and the people who produce them (Miami Herald, 2014, para. 7-8).

However, in the following year, Little Haiti residents protested against the arrival of developers who are pricing them out of their homes and reshaping the areas in ways that do not sustain

Haitian culture, nor redirect economic growth back to its residents. Protest organizer Marleine

Bastien, the executive director of Fanm Ayisyen nan Miyami (Haitian Women of Miami) communicated that, “This is the story of business and homeowners being pressured and threatened one minute and sweet-talked the next to sell their homes. They’re being offered two; three times the property [value] of their homes to get out. Gentrification is here, baby” (Elfrink,

2015, para. 3).

The struggle for Little Haiti’s future has changed since I was a girl, and since my parents rented their first apartment following their emigration from Haiti in the 1980s. What was once a blighted neighborhood of unwanted Black immigrants, has transformed into a cultural

63 symbol, primed for tourist consumption. And since transformed Little Haiti has been able to shirk some of the Discourses of destitution, its residents are in a tough fight to maintain the neighborhood that was carved from an unwanted neighborhood into a rich representation of

Haiti’s transnational imprint on the city of Miami. It is important for this study to gauge how the girls are making meaning of the places and spaces they inhabit, and how their diasporic identities imprint the city of Miami.

Rethinking the Research Paradigms for Haitian Youth

Like any field, literacy theory has taken many turns. The social turn in literacy theory is important for initiating the much-needed counter to the universalist model of literacy—one devoid of sociocultural contexts—to include the different arenas which contribute to the literacy practices of people’s lived experience as racialized, gendered, and culturally-situated beings.

Scholarship from Richardson (2009; 2003; 2002; 2000;1995), Fisher (2009), and Staples (2011;

2010; 2016) help facilitate another turn in which literacy theory centers Black lived experiences, stylizations, and practices, particularly the ways African American youth engage literacy practices that critique the racialized, politicized, and gendered world that Black people occupy in the United States.

Still, literacy research has the task of considering how the complexities of immigrant status, ethnic identity, and racialized experiences intersect in the literacy practices of adolescent

Haitian students in the United States. As established by Moll and Gonzales (2001) language- minority students, such as Haitian youth, harbor funds of knowledge. These are “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and wellbeing” (p. 160). Moll and Gonzalez (2001) make clear that access

64 to students’ funds of knowledge only work under conditions in which literacy goes beyond minimal interpretations as the ability to read and write, “to a view of literacy as a resource which offers possibilities of access” (p. 171).

Educational research of Haitian youth is traditionally dominated by two lenses: educational attainment as Black language-minority students, and ethnic and racial identity development. It is important to note that both lenses are important and have been instrumental in shedding light on the unique experiences and hurdles to school success Haitian students must overcome. The following section focuses on studies of Haitian youth from these perspectives.

Educational Attainment of Haitian Adolescents as Black Language-Minority Students

Understanding the Haitian Diaspora’s context of reception to the United States is critical to contextualizing the opportunities of educational attainment for the children of Haitian migrants. As violence, economic turmoil, and political instability intensified in Haiti during the

Duvalier Era and thereafter (from the late 1960s to the late 1980s), large numbers of Haitian emigrants fled the island. New York City and Miami were premiere relocation sites. The most desperate Haitians charted across the Atlantic, seeking asylum along the shores of South Florida

(Stepick, 1982).

In the early 1990s and 2000s, studies calling attention to the lack of educational attainment5 for Haitian immigrant students were crucial in creating equitable access to schooling for students in a time when public school systems were inexperienced and insensitive to the needs of this relatively new Black immigrant group. When surveying the academic achievement

5 In this paper, educational attainment "refers to the number of years of schooling that an individual completes" (Nicolas, DeSilva & Rabenstein, 2009, p. 666).

65 of immigrant children in the United States using longitudinal data, Stepick, Stepick, Eugene,

Teed, and Labissiere (2001) found that “overall Haitians have the lowest levels of academic achievement, and achievement appeared to decline as students advanced through high school” (p.

261). The negative conceptions and deliberate historical silencing of Haiti (James, 1989;

Trouillot,1995), and discriminatory immigration policies directed towards Haitian immigrants

(Stepick, 1982; Stepick & Swartz, 1998) contributed to the subsequent academic consequences for children of Haitian immigrants in the public school systems (Stepick et al., 2001). The negative context of reception6 (Stepick et al., 2001) for Haitian immigrants has impacted their chances for social mobility and acceptance into society. In addition to the stigmatization of their immigrant background, Haitian students as Black language-minorities students dealt with the following linguistic misalignments.

Misrepresentations/Inadequate Access to Bilingual Education

In the early 1990s, Haitian immigrant students were often miscategorized as African

American. As a result, schools did not provide bilingual instruction. Duguay (2012) argues that

“language proficiency in the main language of the destination country is one of the most significant factors in the integration of immigrants” (p. 306). Also, Haitian immigrant students mostly had inadequate and/or uninformed teacher personnel and bilingual programs to support

Haitian-Creole as a home language (Zephir, 1997; Zephir, 1999; Ballenger, 1992). In a study of

Haitian educators and administrators and bilingual programs for Haitian students, Kleyn and

Reyes (2011) revisit the conversation of a restrictive Black/white dichotomy in the US, which

6 Context of reception is a term used to describe the receiving conditions of immigrants in host countries.

66 doesn’t allow ‘Black’ to signify something other than African American. Kleyn and Reyes

(2011) conclude that the erroneous interchangeability of “Black” and “African American” in the

US erases “the unique immigration and linguistic experiences, as well as transnational identities of Haitians” (p. 218); in effect, such identities can be lost under the overarching label of “Black.”

Devaluation of Haitian Creole as a Linguistic Resource

As a teacher practitioner, Ballenger (1992) exposes her struggles working with preschool- aged Haitian students. Her study is honest in exposing the Discourse associated with the linguistic identity of Haitian students. She points out the assumptions harbored against Haitian students: “they are “wild, they [have] ‘no language,’ their mothers [are] ‘depressed’” (Ballenger,

1992, p.199). As Hebblethwaithe (2010) reports, Haitian Creole is the third most frequently spoken language in Florida. Still, Hebblethwaithe reveals the impositions that mark Creole: “the sociolinguistic situation in Miami weighs significantly on the way Haitian-Americans use

Haitian Creole and English. Social and economic data show that Haitian Creole has a ‘low’ status and English a ‘high’ one in Miami” (p. 410). As such, Haitian Americans “are more likely to demonstrate ambivalence toward Haitian Creole than other groups to their respective languages” (p. 411) demonstrating that Haitian Creole is still positioned as a marginalized language.

Nevertheless, Buxton, Lee, and Mahotiere (2009) emphasize the ways that Haitian culture remains persistently bicultural; Creole and French are constantly interacting with each other and signify power and status within Haitian social worlds. In an examination of Haitian parents, students, and teachers’ perceptions of current educational opportunities for Haitians in

South Florida, Buxton et al. (2009) find that parents encouraged students to construct linguistic

67 identities and actor networks that were rooted in traditional Haitian languages and values. The frameworks of this study were the concepts of linguistic identity and actor networks, which contends that, “social constructs, such as schools, classrooms, languages, and dialects, do not have clear boundaries” (Buxton et al., p. 52). Instead, they are “fluid in form and content as intersections of multiple networks shaping cities, communities, schools, pedagogies and teacher and student practices” (Buxton et al., p. 52). These conceptual frameworks were used to determine how the participants constructed linguistic identities to represent their social, cultural, and linguistic transitions from Haiti to the US, and determine what social and academic networks of the participants construct language as a barrier and resource for them. Buxton et al. (2008) conclude by linking language to identity for Haitian students and communities. Its implications are that schools as a social construct and actor network have the power to conflict or support the linguistic cultural resources of Haitian students. As evidenced in earlier studies, historically, schools tend to conflict with the linguistic cultural resources of Haitian students.

Racial and Ethnic Positioning of Haitian Adolescent Students

The second traditional research lens examining Haitian students explores their racial and ethnic positioning. As Black immigrant youth, Haitian students have to first contend with the reality of racialized educational disparities in the United States. Schwartz and Stiefiel (2006) uphold this finding by concluding that much of the disparity across different student demographics can be attributed to issues of socioeconomic status and racial disparities in performance “which do continue to disadvantage poor, Black and Hispanic students, whether immigrant or native-born” (p. 46). In summary, as Black youth, Haitian students are impacted by the United States’ historical legacy of marginalizing students from low socioeconomic status,

68 and children of color.

Woldemikael’s (1989) case study of Haitian immigrants and their children in Evanston,

Illinois from the 1940s to the 1960s focused on the integration of Haitian immigrants in

American social structures and understanding how they become Black Americans. Woldemikael

(1989) defined race consciousness as “the tendency towards sentimental and ideological identification with a racial group. For the individually race conscious group, race becomes an object of loyalty, devotion, and pride” (p. 225). Woldemikael (1989) found that most Haitian immigrants lacked race consciousness because they maintained insular social networks with other Haitians, remain segregated in the labor force, and held on to a “migrant ideology”—the idea that they fare better in the US despite its propensity for discrimination and cheap labor jobs than if they remained in Haiti. On the other hand, the children of those very same immigrants, often “change and became part of the Afro-American society in the United States”

(Woldemikael, 1989, p. 3).

Charles (2003) and Vilme and Butler (2004) support Woldemikael’s (1989) early finding of a lack of Black race consciousness among early Haitian immigrants. They note that first- generation Haitian immigrants and adolescents identified more with Haitian heritage than with

American Blackness. Charles (2003) reasons that Black Caribbeans “do not necessarily see political conflict through the lens of race” (p. 170). Instead, Blackness is understood through the lens of class interests and is associated with poverty and national belonging because of the context of Haiti as a former slave-based majority-Black society.

These studies (Woldemikael, 1989; Charles, 2003; Vilme & Butler, 2004) establish the first-generation Haitian immigrants and adolescents’ responses to American racial politics.

However, more recent research on the children of Haitian immigrants demonstrates the ability of

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Haitian adolescents to mediate “American Black” and “Haitian Black,” which makes for interesting exploration of Blackness in the 21st century (Joseph & Hunter, 2011). Joseph and

Hunter (2011) examined how Haitian adolescents develop their ethnic and racial identities through social messages and determined that participants who had strong cultural messaging also had higher affiliation with Haitian identity and vice versa. Cultural messaging was a critical aspect to investigate because mainstream messaging media representation was negative in both ethnic and racial perceptions of Haitians and Black youth. This study elucidates three points: 1) adolescence is an important moment in the development of identity; 2) ethnic and racial identity cannot be conflated, and their development presents processes for Black immigrant groups such as Haitians; and 3) cultural messaging from home is vital in establishing Haitian identity, especially in places where a community may not convey positive messages about Haitian culture.

Doucet (2011) examined “the tactics that Haitian immigrant parents used to negotiate the boundaries around home and schools” (p. 2705) and “questions the pervasive notion in educational literature and practice that close links between home and school should be the goal of both teachers and families” (p. 2706). The findings suggest that Haitian parents work actively to construct boundaries around home life and the school (which is contrary to the efforts to build bridges between home and school) in order to “protect and ensure their children’s futures” (p.

2706) and ward off Americanization, which is seen as detrimental to the development of Haitian children.

As mentioned earlier, past studies that focus on racial and ethnic positioning of Haitian youth have contributed valuable knowledge on the complexities of race and ethnicity for students in the African Diaspora. These studies have also highlighted challenges that Haitian students, as linguistic and cultural minorities, face in public education. Methodologically, the studies have

70 been limited because educational attainment has been restricted to tangible, measurable variables

(Nicolas et al., 2009; Stepick et al., 2001; Schwartz & Stiefiel, 2006). These variables are unsuited for exploring educational attainment in different capacities and iterations that go beyond number of years in school, degrees attained, or performance scores. As with the inquiry of racial and ethnic positioning, studies have engaged both quantitative and qualitative approaches to discuss the assimilation of Haitian adolescents into Black America. Analysis was also limited in that it was restricted to survey data (Joseph & Hunter, 2011; Vilme & Butler, 2004), observations, and interviews (Woldemikael, 1989; Kleyne & Reyes, 2011). A limitation of the findings is that it was unclear how Haitian adolescents’ racial or ethnic positioning manifested in their role as students, the work they produced, or the kinds of contributions they made to the classroom community as occupants of racialized and immigrant bodies.

Moving forward, I argue that a critical literacy approach must be developed to elevate educational research of 21st century Haitian adolescent students. As time has passed, some of these barriers to educational attainment have evolved and/or changed in nature. Considering that we are now two to three generations removed from the initial wave of Haitian immigrant students entering American public school systems, this later population does not necessarily face the same hurdles as their predecessors. To understand the experiences of Haitian immigrant students following these changes, literacy scholars new explorations into the needs of Haitian youth in secondary public schools.

Conclusion

Each scholar imparted theoretical considerations for my work with Haitian youth. Haitian youth literacies is an emerging term that I will operationalize as a guiding concept in my studies

71 of Haitian youth in Miami, Florida. At present, Haitian youth literacies are the ways in which adolescents of Haitian heritage use primary Discourses rooted in Haitian epistemologies to develop secondary Discourses of race, gender, politics, sexuality, and power, observed from their engagements with reading/writing, speaking/listening, movements of the body, and the arts. I draw from Gee’s (2001) discussion of literacies as the acquisition of multiple secondary

Discourses, as well as the body of work of Black women literacists who honor Black discourse styles and ways of knowing to highlight the specific literacy practices of African American youth.

On a practical level, Richardson’s (1995; 2000) delineation of Black rhetorical features will serve as guiding principles in trying to identify characteristics germane to Haitian youth literacies. A discussion of Black discourse styles with regards to Haitian youth also provides an opportunity to modify and adjust the principles within the framework of Haitian youth literacies by finding ways students mirror and manipulate these defined Black rhetorical features into their own forms.

The trope of “literacy as freedom” was prevalent in both Fisher’s (2009) and

Richardson’s (1995) discussions of African American literacies. In this work, I examine how

Haiti’s revolution narrative functions as a “literacy as freedom” trope. What are the diasporic similarities in the “literacy as freedom” trope in Haitian and African American culture? I am curious to learn the specific ways in which this trope functions is an empowering mechanism within the context of the Haitian community. Additionally, Fisher’s (2009) IBI concept provides a lens through which to examine out-of-school literacy sites as institutions that extend and nurture culturally specific literacy practices of the Haitian community.

Last, Staples (2011; 2012) theorizes the concept of popular culture narratives, a helpful

72 tool with which to inform critical literacy research and teaching design. In the past, my students have been almost exclusively prescribed canonical Haitian print texts to analyze and connect with. Thus, the implementation of a popular culture narrative in the classroom will help spark relevant conversation and reveal the literacy practices Haitian students activate when engaging with a PCN of their choice.

A critical sociocultural literacy approach meshes the sociocultural sensibilities of NLS and the acute attention to power, marginalization, representations, and historicity of critical theory. These are necessary expansions in the scope of research concerning Haitian students by supporting inquiry into ways students are making meaning, expressing, and/or communicating their positionalities as racialized, gendered, immigrant young people. Additionally, educational attainment can be pried open to take into account the ways in which Haitian adolescents learn to interpret their literate worlds and engage in rigorous examinations of power, privilege, and social representations. Using the work of African American literacy theorists as a guide—bearing in mind the added complexity of ethnicity and non-English linguistic identities—a literacy perspective on the research of Haitian youth can push the fields of literacy studies and Haitian studies into the forefront of grasping the incredible ways immigrant Haitian-American youth are forging academic and social identities through literacy.

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CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

Introduction

This study examined the literacies of middle school aged H/HA girls enrolled in the

Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project (HELP) in Miami, Florida. The purpose of the study was to investigate the ways in which a unique population of students engaged literacies and negotiated their intersectional positionalities as Black immigrant girls. This study also explored the mechanisms of literacy instruction that fostered and/or impeded the development and articulations of Haitian girls’ literacies. The research questions for this study are as follows:

1. How do H/HA girls enrolled in HELP narrate place, their identities, and girlhood

in autobiographical writing?

2. In what ways do Haitian and Haitian American (H/HA) girls generate Discourses

of race, place, and girlhood through discursive practices in HELP’s classroom?

3. How do the institutional practices of HELP attempt to center the needs and talents

of H/HA girls? How does HELP reconfigure learning spaces?

This chapter is organized by sections that outline and thread key components of this study’s methodological framework and design. The chapter contains sections discussing the research design, participants, data collection, data analysis, ethical issues, trustworthiness, limitations and chapter summary.

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Research Design Overview

Embedded Case Study Research Methodology

Case study, as a research methodology, allows for a focus on society and culture in a group or program (Marshall & Rossman, 2011). It places emphases on how groups or programs work in contexts (Mason, 2002), which enables various sources of data that “take the reader into the setting with a vividness and detail not typically present otherwise” (Marshall & Rossman,

2011, p. 267). I view case study methodology as a means to unite various elements of data in ways that speak to the larger research questions and provide a meaningful gateway into the girls’ experiences as young literate beings. Yin (2003) defines an embedded case study as a “case study with more than one unit of analysis” (p. 42), and contends that “the subunits can often add significant opportunities for extensive analysis, enhancing the insights into the single case” (p.

46). This study embraces this stance and looks to triangulate data collection and analysis by including a range of student-generated literacy events, teaching artifacts, as well as developing multiple tiers of analysis for these various data sets. The two units of analysis for this study were five student participants, and the curricular design and pedagogical approaches of HELP.

For three summers, I had the privilege to work with and learn from over 100 middle schoolers from North Miami, Little Haiti, and the surrounding areas of Miami-Dade and

Broward County as a literacy teacher at the Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project. This experience taught me that young people access an ever-changing landscape of tools, social media platforms, and media to express thoughts, positions, humor, happiness, concerns, confusions, etc.

In thinking of a methodological framework that best made sense of this experience, I had to consider frameworks that would center student voice, be considerate of their intersectional identities, and honor their multiple forms of expression as legitimate and edifying. Additionally,

75 this study was committed to executing serious examinations of power, race, ethnicity, and assumptions of literacy in the analysis of literacy events and curricular designs. Therefore, the study methodology and design blends multiple strands of critical paradigm: critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical race methodology for language analysis, and Janks’s (2013) critical literacy-based interdependent model of literacy for curricular design analysis. This blended methodological framework queries the ways Haitian students understand and engage power dynamics in their worlds, as well as how their literacy events signal the racial, ethnic, and gendered ideologies they draw on as Black immigrant girls. This was particularly important considering the stigmatized and racialized migration history of Haitian immigrants to the United

States.

Analyzing Text and Talk Using Gee’s Outward Progression of Language Analysis

The primary unit of analysis will be the literacy practices of five H/HA girls who were students in my classroom during the 2015 HELP program. I used a critical sociolinguistic approach to analyze the talk and text of the participants in this study. James Collins (2011) instructs CDA researchers in education to “combine systematic analysis of language and other sign modes, ethnographic grounding, and social theory engagements in order to develop studies of education which are also inquiries into contemporary life” (p. x), in order to discern “how we engage each other, learn in groups, develop identities, and resist oppression” (p. x). This study aligns with Collins’ perspective and therefore utilizes Gee’s (2011) outward progression of language analysis. This constellation of inquiry modes works synchronously to analyze and situate discourse, both locally and globally, in relation to the speaker and listener. Gee’s framework of critical discourse analysis is a “synthesis of form and functional linguistics,

76 cognitive science, post-modern literacy, historical and sociological research on society, schooling, and literacy…and can be applied to texts, stories, policy documents and video games”

(Collins, 2011, p. x). The most useful contribution of Gee’s work to this study is the methodizing language analysis into various “modes of inquiry” that promote the analysis of language from its most granular representations to a global perspective in terms of how language constructs figured worlds for interlocutors.

Gee’s (2011) seven situated tasks of analyzing language provide the tools to engage the narrowing and broadening of scopes in which to analyze language. Each one of the tasks provides a lens to interrogate discourse; they are significance, activities (practices), identities, relationships, politics (distribution of social goods), connections, sign systems and knowledge.

Each task gave me the opportunity to ask the following questions in order to guide the analysis of each participant’s literacy events.

When looking for significance in language, I asked,

1. What is being underscored as significant in the literacy event? What was the participant

downplaying in the literacy event?

2. (Activities) What were the activities being marked? What were the institutionally or

culturally supported series (sequenced, combined) of actions present in this literacy

event?

3. (Identities) What roles were the girls taking on in the class discussion? In their journals?

4. (Relationships) What were the relationships they building/signaling in the literacy event?

With me? With HELP? With each other? With girlhood? Other genders? Parents?

Culture? Language/Creole? What was the nature of these relationships (formal, distinct,

intimate, combative)?

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5. (Politics/distribution of social goods) In what ways were the girls in the study

positioning social groups? Which social groups were the participants affording social

benefits? From which groups would the girls withhold social benefits?

6. (Connections) What connections were rendered visible?

7. Sign systems what sign systems were girls accessing? What systems of knowledge were

being privileged in their literacy event?

In conjunction with seven situated tasks for language analysis, Gee (2011) offers four theoretical tools for inquiry that tie language to the world and culture. These theories of inquiry help push the analysis of language outward by focusing on situated meanings, Discourses, social languages, and figured worlds.

Situated Meanings

Gee’s first theoretical tool, situated meanings, refers to the specific uses of language in a specific context. Gee (2011) contends that, “in actual situations of use, words, and structures take specific meanings” (p. 40). However, when working to connect language to broader concepts such as culture and the world, Gee (2011) also adds in the aspect of the listener: “When speakers speak, they assume that listeners share knowledge, beliefs, values and experiences with them to be able to situate the meanings of their words” (p. 40). Situated meanings are broadened to include the listener in the interaction and the process by which “listeners situate the meanings of words by consulting what the speaker has said, the context in which it has been said, and (if they actually have it) the wealth of shared background the speaker assumes they have” (p. 40).

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Discourse

Paying attention to Discourse also assists in the outward progression of language analysis. Discourses speaks to the identities and institutions present in language: “people talk not just as individuals, but as members of various sorts of social and cultural groups” (Gee, 2011, p.

36). Gee (2011) describes engaging discourse as being able to “engage with in a particular sort of ‘dance’ with words, deeds, values, feelings, other people, objects, tools, technologies, places, and times so as to get recognized as a distinctive sort of who doing a distinctive sort of what” (p.

38). The job of the researcher is to be able to understand the different “dances” present in the utterances.

Social Languages

Social languages refer to the varieties present in the language we speak and the different context in which those varieties are activated. Gee (2011) formally defines social languages as the “style or varieties of language (or mixture of languages) that enact and are associated with a particular social identity” (p. 39). And an important aspect to keep in mind is that in order to understand what a speaker says, a listener needs to know who is speaking (Gee, 2011).

Understanding who the speaker is, is more so related to identity in which the speaker is taken up to relay discourse.Gee (2011) argues, “to know any specific social language is to know how characteristic lexical and grammatical resources are combined to enact specific socially situated identities” (p. 39). Simply put, “to know a particular social language is to either be able to ‘do’ a particular identity or to be able to recognize such an identity, when we do not want to or cannot actively participate.” (p. 39). The importance of being able to recognize the social languages at play is to be able to discern not only the multiple identities a speaker can evoke, but also to think

79 through the tentative and often unspoken, and problematic, ideas listeners might construct based on whatever social identity of a speaker is at play (Gee, 2011).

Figured Worlds

The last theoretical mode of inquiry is the idea of figured worlds. Gee (2011) explains a figured world as the taken-for-granted theories people have of the world. As Gee (2011) explains, “when people ‘figure’ a world, that is, imagine what the world looks like from a certain perspective of what is ‘normal’ or ‘typical’…they are imagining pictures of Discourse or aspects of Discourses at work in the world” (p. 43). This mode of inquiry challenges the discourse analyst to place the speaker in their respective context by ascertaining the ways in which the interlocutor uses language to construct their world: Who/what/when/where is encompassed in their purview? What occupies the center of their figured world? How is the speaker epistemologically grounded? In other words, what funds of knowledge (Moll & Gonzalez, 2001) does the speaker access to construct their world? How does their figured world relate to others?

Critical Race Methodology

While the emphasis of Gee’s (2011) outward progression of language analysis provides an intricate foundation for situating the analysis of language in larger constructs such as power, culture, and identity, this perspective is incomplete with regards to the social realities of Haitian girls. A CRT perspective “enables critical attention to race, class and gender as center pieces of academic and social experiences among students of color” (Staples, 2012, p. 59) and allows for earnest acceptance of racism, discrimination, and normalized dominance. A critical race methodology is rooted in the following theoretical approach to research:

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(a) foregrounds race and racism in all aspects of the research process but also challenges

the separate discourses on race, gender, and class by showing how these three elements

intersect to affect the experiences of students of color;

(b) challenges traditional research paradigms, texts, and theories used to explain the

experiences of students of color;

(c) offers a liberatory or transformative solution to racial, gender, and class

subordination;

(d) focuses on the racialized, gendered, and classed experiences of students of color

(e) uses the interdisciplinary knowledge base of ethnic studies, women’s studies,

sociology, history, humanities, and the law to better understand the experiences of

students of color. (Solόrzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 24)

As a research methodology, CRT is similar to CDA in that it challenges dominant ideology— nothing is neutral or normal. However, it diverges from and supplements CDA by centralizing the experiential knowledge of students, and asks: what counternarratives are being produced and supplied by students of color? Their stories of self are crucial in first understanding the racial and ethnic ideologies imprinted on to their bodies, and second in learning ways girls are constantly working to shirk them.

A critical race methodology in education research also seeks to understand the intersectionality of race, class, gender, immigration status as layers of subordination, and has an explicit commitment to social justice by offering liberatory or transformative responses to race, class, and gender oppression (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Additionally, in challenging dominant and normalized discourse, a critical race methodology uses transdisciplinary methods to undermine ahistoricism. By consulting multiple systems of knowledge, experiential knowledge is

81 couched in contextualized realities, resists historical erasures, and creates connections to present day experiences to documented patterns of systemic oppression. Framing the discourses of my participants as counternarrative productions within a historical continuum works to legitimize their experiences as young literate people of color.

Curricular Analysis of HELP

Interdependent Model of Literacy

In thinking of critical approaches to study literacy instruction, particularly in out-of- school contexts, Siegel and Fernandez (2002) advocate examining how “literacy instruction participates in the production of these persistent inequalities” as well as looking for ways in which literacy instruction “may become a site for contesting the status quo” (p. 72). The mission of HELP was to ensure the empowerment of Haitian youth through a liberatory literacy program.

Thus, it was crucial to examine the deliberate program practices used to implement HELP’s goals. Curricular analysis of HELP is grounded in a critical literacy perspective constructed by

Janks’s (2013) critical literacy analytical tool. The curricular analysis focuses on the activities that cultivates literacy practices and allow students to generate multiple literacy events. The interdependent model of literacy helped question how issues of power, access, diversity, and redesign are addressed by HELP’s conceptualization of literacy and its pedagogy of literacy instruction.

According to Janks (2013), who is heavily influenced by Freire (1985), “critical literacy is about enabling young people to read both the word and the world in relation to power, identity, difference and access to knowledge, skills, tools, and resources” (p. 227). Her critical literacy perspective asks, “How can we produce students who can contribute to greater equity,

82 who can respect difference and live in harmony with others, and who can play a part in protecting the environment?” (p. 227). Conversations in the field of literacy studies often underemphasize critical literacy’s goal of “writing and rewriting the world: it is about design and redesign” (p. 227, emphasis in the original). Janks’s (2013) approach to critical literacy theoretically aligns with that of CDA and CRT in that it “recognizes that language produces us as a particular kind of human subject and that words are not innocent, but instead work to position us…our world— geographically, environmentally, politically and socially— is not neutral or natural” (p. 227).

Janks (2013) develops an interdependent model of literacy that takes critical concepts such as power, diversity, access, and design/redesign, theorizes their interdependence, and considers “the effects of focusing on any one of these dimensions without any one of the other dimensions” (p. 225). Prins (2016) explains:

Power means helping learners to understand ‘how powerful discourses/practices

perpetuate themselves’—for example, the dominance of English or certain literacies.

Access means providing opportunities to understand, acquire, and use dominant

language, discourses, literacies, knowledge, genres, visual modes, cultural practices, and

so on, resources from which marginalized groups are often excluded. Diversity entails

acknowledging the existence and value of forms of language, literacy, knowing, doing,

and being that are often invisible or discounted. Finally, design ‘encompasses the idea of

productive power – the ability to harness the multiplicity of semiotic systems across

diverse cultural locations to challenge and change existing discourses.’ This definition of

design includes conceptual planning and material production. (p. 3)

For example, what does it mean for a curriculum to focus intently on power and access, but

83 neglect the importance and impact of redesign or diversity? The model can be applied to literacy instruction curricula, pedagogy, and literacy research, though Janks advocates for its use across disciplines. In Table 3.1, Janks (2013, p. 226) provides descriptors of how interdependence of a given context (curriculum, pedagogy, research, etc.) can be evaluated using the concepts of power, access, diversity, and design/redesign as evaluative tools and the characteristics of instruction that addresses one critical concept but neglects another.

Table 3.1 The Interdependent Model of Critical Literary

Power without access This maintains the exclusionary force of powerful discourses and powerful practices.

Power without diversity Power without diversity loses the ruptures that produce contestation and change.

Power without design or The deconstruction of powerful texts and practices, without redesign reconstruction or redesign, removes human agency.

Access without power Access without a theory of power leads to the naturalisation of powerful discourses without an understanding of how these powerful forms came to be powerful.

Access without diversity This fails to recognize that difference fundamentally affects who gets access to what and who can benefit from this access. History, identity and value are implicated in access.

Access without design or This maintains and reifies dominant forms without considering redesign how they can be transformed.

Diversity without power This leads to a celebration of diversity without any recognition that difference is structured in dominance and that not all discourses/genres/languages/literacies are equally powerful.

Diversity without access Diversity without access to powerful forms of language ghettoises students.

Diversity without design or Diversity provides the means, the ideas, the alternative redesign perspectives for reconstruction and transformation. Without design, the potential that diversity offers is not realised.

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Design/redesign without Designs or redesigns that lack power are unable to effect power change.

Design/redesign without This runs the risk of whatever is designed remaining on the access margins.

Design/redesign without This privileges dominant forms and fails to use the design diversity resources provided by difference.

To study a culturally-based literacy program serving Black Haitian students, it was also important to explore the ways in which the HELP program functions as a liberatory literacy program. Fisher’s (2009) concept of the IBI is the analytical framework to examine the HELP’s institutional practices performed outside the classroom but within the context of the program to determine its system of empowering Haitian youth. I place the narrative of “literacy as freedom”

(Richardson, 1995; Fisher, 2009) within the broader African diasporic context of HELP and conceive of the program’s goal of empowerment as a form of freedom. Studying HELP in this context allows an assessment of the ways in which the program centralizes and operationalizes literacy to accomplish empowerment. Using Fisher’s Black literacies concept as an analytical framework supports the epistemological grounding of this study: Black people’s reading of the world, as a distinct form, is rooted in actively resisting dehumanization, continual development of self-determination, and nurturing a collective community consciousness. The Janks model provides specific techniques to gauge if and how instructional practices examine and destabilize power and stirr students to be change agents. However, the model it is limited because it does not ground literacy in the freedom trope—a focus I do not want to lose sight of in this study.

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Research Site: The Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project (HELP)

In the spring semester of 2013, a close friend mentioned that she heard of a program serving Haitian students; they were looking to fill teaching positions and she recommended that I apply. The program hired me that spring and I spent three consecutive summers (2013-5015) working with students, colleagues, and local artists from the Greater Miami community. The

Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project (HELP) is a literacy program based at a private Catholic

University, Barry University, in Miami, Florida. The program was funded by a grant from the

Children’s Trust and completed its 7th and final institute in the summer of 2015. Drs. Charlene

Desir and Pamela Hall co-founded the program. At the time of HELP’s founding, Hall was an assistant professor of psychology at Barry University and Desir is a co-founder of The

Empowerment Network Global (T.E.N. Global) and program professor of applied research at

Nova Southeastern University’s Fischler School of Education.

HELP is the successor of the Literary Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) Program, which ran its first summer institute in 2009. With the collaborations of T.E.N. Global, Nova

Southeastern University, Barry University and The Children’s Trust, LIFE served 95

Haitian/Haitian American high school students in its inaugural summer. The grant donors requested that the LIFE shift to serve students in grades 5-8, and HELP was born. The program recruited students of Haitian heritage residing in Haitian enclaves throughout the city: Little

Haiti, North Miami, Miami Shores, and North Miami Beach with an exception of a few students coming from Miramar, a neighboring city on the northern county line bordering Miami-Dade and

Broward County.

The purpose of the program was to mentor Haitian adolescents by empowering them to make positive life choices, develop sociocultural awareness and build literacy skills in order for

86 them to maximize their potential. As a culturally based literacy program, HELP employed a holistic approach that provided students with “practical” literacy skills, explicit spiritual education, and cultural education. This education included counter narratives of Haiti, which accesses the legacy of slave ancestors’ revolutionary spirit. The program focused on cultivating the minds, bodies, and spirits of students. Each summer was guided by themes, which provided the foundations and framework for the cognitive, physical and spiritual work to be accomplished during the summer institute. The themes and slogans during my three years at the program were as follows: 1) The School is the Church, the Church is the School: “Spiritual Consciousness

Connects us with the Divine Mind”; 2) Mystical Imagination: “Zero Curriculum: From Nothing

Comes Everything”; and 3) “Beyond Liberation.” Each week in the 7-week program was led by a smaller guiding principle that related to different aspects of the broader summer theme.

The program convened Monday-Friday from 8:00am-4:00pm. Each summer, HELP enrolled approximately 100 students between the grades 6-8. In the summer of 2015, I had a combination of 7th and 8th grade students in my class for a total student of 27 students: 22 girls and 5 boys.

Participants

A concept I am developing is Haitian youth literacies. Haitian Youth Literacies are the socially constructed and culturally informed practices that illuminate Haitian epistemologies and result in written and performative artifacts, e.g., reading/writing, listening/speaking, movement of body (performance), and creative arts. It is important that this study have a sufficient number of literacy events to construct the most complete representations of this concept. Therefore, I sought participants who actively generated an array of literacy events inside and outside the

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HELP classroom to make sense of identities in various teaching/learning spaces, over the course of the summer institute. The selection criterion is represented in Table 3.2. This table represents criteria embedded within research question number 1. The question guides my exploration of

Haitian girls’ literacy practices and the Haitian epistemologies embedded within them.

The criteria used for participant selection included the following: journals, interviews, participation in end-of-summer showcase, participation in recorded classroom discussions, an original piece of creative art or performance, and submission of at least three “What’s Hot?” texts. Each one of the criteria represents a data set that could be analyzed to determine if it conveys a narrative about the participant in a given context. Alone, the data sets provide a limited snapshot of the participant, and it would be difficult to detect and interpret the ways in which their intersectional positionalities manifest in literacy practices. However, multiple data sets can be pieced together to form a more detailed and accurate picture of how the participant engages literacies and how those literacies are impacted by Haitian epistemologies. The criteria correspond with my interests in the girls’ reading/writing and speaking/listening, and embodiment of literacy. Table 3.2 was used to determine the cases for this study. I selected girls who generated numerous and varied literacy events across categories.

The Five Cases

For this study, I chose to focus on girls. This was a socio-politically driven choice to dedicate energies and attention into inquiring about the intersectional literate lives of Black immigrant girls, who are often relegated to the margins of society. Their occupancy at the periphery of educational research is a constant reminder that there is much to learn about centering the lives of women/girls of color, and the ways in which literacy captures their

88 experiences and knowledges. Table 3.3 provides demographic details of the participants. The participants of this study are five Black H/HA girls from the Miami metropolitan area. All were students in my classroom. Institutional Review Board approval was obtained prior to the start of the case study and all the girls have completed and signed consent forms to participate. These girls generated literacy events in most, if not all, the selection criteria. I selected Sabrina as a special case because she was the only student in my classroom who had migrated as a result of the earthquake disaster of 2010. Even though she was one of the quieter students, I wanted to have a better understanding of her more recent immigrant perspectives.

Table 3.2 Rationale for Selection of Student Cases (Research Question 1 & 2)

Participants Journals Completed Brings up multiple Participated Participated Produced an Submitted (at least 1 at least 1 discourses in in End of in Recorded Original Piece at Least 3 summers of Interview writings/speaking Summer Class of Expressive What’s journals (race, gender, Celebration Discussions Art/ Hot Texts with entries sexuality, religion, Performances averaging a politics, nationality, paragraph) ethnicity) Mirlande X X X X Antoinette H. X X X X X X Antoinette L. X Darline X X Dascha X X X X X Nadège X X X X X X X Lovely X X X X X X X Judeline X X X X Kimberly X X X X Katia X X X X X Johanne X X X Venus X X X X X X X Widelene X X X X X Mideline X X X X X Nephtalie X Gaelle X X X Esterlie X X X X Rose X X X Tamara X X X X X Cassandra X X X X Beatrice X X X X X Rose X X X X X Sabrina X X X X

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Table 3.3 Demographic details of the participants

Years Grade Participants Age Generational Status Area Enrolled in Level HELP Antoinette 14 9th 1st Generation Haitian North Miami 2 (migrated to US in 2005) Nadège 14 9th 1st Generation Haitian Miami 2 (migrated to US in 2007) (Pinewood) Lovely 14 9th 2nd Generation Haitian American North Miami 2 (born in South Florida) Beach Venus 14 9th 2nd Generation Haitian American Hallandale 1 (born in South Florida) Beach Sabrina 12 8th 1st Generation Haitian North Miami 3 (migrated to US in 2010)

Journals (Writing)

HELP literacy instructors were advised to anchor writing as a daily practice for students.

Every day, class began with a journal prompt centered on the theme of the week, the readings, or self-reflection. The journals were also a space for responding to texts, creative writing, doodling, and passing notes. In selecting girls, I looked for girls who had responded to prompts and creative writing exercises with a paragraph of least three to five sentences. I wanted to be sure there was a sufficient amount of language present to support rich analysis of written text.

Interviews (Speaking)

Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted at the end of the summer program.

It was an opportunity to sit with the participants— and sometimes their family— to ask questions of the program, their ambitions, talents, politics, and culture. The interviews complemented the writing in that the girls had a space to make new points, explain ideas more deeply, and offer insights on topics we may have not discussed in class— which made it imperative to have participants who had done both. Some participants opted out of the individual interview session;

90 not having the corresponding data set brought questions of balance and accurate representations of their literate lives. For that reason, I chose interviews as a selection criterion. However, by the end of the data collection, I decided to leave out the individual interviews with the five cases to maintain a focus on the classroom experiences of the participants. The interviews will be taken up in a later study to further explore the literate lives and identities of the girls.

Multiple Discourses Represented in Literacy Events (Writing/Speaking)

This study is committed to examining intersectional positionalities of Haitian girls. In order to understand what that means and to be able to analyze how the girls position themselves in various contexts, it was important to have participants who were forthcoming with their perspectives in multiple Discourses. This criterion was not relegated to a single data set. I searched through journals, listened to classroom discussions, interviews, performance, and artwork to assess if participants were talking about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, politics, nationality, etc., across the spectrum of literacy events that they had generated in the 2015 summer institute. This encouraged well-rounded analysis of the cases and averted flat summations of girls that disregarded the pluralities in their identities and lived experiences.

“What’s Hot?”/Class Participation (Reading/Listening/Speaking)

In 2015, students had the option to bring in their own media texts for the class to read and analyze once a week. During our designated computer lab times, I encouraged students to search for material they wanted us to talk about as a class. The student-selected media texts provided students the opportunity to anchor classroom conversations on topics that were of interest to them; therefore, I wanted to have a range of texts that could help understand the participants. The

91 girls in this study contributed at least three media texts for class. It was also an opportunity for students to develop communication skills as they debated each other on media texts that garnered heated discussions. During the course of this study, I recorded six classroom discussions on feminism, debriefing a morning meeting on sex, colorism, and three “What’s Hot” discussions around media texts. I sought participants who contributed to each recorded discussion at least twice. These speech events permitted analysis Discourses that spoke to their realities and their positions within American popular culture.

Data Collection

Data collection occurred during the 2014 and 2015 HELP summer institutes. For this study, I focused on 2015 data. By 2015, I was much clearer in how to construct the classroom space, build rapport with students, and generate reading and writing assignments that more closely aligned to critical literacy frameworks. Table 3.4 details the daily routine of the program and the subsequent methods of data collection.

Table 3.4 Weekly Schedule (HELP Curriculum Guide, 2014)

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Morning Meetings. The program began promptly at 8:00am before the start of the first literacy block. Every morning, all the students of HELP would congregate in a large lecture hall at the university. After being served breakfast, a student would volunteer (or be coaxed) to lead the call and response recitation of the morning ritual, “I invest in myself because I must invest in who I am. I invest in myself because I must invest in my fellow man. I invest in myself because I am an intricate part of life. Without me, my dreams would not take flight” (HELP, 2009). The morning ritual worked as a positive affirmation to build a sense of purpose within students and a sense responsibility to each other.

The recitation of the morning ritual signaled the beginning of the morning meeting. The morning meetings served as an opportunity for the directors to facilitate or revisit the summer’s theme, slogan and weekly principles. Morning meetings lasted between 45 minutes to an hour.

Students would sit for lectures where Drs. Desir and Hall would discuss enslaved African ancestors, legacy, dreams, pride, meditation, self-care, and self-respect. Students would be encouraged to engage in the conversations by sharing perspectives orally or in writing. In other morning meetings, students would be tasked to be still and meditate or pray.

Morning meetings would also be a space for guests from different walks of life to speak to students about various topics. Guests included pastors, photographers, poets,

7 spiritual healers, saved dope dealers, nutritionists, former Figure 5 Danticat visits HELP July 2015

HELP students, artists, writers, and HELP teachers. Renowned MacArthur Genius, Edwidge

Danticat, was among the class of speakers who frequented the program. During the meetings, I

7 In the Protestant/Evangelical Christian faith, one of the religious traditions that informs HELP, people who accept that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for their salvation and is their Lord and Savior are referred to as “saved.”

93 often sat amongst students and scribed observation notes of the topic of discussion and would note when students in my class participated and the ideas they shared. At the conclusion of morning meetings, students left with their respective classes. The morning block consisted of one hour of literacy and an hour of fitness outside with a coach.

Fitness. For literacy instructors, the morning fitness block served as a planning period to prepare materials for the day. However, in the last year of the program, procedural changes required teachers to assist as another set of eyes out on the field. In the early weeks, my colleagues and I found refuge on a shaded bench, while grumbling and fanning ourselves in the humidity. During this time, students would mosey over to the bench or stoop I sat on and ask random questions, invite me into whatever heated debate, or just sit with me. Morning fitness transformed into a sort of “girls’ corner.” Most of the boys stuck with football and soccer, while the girls generally gathered in small groups once they completed the required physical activity.

When I realized a group of girls consistently welcomed me into their small group, I would record some topics of discussion on my mini legal pad. The outside, “down time” dynamic allowed for organic conversations on fashion, comic books, anime, cosplay8, and experiences of being a

Haitian/Haitian American girl in Miami.

Literacy. Traditional academic practices of reading, writing, listening, and speaking occurred during the literacy blocks. Each day consisted of two literacy blocks, the first in morning and the second later in the afternoon following lunch. As a literacy teacher in the program for the last three summers, I facilitated discussions around different texts authored by

Haitian novelists and poets and would bring in news articles or blog posts to supplement texts or

8 Cosplay- “the art or practice of wearing costumes to portray characters from fiction, especially from manga, animation, and science fiction” (dictionary.com)

94 discuss current events. Each grade level had a core text for the summer, but as literacy instructor, we had license to supplement the core texts with outside readings. The curriculum guide centered around the assigned core text for each grade level.

Curriculum Guides, Novels, Short Stories, and Lesson Plans. The program coordinator, a former secondary teacher and PhD candidate in the department of Curriculum and

Instruction at Barry University, constructed the curriculum guides each summer. The curriculum guides detailed the themes, slogans, and weekly principles. My 5th and 6th grade students read

Behind the Mountains (2002) by Edwidge Danticat in the summer of 2013. In 2014, the 7th and

8th grade students read a collection of short stories from Krik? Krak! (1995), also authored by

Danticat. The following year, 8th and 9th graders read stories from Krik? Krak! (1995) and poems from Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry (2001). As literacy instructors, we were encouraged to approach the text as we saw fit; the curriculum guides provided reading and writing strategies, and project ideas to supplement our instruction. During the summer of 2015, I began crafting specific lesson plans to discuss the supplemental poems, articles, and blogs I coupled with the assigned texts. These instructional materials serve as another source of data as they speak to instructional and pedagogical frameworks of HELP during my 3-year tenure.

“What’s Hot?” Another subset of data present from the literacy block is the audio recorded classroom discussions during the “What’s Hot?” segment of class. “What’s Hot?” was a time designated for students to bring in any form of text, broadly defined, that they thought was worth discussing as a whole group. These discussions occurred at the end of the week. This gave the students time during our designated computer times to search for memes, music videos, news articles, YouTube commentary, vines, photos, etc., and have them submitted to me before

Thursday’s “What’s Hot?” discussion. I also have an inventory of the multiple texts that each

95 student sent me over the course of seven weeks.

Board Work. I often recorded student responses on the board and often snapped photos of their ideas on the whiteboards. For example, one week the students participated in a silent gallery. The dry erase boards were segmented according to different questions regarding the texts. Students stopped at each segment and wrote their responses. This activity generated interesting commentary and motivated me to continue capturing their thoughts. To get a better sense of who contributed what, I made sure to place student initials next to comments so that I could cross-reference responses to students in the future.

Handouts. I frequently brought in poetry, news articles, or blog posts to supplement the short stories we read in class. I encouraged students to annotate the texts for reactions, questions, and points they considered important, and kept the handouts for future use.

Enrichment. Every week, local Haitian artists would spend a few days with students to expose them to different forms of expression or perspectives in life. For example, students learned of the African diaspora and wrote poems about their connection to the continent with a

Haitian spoken word artist. Another week, students learned of chakras and the different zones of spiritual energies located throughout the body. Some enrichment activities required that I participate in the activities, such as martial arts or helping students create their facemasks. Other activities were sometimes discussion based, so I could sit quietly in the room and take field notes of the interaction — and sometimes video if students were asked to perform.

Computer Time. Computer time functioned as a sort of “downtime” to break up the long day. During this time, students walked over to the computer labs and used program logins to access the Internet. On some occasions, I would circle the room and jot down notes of sites that students visited and asked about sites unfamiliar to me, such as gaming and wardrobe building

96 websites. It was also a time for conducting searches related to their “What’s Hot?” discussion.

End of Summer Showcase. Every summer institute ended with a ceremony highlighting performing arts achievements of the students. The ceremony consisted of song, rap, folk and contemporary dance, musical arrangements, stepping, skits, poetry readings, and capoeira and martial arts demonstrations. Teachers, LIFERs—former LIFE students who served as peer mentors to the middle school students—and students helped organize the show. Speakers, artists, and musicians also returned to help choreograph and assist in completing art projects for the show. Practicing for the show is a special time of the summer institute when students become especially focused and excited to perform. All three years in the program, I worked with the choir and conducted renditions of “Lift Every Voice” (1899), the Haitian National Anthem

(1904), “Say Yes” (2014), and “Hall of Fame” (2012).

Field Notes. As a participant researcher, I wrote field notes of the morning meetings as well as wrote memos on interesting interactions with students and/or my colleagues during the day. During the morning meetings, the field notes were used to document guest lectures and the responses of the students in my class, particularly the five girls. These reflections helped to document my feelings, curiosities, and moments I perceived as missteps in my instruction. The memos/reflections span from my first year as an instructor to the third year.

Miscellaneous Pictures and Artwork. I snapped pictures of students throughout the day to capture comical moments on campus or during field trips, interesting outfits, manicured fingers, and artwork and designs. I captured the photographs in the hope they have the potential to contextualize each participant and provide visual representations of their unique personalities as young literate people.

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Data Analysis and Synthesis

Journals and Transcripts

The organizing tools and methods reflect Gee's (2011) outward progression approach to

CDA, as well as the critical race methodology that Solόrzano and Yosso (2003) propose. In order to organize this analysis of student writing and discussions, I used Excel workbook to organize each of the girls’ responses to the five journal prompts transcripts of four classroom discussion.

The columns were populated with 15 preexisting codes that were a combination of Gee’s inquiry units (bolded) and codes I generated based on my interests and experience with the girls. The codes (in quotations) were:

1. “Orientations of identity” – What identities or roles are the girls taking on in

the journal entry? (Identities)

2. “Slogans/phrases/colloquialisms” – What social languages and group

memberships were activated in the ways the girls used slogans, phrases or

colloquialisms? (Social Languages)

3. “Haiti” – In what ways are the girls in the study positioning social groups? To

which social groups do the participants afford social benefits? From which groups

do the girls withhold social benefits? (Politics/distribution of social goods)

4. “Black” - In what ways are the girls in the study positioning social groups?

Which social groups are the participants affording social benefits? Which groups

do the girls withhold social benefits? (Politics/distribution of social goods)

5. “White or other races” - In what ways are the girls in the study positioning

social groups? Which social groups are the participants affording social benefits?

Which groups do the girls withhold social benefits? (Politics/distribution of social

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goods)

6. “Labels” – What labels do the girls use in their writing to mark people and

places?

7. “Creole” – What creole or words or phrases do girls use?

8. “Power relationships” – How are the girls writing about relationships and

presenting power dynamics?

9. “Institutions” – What are large systems that the girls write about in their

journals?

10. “Significance” – What is being understood as important in the literacy event?

What is she downplaying? (Significance)

11. “Clarification/supporting detail” – Important details or justifications for a

stance or understanding of social dynamics.

12. “Actions/Activities” – What are the institutionally or culturally supported series

of actions present in the literacy event? (Actions/practices)

13. “Relationships/connections” – What connections to topic, people, places,

objects are they building/signaling in the literacy event? What relationships are

they building/signaling in the literacy event? What is the dynamic of that

relationship (formal, informal, combative, fearful, apprehensive, loving, etc.)?

(Connections)

14. “Allusions” – What are the popular culture, literature, and historical references

present in the writing?

15. “Sign systems” – They are significance, what systems of knowledge are being

privileged in their literacy event? (Sign Systems)

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I used these categories to analyze seven journal prompt entries listed in Table 3.5 and four classroom disucssions. I used an excel workbook to organize the codes into a spreadsheet with the codes in columns and each case’s responses in each row. I also wrote a memorandums for summarizing the girls’ responses, my questions, and comments I had on the writing and speaking.

Table 3.5 Selection of Journal Prompt

June 8, 2015 Describe a typical school day. June 9, 2015 How would you describe Miami to someone who has never been there? June 15, 2015 Where do you come from? Who do you come from? What do you come from? June 15, 2015 What does it mean to be Haitian? Black? American? Do they ever clash with each other? What else do you use to identify who you are? June 22, 2015 Who am I? June 23, 2015 What do I desire? (heart maps) July 1, 2015 What is your life plan? What legacy to you want to leave behind? Each data set was collected from unique contexts and therefore requires different types of engagement. The text-centric sources of data (e.g. curricular materials, student journals, memos/notes, etc.) were analyzed using CDA and CRT. I was especially sensitive to mark any

Black discourse styles (Richardson, 1995; 2000), cultural ideographic use of language

(Richardson, 2009), and Haitian girls’ forms of resistance to patriarchal structures in

English/Haitian Creole mother tongues (Richardson, 2009) evoked in student reading/writing and speech acts. I analyzed patterns in the PCN students submitted during the “What’s Hot” segments of the literacy block and the ways they chose to engage these texts. The audio recordings of class discussions were transcribed and analyzed using CDA and CRT methods, again with the hope of finding themes in Black discourse styles Haitian students evoked at the website.

After organizing the Excel workbook, I focused on reading each girl’s journal responses

100 across the five journal prompts to get an overall sense of her voice in writing. I then read her entries an additional time, coding the responses within the Excel workbook. I wrote memoranda at the end of each coding session to document my impressions of the entries and how the writing personified aspects of the girls’ identities, personalities, and relationships.

The next phase in analysis included asking larger questions of the texts and connecting language analysis to the worlds and cultures constructed in the autobiographical writings of the girls in this study. The second round of analysis used two of Gee’s (2011) four theoretical tools for inquiry: (D)iscourses, and the figured worlds of each girl. In addition to Gee’s (2011) theoretical tools of inquiry, I included Solórzano and Yosso’s (2002) methodological conception of counternarratives as tool of inquiry to decipher the ways the girls’ discourses contributed to a diasporic continuum and ask how their writings tapped into family and transatlantic histories to disrupt and reshape conceptualizations of themselves as young Black girls. The table below presents the guiding questions for each inquiry lens. I read each set of journal entries and completed the organizing table in order to see how each girl responded across multiple entries. I then drew trends, patterns, and silences collectively amongst all the cases.

Ethical Considerations

In terms of ethical considerations, it was important to differentiate student participation in the HELP program from student participation in the study. As a veteran instructor, I was aware of my position of power. I was careful not to coerce students into the study or punish or exclude those who decided not to participate. Classroom instruction and participation did not change; all students were encouraged to partake in discussions, performances, and writing activities to the same extent as study participants. As I learned from the previous year, students quickly assessed

101 and constructed meaning from not being asked to participate in the study. The following year, I offered my entire classroom the opportunity to participate as a form of redress, and I was explicit in articulating that non-participation would not change their status in the HELP program.

Limitations of the Study

The study was conducted in a restricted time frame: two 8-week summer sessions in 2014 and 2015. I did not collect data while students were in their traditional school setting during the academic year. The observational notes, literacy events, and interviews were all conducted while the HELP program was in session. This study excludes the six Haitian and Haitian American boys in my classroom. The selection method of this study also excluded girls who did not meet the writing, speaking, performance, and media criterion for the study. As such, girls who were particularly productive in just one literacy practice and not the others were not taken into consideration. On a larger scale, the sample size of this study was limited to the students in my classroom, which only represents roughly one quarter of the student population of the program.

Data Quality and Trustworthiness

Credibility of this study was established through prolonged engagement at the research site, triangulation of data, member checking, and peer debriefing. As literacy instructor for three consecutive summers, I was active in the discussions of the curriculum with program staff, and conducted research with the founders of the program starting as early as my first semester. I had an intimate understanding of the institution and the developed a cohort of students that I worked with from 2013-2015. In this study, I also collected an array of literacy events to ensure triangulation of the data. I had access to multiple writing samples and classroom discussions to make sense of the literacies of the participants of this study. Last, I engaged in member checking

102 with students and program founders. Since the summer of 2015, I conducted follow-up meetings and informal meetings with the participants to ask clarifying questions about some of their journal entries or classroom discussions. I also shared my findings from Chapter 6 with Dr. Desir to ensure the I was accurately representing institutional practices of the program. I engaged in peer debriefing to ensure that my interpretations were rooted in the data and to make clear my assumptions as researcher and instructor of the field site.

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CHAPTER 4

Writing Her Truths: When Black Girls Command the Pen

Autobiographical Journaling at HELP

During my third year as a literacy instructor, I recognized that my own alignments to my

Black Haitian-American identities had undergone major shifts throughout my lifetime. My ideas of Blackness/Haitianness/Womanness took considerable turns. They took form while I was growing up as the youngest child of my Haitian mother, living with her, my grandmother, sisters, and cousins from Haiti in one house. My ideas of myself evolved when I was a young woman and left Miami to study at a private liberal arts institution for my undergraduate education. They grew more nuanced in my graduate work studying race, curriculum, and literacy in my Master’s and PhD program at large research one institutions. I have come full circle in doing literacy work as an adult working with HELP students, only two blocks away from my mother’s home.

Understanding the twists and turns that come with the full range and complexities of the

Black diasporic experience, my intent in generating journal prompts for my students was to provide them the opportunity to explore their own conceptualizations of who they were in this particular time and space. The probing questions of who/where/what you locate your origins, in conjunction with having to speak to three complicated intersected identities, provided our class with groundwork to embark on a critical culturally grounded and faith-based curriculum.

Journaling was an essential part of the teaching and learning experience at the HELP program. During staff orientation in my first summer as a literacy instructor, the co-founders emphasized that student writing was an important reflective tool that supported the mission of the program. They insisted students write every day during their literacy blocks. Each instructor took up this task differently. In my classroom, journals were utilized in the mornings to prime

104 students to the program’s weekly themes, daily readings, and the arts activities that would take place later in the afternoon. This chapter delves into seven specific journals prompts that invited students to include life experiences and world views in their responses. The girls in this study wrote entries that were autobiographical in nature and addressed the first research question of this study: How do H/HA girls enrolled in HELP story places, identities, and girlhoods in autobiographical writing? The table below shows the prompt dates and prompts.

Table 4.1 Selection of Journal Prompts

June 8, 2015 Describe a typical school day. June 9, 2015 How would you describe Miami to someone who has never been there? June 15, 2015 Where do you come from? Who do you come from? What do you come from? June 17, 2015 What does it mean to be Haitian? Black? American? Do they ever clash with each other? What else do you use to identify who you are? June 22, 2015 Who am I? June 23, 2015 What do I desire? (heart maps) July 1, 2015 What is your life plan? What legacy do you want to leave behind?

I independently crafted the prompts for June 8 (“Describe a typical day at school”) and

June 9, 2015 ("How would you describe Miami to someone who's never been there") for the first and second day of the program. The purpose of these prompts was to get students in the habit of reflecting on the spaces they occupy (school, and the city of Miami) in terms of how they are constructed, the routines and rituals that are normalized, and the ways the students themselves characterize and interact in those spaces. The following week, the prompts on June 15 (“Where do you come from? Who do you come from? What do you come from?”) and June 17, 2017

(“What does it mean to be Haitian? Black? American? Do they ever clash with each other? What else do you use to identify who you are?”) served again as anticipation guides for reflection on people, places, and histories that students access to ground their identities. These questions also supplemented the program's theme of the week of “duality.” The journals were productive in

105 engaging students with major theme for the final summer institute, “Beyond Liberation.”

The last three prompts from June 22 (“Who am I?”), June 23 (“What do I desire?”), and

July 1, 2017, (“What is your life plan? What legacy do you want to leave behind?”) were embedded in the program’s curriculum guide. These questions corresponded with arts and craft projects that students were to complete at the end of the summer's institute. The larger objective of these predetermined journal prompts was to steer students to conceptualize their futures in empowering frameworks. Additionally, they guided articulations of the future couched in the overall themes of liberation that built on their legacy of Haitian ancestry, and disrupted limiting

Discourses of what they could achieve. The philosophies informing these journal prompts and the program's empowerment framework will be discussed and evaluated in greater detail in

Chapter 6.

Findings

In this section, I outline the ways in which the girls’ autobiographical writings contended with their intersectional identities and the dominant places and spaces in their lives, as well as how they chose to frame girlhood. The three larger findings after analyzing their journal entries are the following. The girls in this study narrated place by using Discourses from the center.

They did this by reporting the institutional norms of their schooling environment, and using the dominant Discourses to frame the city of Miami. However, the acceptance of these institutional norms and Discourses of Miami disengaged the girls from the places and spaces they occupied and limited their abilities to reimagine and transform them. In terms of identities, the girls narrate their intersectional identities by referencing family, community, culture, and faith. They wrote about the nuances in their racial, ethnic, and national identity markers as Black Haitian girls. In

106 doing so, they reveal different relationships to Blackness, Haitianness, and Americanness based on their alignments and resistances to the dominant Discourses attached to those identities. And in the last finding, the girls narrate their ideas of girlhood in autobiographical writing which situated their agency and empowerment in the talents, personalities, and relationships they are able to occupy on their own terms. While their writing contains undertones that are heteronormative and sometimes patriarchal, the girls construct ideas of who they are as young women towards a trajectory of they want to accomplish for themselves.

Dominant Discourses of Schools and Miami

This analysis of place focuses specifically on two journal prompts: “Describe a typical school day,” and “How would you describe Miami to someone who has never been there?” However, I also paid close attention to how places came up in other prompts and will discuss those references as well. I asked specific guiding question of the texts to understand how the girls socially constructed schools and the city of Miami to address the primary research question. The guiding questions were: How are the girls framing schools and Miami in their writing? What are the girls able to do in the spaces they write about? Is there an ability to transform?

Schools. Analysis of the girls’ writing about school revealed two central themes: 1) all the girls describe sanctioned institutional practices of their schools along with their levels of adherence to those protocols, and 2) Writings about school tend to highlight relationships with adults and peers rather than the inner workings of classrooms or discussion of knowledge/content.

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Adherence to institutional protocol. In these prompts, the girls describe the mundane and draw out the routines, norms, and expectations of their respective school dynamics. Their depictions of “normal” school days are noteworthy for the ways in which they chose to fall in line with these routines. The girls all spoke to their places in school protocols, and, to a certain extent, the ways they chose to adhere to or resist the institutional practices of their middle schools.

Four of the six girls begin their entries by sharing their morning protocols. Venus writes,

“A typical school day is me walking to the track with my friends, since that’s where all the 7th and 8th graders are supposed to go” (2015). Nadège, in her role as a safety patrol, opens her entry by writing, “A typical school day starts with greeting my teacher, and then going to patrol at my school’s gates” (2015). Lovely, also a safety patrol, walks us through how she reports to duty,

“When I get to school I put my bag down in the classroom…this year, I had a job to control traffic and take the Pre-K children to class…I put my phone in the office because my school doesn’t allow cellphones” (2015). From there the girls illustrate days in which they attend X number of class periods, the types of socializing that occurs at school, and their feelings of being ready to go home. Nadège captures this sentiment in her thought, “The day goes on as usual— I attend classes and whatnot. By the time lunch comes around, I’m ready to go home” (2015). In their responses to this particular prompt, all the girls delineate a school in which they enter the space and understand and participate in the practices and procedures of the day: where to go in the morning, the schedule of classes, and then procedures for going home.

A cursory read of these journals could render unsurprising findings of middle schoolers who aren’t particularly enthused about their respective schools. Lovely (2015) summarized attending 8 classes a day. She does not mention a teacher or subject area, or even friends.

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Venus's (2015) description of a school day doesn't include a teacher's name but does differentiate between periods that are boring and favorite periods, while expressing feelings of “get it over with” or “putting headphones and going home.” The most noteworthy aspects of these reflections about schools are what each girl chooses to highlight while breaking down the school as an institution. Additionally, the omissions in the text help scholars of education and race to understand the ways girls frame school as a place and their ability to transform those spaces.

For example, while Venus mentions, “My favorite, class is Language Arts since I’m good at that” (2015), her journal highlights the omissions. She doesn’t name what makes her particularly “good” in Language Arts, who her friends are, or activities that she looks forward to engaging. She ends her entry by stating the designated dismissal area where “there is usually a fight of some sort,” and then gets on the bus, puts on headphones, and heads home. Venus paints a chronological retelling of the day from beginning, middle, and end, and where she is required to be during those turning moments.

Nadège, on the other hand, writes about the highlight of her mornings, which are her early morning conversations with her fellow safety patrol and book buddy. She writes, “we both patrol at the gates, so we take any chance we can get to talk about the latest book we are reading”

(2015). But then she abruptly concludes her entry with, “By the time lunch comes around, I’m ready to go home” (2015). In terms of omission, Nadège doesn’t name anyone in the entry. She discusses the different places on the school grounds that she must occupy during given times, but she frames the school site a place she desires to leave just as soon as she enters.

Drawing attention to interpersonal connections. Both Sabrina’s and Antoinette’s journal entries about a typical day of school differ from the other girls in that they do not make routines and rituals the central points of focus. In an especially brief entry, Sabrina constructs

109 school in the binary of fun/boring. Fun is described as when “the teacher tells a joke or put (sic) on a movie” (2015), while boring occurs when “all the teachers do is make us do work” and

“give us a lot of homework” (2015). What makes Antoinette’s journal response notably jarring is that she centers her writing on the different emotions the school space evokes in her throughout the day. Antoinette begins, “I walk inside the school gates unaware of what to expect, how to feel, and what to be expected of me” (2015). Further, she makes note of her appearance and hints at a possibly contentious relationship with peers, “I walked in with my hair a hot mess, but I tried not to let others’ opinion of my (sic) suppress my own” (2015). Antoinette also expresses moments of fear experienced throughout the school day. She shares, “I usually try to eat breakfast because I'm scared that I might slow down my metabolism… I'm scared of not reaching the goals I set up for myself...” (2015). Nonetheless, Antoinette also expresses a pleasurable moment in school: “I enjoy having real-life conversations with my school’s counselor throughout the day” (2015). In poetic fashion, Antoinette concludes her entry on a positive note where she asserts, “In a typical day of school, I try my best to grow in the moment and bring out the best of me” (2015).

The girls’ journal entries do not provide enough insight into the day-to-day classroom spaces to fairly assess whether each girl has the agency to transform her classroom learning environments. However, the journals provide a clearer overall impression of school as an institution: the girls position themselves such a way that school happens to them. The girls write from a place in which they adhere to well-implemented school practices and are able to delineate those practices. The protocols of the day and their varied tones of detachment indicate that school does not necessarily offer experiences when the girls can operate outside sanctioned practices and outside of the school’s power structure.

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The journals also introduce the girls and aspects of who they are. For the most part, all the girls adhere to some forms of the school’s institutional practices. As writers sharing aspects of their lives, the girls do not shy from expressing displeasure, detachment, fear, excitement, and boredom. However, the girls display individual characteristics. Nadège marks herself as an independent reader. Antoinette is open about her struggles with her peers and meeting the high expectation she has set for herself—even so, she is persistent in trying to meet them. Lovely demonstrates an ability to comply with institutional practices. Sabrina enjoys humor, entertainment, and activities that are stimulating. Last, Venus is upfront in expressing activities/practices she does not care for.

Miami

This section focuses attention on the ways the girls in this study frame Miami, Florida.

For all but Venus, Miami is home and where they were born and raised. Miami is a unique city because of its thriving Caribbean and Latin American Diaspora. Miami is currently home to the largest population of Haitian immigrants, surpassing New York in the last 8 years (Buchanan,

Albert, & Beaulieu, 2010). Haitians have been able to carve out unique cultural spaces in parts of the city such as Little Haiti, North Miami, and North Miami Beach, and contribute to the cultural richness and aesthetics of Miami.

In response to the journal entry prompt, “How would you describe Miami to someone who has never been here?” the girls offer two prevailing narratives and counternarratives of this global city. The first, dominant narrative is that Miami is a beautiful ocean city with gorgeous, but sometimes wonky weather, and is home to a bustling, diverse population of people from all over the world. The second counternarrative, as I will name them in this chapter, comes from a

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Black immigrant perspective. Miami is a city with narratives of violence occurring in Black and

Black immigrant communities, thriving music, and segregation along racial and ethnic lines.

Miami, the beautiful. There is nothing inherently wrong with the first narrative framing

Miami as a beautiful city nestled next to pristine beaches with yearly warm weather. What is most interesting in these responses to observe the ways in which Venus, Nadège, Lovely,

Sabrina, and Ronelda position themselves in these narratives. How do they figure themselves in this landscape and backdrop of a thriving Haitian Diaspora? Are they aware of the ways in which dominant Discourses of the city include and/or exclude young people such as themselves?

Lovely best encapsulates the dominant Discourses of Miami in her first journal entry. She writes,

It’s a warm and sunny place. I feel that it’s a good place to raise children here. It never

gets to extremely cold enough to snow, which is perfect for tourists. There are places here

that you can’t find anywhere else like Water Rapids! [water theme park located just an

hour north in Palm Beach County] (2015)

Lovely speaks about the city she was born and raised in from an “attraction” perspective. Miami has lots to offer those who are passing through in tourist capacities. Though she references raising children, she does not elaborate on this point. Sabrina, who emigrated from Port-au-

Prince, Haiti because of the earthquake disaster in 2010, also frames her new home in attraction tropes: “Miami is a great place to visit. Miami have a beautiful beach. The food here is great specialy (sic) the pizza and ice-cream. Theirs (sic) a lot of place to visit for example the Miami

Port and undersea tunnel.” (2015). As a relative newcomer to the city, Sabrina shares some of the ways her new home has impressed her.

Venus and Antoinette further develop this narrative by speaking to the diversity within

112 the city. Venus writes, “There’s a lot of Haitian and Hispanics. Miami is also very cultural.

You’ll find different places with a certain race there only” (2015). What is interesting about the point that Venus makes is the disconnect or lack of historical understanding of how a city comes to socially constructed— and subsequently segregated— to create pockets of communities in which only one race/ethnicity is the majority. In her entry, Antoinette does the work of pointing out what makes the city intriguing for her. She states,

What I find intriguing about Miami is the many cultures that are bunch[ed] into one city.

You’re able to learn many languages through the inhabitants of Miami. The diverse

populations helps you accept people [for] who they are, where their (sic) from, and where

they are going. (2015)

Antoinette is mindful of the ways her city’s diversity can be a resource to developing an empathetic community of people. While Venus and Antoinette both write from the “Miami as an attraction” perspective, they are able to expand the concept of attraction to include the human resources the city has to offer.

Nevertheless, Nadège diverges from the normalized narratives of Miami and writes from her unique perspectives about the city. Nadège writes a narrative of Miami that is complicated by her immigrant experience as a girl. She frames her response by sharing her memory of coming to

Miami (and presumably to the United States) for the first time as a young girl leaving Port-au-

Prince, Haiti:

I have a faint memory of the first night I came to Miami. My first thoughts were that it

was a busy place. It was beautiful with all the lights and everything. But in the morning,

it was hot, and many of the people I met were rude. The schools were just no—I thought

Haiti was better. But now I just think Miami is a hard place to survive, but survival is not

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impossible. (2015)

Reading this entry struck a chord for me. My mother lived in survival mode in Miami. She was a working-class woman who had to raise 5 daughters (and grandkids) in a very expensive city that has a long history of marginalizing Black and Haitian citizens. To understand how Miami is a hard place to survive, despite its glamor and warm beaches, is to be Black/Brown, working class, and immigrant. Miami as a busy place with beautiful lights, but Nadège doesn’t mention its beaches and sunny weather, an interesting omission.

In this section, I point out two things: in general, Miami is often framed in discourses of attractions/tourist destinations and diversity. Furthermore, the majority of the girls take up that discourse in their narratives. What's problematic about this dominant discourse of Miami is that it erases the lives of Black and Brown people in the space. When you are talking about warm weather, beautiful beaches there is not a lot of room to also acknowledge poor working-class people who don’t have access to those spaces or people who are not from the majority. So, the girls who took up this narrative primarily reflected on how the space is socially constructed to bring in people and said less about how the space belongs to them.

However, Nadège does something a bit different in her writing. Nadège writes from her perspective as an immigrant coming to the city for here for the first time. In her stories, she recounts experiences of Miami as this busy loud rude place; the most important part of these reflections is that she says it’s a hard place to survive. So, she alludes to what happens to poor people in Miami even though she can say more. Nadège provides writings of girls who talk about

Miami but do not erase themselves when describing the city they are from.

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Relationships and Resistance to Discourse of Black Diasporic Identities

This section does the work of understanding how the girls write about their intersectional identities as Black, Haitian/Haitian American immigrant girls. The following question guided the analysis of this section. What are the different facets of their identities? How do they take it up in their writing? Where do they write about conflict or tensions between intersections? What do their identities allow them to do? What are the identities teaching you about how to be who you are? What are the messages you’re getting from Christian faith, Blackness, Haitian culture,

American culture, etc.?

This section focuses on the following journal entries. 1) Where do you come from? Who do you come from? What do you come from? 2) What does it mean to be Haitian? Black?

American? Do they ever clash with each other? What else do you use to identify who you are? 3)

Who am I? These entries revealed several themes in the girls’ writings and the ways they identify themselves. The girls grounded themselves in Haiti, Miami, family, and spirituality. The girls’ writings also highlight the ways in which Haiti, Miami, family, and spirit impacted them. Family functions differently for each girl, providing spaces of both support and tensions, as well as senses of legacy. The girls write about the nuances in the identity markers (Haitian, Black,

American) and present different alignments with Blackness, Haitianness, and Americanness.

Their alignments reveal the controlling Discourses attached to these identities. The girls use writing to discuss the tensions of these harmful perceptions and how they coexist with their other identities.

Family, Community, and Faith. On June 15, 2015, the girls were asked to respond to

“Where do you come from? Who do you come from? What do you come from?”

Nadège locates her origins in Port-au-Prince and is the opening declarative sentence of

115 her entry. She writes, “I come from a line of hardworking individuals that are willing to put in the time and work, to get what they want. I come from a family that is full of faith, but sometimes tend to be narrow-minded” (2015). With this statement, she locates herself in this family that might trouble her. She recognizes the dissonance, but also can identify what keeps them together. “Narrow-minded” in this context hints towards tensions that occur in the intersections between faith, culture, and Nadège’s American upbringing. She chooses to speak of family as a collective and doesn’t name or make distinctions between people. But she includes herself in it, using “we.” She writes, “We are physically very close, but we have differences that come between us. Yet, our morals and blood our blood keep us together at the end of the day”

(2015). Nadège also indexes her family as a line of hardworking individuals. She also spends time talking about differences and narrow mindedness present despite the closeness to family.

She expresses reverence for family, but also notes differences and possible sources of friction with the same individuals who have helped shaped her.

In her entry, Venus responds to each question systematically: “Where I come from is a small place in Miami filled with Haitians and Cubans” (2015). The ways she describes her mother and father and the type of environment they have established for her as their child are particularly moving. “I come from a very energetic woman named and a quiet man named . I come from a loving environment where you can be yourself, and goof off, and just relax” (2015). She names them in a terse way, but I can feel that the quietness and energy of her parents is part of what she loves about them. She reveals that part of her is silly and desires acceptance and peace.

Sabrina approaches this prompt by listing her personality traits: kind, “don’t care,” respectful. It is interesting how Sabrina and the other girls list ways they’re kind, approachable,

116 and nice, but then explain that they able to shut that openness off if it is not reciprocated. She lists her parents. What is pointed to me is that she remembers the exact date she came to United

States, although she was young and it occurred five years before the time of the writing. “I come from Haiti. I came here in February 17, 2010. When the earthquake happen (sic) in Haiti.”

Sabrina references the earthquake throughout her writing, and this event functions as an epochal marker for her, and for other Haitians and Haitian Americans. Haitians often talk in terms of before/after the earthquake.

Lovely’s interpretation of this entry is both literal and spiritual. She writes, “I come from

Miami where I was born…” (2015). She also broadened this story to include all the influences that have shaped her: “I came from my family, teachers, friends, classmates, parents, and God they shape me and watched me grow.” Lovely’s story also encompasses being a part of the diaspora. She reflects, “I come from Africa, the Haitian culture, Christianity, and a community of diverse people and ethnicities.” Her understanding of her origins transcends physical and literal.

Her narrative of her origin and growth places her in the context of Diasporas and many communities (2015). Lovely makes an intentional connection to spirituality when listing her origins of where, who, what, with spirit, God, and source. She also lists her mother’s uterus/stomach and her family. God or source is listed first in all the three categories.

Antoinette's entry is replete with religious undertones. She alludes to Jesus Christ. She sees herself as a child of Jesus and possibly his teachings. And how she recognizes her upbringing into who she is and who she wants to be.

To be Black, Haitian, and American. This section focuses on the way the participants in this study negotiated racial, ethnic, national identities in their writings. They demonstrate these negotiations in their responses to the June 17, 2105 prompt: “What does it mean to be Haitian?

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Black? American? Do they ever clash with each other? What else do you use to identify who you are?” I have found that all girls are able to write about the nuances in the identity markers

(Haitian/Black/American) and present different alignments with Blackness, Haitianness, and

Americanness. Their alignments reveal that the controlling Discourses attached to these identities influenced the ways in which each girl took up or rejected these different identities.

Overall, the girls in this study take up two stances in writing about what it means to be

Haitian. I found the majority of girls linked their Black and Haitian identities. The girls who did this exhibited the following in their writings: first, they named the controlling narrative of

Haitianness and then openly resisted those narratives in their writing (deny our success, deny our historical legacy), and second, they went a step further by connecting to Blackness in terms of a shared diasporic legacy of marginalization.

Antoinette's writing takes interesting twists and turns when she talks about the ways she identifies with these different categories and she takes up particular Discourses when making her negotiations. She talks about Blackness as “constantly judged by those that are not my same color, (not all) to be inferior to those who lead me to believe that they're my superior in looks, class, intelligence, and etc.” (2015). She lays bare the dominant narrative of Blackness and then quickly rejects it with a counternarrative. Her following statement asserts, “However, I believe that Black is beautiful in more ways thank you can imagine and it's about time people stop looking down [on] us/judge us based on gossip or what someone else of are (sic) color does”

(2015).

Antoinette then introduces the idea of being Haitian as being “part of a group; not just any kind of group, a one of a kind” (2015). Antoinette spends time qualifying the conversation about Haitiannes with culture and language. She also raises the practice of “bringing Haitians

118 down” and the problem of Haitians not being recognized for who we are:

I'm given the opportunity to say 'Sak Pasé?' to my fellow Haitian. I find being Haitian

really cool and interesting. It angers me when people put down Haitians and don’t

recognize us for who we are and what we can be. (2015)

She also does an interesting job of framing Americanness as a privilege, and as a “trying to take over Haitian side” which harks to parents' concerns about raising their children in the Diaspora.

She is privileged as an American for being able to learn a new language [presumably English] and have more liberation than she would get in her other country [Haiti].

Still, Antoinette unexpectedly takes up the Discourse of the “race card.” She calls it the pity card, and “Black people take advantage of their color” (2015). She substantiates this claim using an example of hiring practices. She posits that if a Black person were denied employment from a predominantly white workplace, “they would use the use the racist card” (2015). These sentences co-exist in the same paragraph and highlight the complexities and contradictions that exist at the intersection of race and ethnicity. White supremacy has been successful in incorporating Anti-Black discourse across the diaspora. From a Haitian perspective, Black

Americans’ preoccupation with racism and discrimination has been framed as a pretext for laziness, lack of discipline etc. As Antoinette's writing demonstrates, anti-Black sentiments are difficult to expunge and doing so require deliberate focus, even for a young girl who is staunchly proud of her Blackness and Haitianness.

In her marginal notes for Black, Nadège remarks that she endures constant struggle and criticism. She writes in the body of the entry, “I am Black, that is my race. Because of my race, there are certain expectations that I must surpass” (2015). As a Haitian, Nadège notes, “you have to be better than everyone else,” and adds, “Just as in my Haitian culture, I am expected to do

119 better than everyone that came before me in my family” (2015). Blackness and Haitianness have common ground. As a Black person, one is expected to surpass expectations and as a Haitian person, one is expected to socially climb, do better, and do right by those who brought you to the

States. Both identities must work hard towards progression and advancement—in spite of social disparities and structural inequalities that make those tasks more difficult.

Lovely differentiates Black, Haitian, and American identities as being rooted in different traditions, foods, and music. She makes an interesting pivot when explaining how these identities clash: “The American side of me says that all Black people (meaning Haitian as well) are considered ugly or not beautiful. Which is very sad.” Blackness, which also encompasses

Haitianness, is understood as less desirable, signaling Lovely's understanding of shared diasporic experiences and racialization processes.

Venus's interpretations of these identities demonstrate how tensions can exist between all the identities. Venus describes the ways in which bilingualism as a Haitian American creates tensions. She explains, “Being Haitian and being American clash all the time. My mom can speak English but has a very thick accent, and my brother can't speak good Creole, so I always found myself translating for both of them” (2015). She also distances from identifying as Black.

“I'm not very Black but I think to be Black is to connect yourself to your roots, and always defending yourself,” Venus writes (2015). What is jolting about the distancing she does here is that while this parallels what the other girls in the study characterize as Blackness, Venus distances herself from those characteristics. She further explains:

Being Black and being Haitian are very different to me. I feel being Haitian is a bit more

cultural while being Black is just a label. I feel that me being Black and being American

clash because when my friends listen to their rap music, I would rather listen to

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something a bit more theatrical. (2015)

Venus doesn't indicate whether she sees connecting with your roots as a favorable quality, but the idea of “always defending yourself” carries an exhaustive tone that she elects to not to take up. The clarification of not identifying with rap music also insinuates that Venus's understanding of Blackness might be limited and that those limited perceptions do not include who she is or her interests, and therefore cannot include her.

Girls are able to paint a more complete picture of their understanding of the ways

Blackness is positioned in their US social context. In delineating Haitianness, the girls also present an understanding of how people at the center project controlling Discourses onto

Blackness, the external constructions of their identity marker. They provide examples of “[being] constantly judged by those not my same color, and be inferior to those who lead me to believe they are my superior in looks, class, intelligence”; “Being Black means not everyone is going to hand you everything”; “Black people (including Haitians as well are considered ugly or not beautiful)”; “I am Black, that is my race, because of my race there are certain expectations I must surpass”; “Black is connected to your roots, and always defending yourself.” These demonstrate that the majority of those dominant Discourses function to marginalize Black people.

Only one girl does not identify as Black and her rationale also reveals the limiting framework of Blackness. By definition, this identity would be hard for anyone to feel attached to.

Being Black is categorized with a rap/hip-hop music tradition, something she doesn’t feel drawn to. Additionally, her characterization of having to always having to defend herself implies a rejection of that particular labor. Students, either by experience or acute observation, have confronted anti-Black social structures. However, resistance is not as full-throated in the girls’ writing as it was in the first identity marker. The girls maneuver conceptualizations of Blackness

121 based on their understandings of that positionality and their relationships to that concept. Girls express acceptance, outright rejection, and resistance. Resistance takes on different forms.

Unsurprisingly, all the girls describe different relationships to American identity. Two (Nadège and Sabrina) reject it outright for different reasons. For Sabrina, being born in Haiti was reason enough for her to not be American. Nadège, who was also born in Port-au-Prince, rejects

American-ness for a different reason. She states, “I don’t really consider myself American even though I listen to American music, eat American food, and go to a very American school. The

American culture is desirable, but expensive...I live in it, but it is not me.”

Being an American, in terms of the girls' conceptualizations, means being part of a dominating culture that has privileges (speaking the majority language, knowing the music, food, and culture). They also understand that American culture has harmful perceptions of other identities. Blackness is considered ugly/not beautiful, and the culture underscores language barriers, materialism, and nationalistic or patriotic sentiments. The girls use writing to discuss the tensions of these harmful perceptions and how they coexist with their other identities.

Who I am Now and Where I Want to Go

This section will center the ways in which the girls story experiences of girlhood in their autobiographical writing. The following journal entries helped gauge the construction of girlhood: 1) Who am I? 2) What do I desire? (heart maps), and 3) What is your life plan? What legacy to you want to leave behind? This construct of girlhood is influenced by the work of

Elaine Richardson's (2009, 2002) concept of African American girls' literacies, which she defines as “the constellation of African American cultural identities, social locations, and social practices that influence the ways members of this discourse group make meaning and assert themselves socio-politically in subordinate as well as official contexts” (Richardson, 2009, p.

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755). I pay particular attention to the Black discourse styles offered by Richardson (2002)

“storytelling, conscious manipulation of silence and speech, code/style shifting, and signifying, among other verbal and nonverbal performances” (p. 680). With this theoretical framework in mind, I ask “What are the types of phrases, sayings, and colloquialism that students evoke, and under what circumstances, when activating their linguistic connections to their Haitian heritage?”

Special considerations must also be made when discussing young Haitian girl literacies as patriarchy and their resistance to it manifests differently in a Haitian cultural context. I also ask the following questions as I interpret the girls’ journal entries: “What do the girls place at the center of their identities, and what ways do their choices resist/reinforce gendered norms for them? In what ways are the girls in this study joyous?” When describing who they are, I found the girls generated autobiographical texts that situate their agency and empowerment in the talents, personalities, and relationships they are able to occupy on their own terms.

In her opening paragraph, Nadège recalls a moment in which she felt particularly fully empowered. This memory and her self-description about her current state exemplify why Black girls resist and how the process is cyclical:

Last year, I stood on stage and spoke to an audience about who I thought I was. I was

filled to the brim with confidence about my identity. However, as I went through my 8th

grade year, that solid image shattered. I come back to HELP to pick up the pieces and

glue them back together. (2015)

Nadège references HELP’s 2014 end of summer celebration where she performed an original spoken word piece on stage in an auditorium on the university's campus. The audience was all the HELP students, teachers, support staff, family, friends, community members, and university personnel. I remember very well Nadège's “Who am I” performance because it blew me away. I,

123 too, could see a young girl take command of the stage using her voice. It was surprising to read the opening paragraph of this entry describing how she lost touch of who that girl was during 8th grade and that she was back in HELP trying to rediscover herself. Nadège also describes a real pressure for immigrant girls: being successful. Overall, Nadège names herself in three ways:

Black scholar, writer, and Christian.

As a Black scholar, Nadège articulates larger Discourses of Black students, “As a Black student, some people don’t really expect me to succeed, so I can’t let those people have the last laugh” (2015). She articulates the pressure to prove this narrative wrong and not allow those who ascribe to it be able to have the final say in her life outcomes. There is conviction in that, like lifting a stubborn chin defiantly. But there is also weight:

In fact, my biggest fear is that I won't be able to succeed as much as I can in getting an

education. But I never like to even consider failure as an option for me be because I want

to beat the odds. (2015)

Nadège names writing as her gift. She reflects, “I may not do it consistently, but I do have strong urges to create things. I think writing is my gift” (2015). Writing is her power. Nadège explains,

“when I write, I'm exposed to a type of freedom that I don’t have in real life. When I read I get to visit amazing places, but when I write, I get pulled into a reality that I created” (2015). As a literacy practice, writing exposes her to a type of freedom that she doesn't experience in real life.

Her identity as a writer suggests a realization that the figured world she inhabits now isn’t necessarily one she can shape and impact just yet. Even in reading, while she able to go places, she still doesn’t have the power to execute creating her own reality.

Last, she expresses, “I am a Christian because I have a strong faith in God” (2015). What is interesting in her conceptualization of Christianity is that it is not couched in any particular

124 institution or community group, but the ways in which she taps into God. She asserts, “I'm not sure which form of Christianity I believe in, but I pray every night.” Nadège also acknowledges the ways growing up Protestant and attending a Catholic school have influenced her developing beliefs.

As a whole, Nadège builds her moment in girlhood into three constructs as a Black scholar, a writer, and Christian. She focuses her identity as a scholar as an intentional tool of resistance. Her mind and work in academia demands high expectations and goal setting. Her writing is where she feels liberating; she discusses the freedom in creating her own worlds and realities. And finally, her girlhood is largely shaped by Christian faith and belief in God, which she nurtures through prayer.

Venus's identity is tightly constructed around her talents as a creative artistic person. She does not mention identifiers such as race, ethnicity, or gender—which isn’t surprising, considering her stance that Blackness is a label that comes with always having to defend yourself. Her understanding of self is highlighted more by what she enjoys doing and the activities does well. Her interests are multimodal: reading on Wattpad, reading sci-fi books, song writing, playing the piano and engaging with social media such as Vine and YouTube. However, there are moments in journal where she negates or downplays her talents. Despite saying, “I try to be creative when I do projects, which ends up making me become a perfectionist,” and explaining that she has been playing the piano for three years, songwriting, and self-identifying as an artistic creative person (2015), she credits some of her talent to those around her: “At school, since I’m surrounded by so much talent, I guess it kind of rubbed off on me” (2015). She also does the work of describing her character.

In the prompt, Venus points out she “almost never breaks the rules,” and “can’t even

125 litter without feeling bad” (2015). She also speaks to the range in her personality by stating, “I can be overly nice, but I have a very smart mouth when I want to” (2015). “Having a smart mouth” is often associated with “sassy” Black girls and can take on negative connotations of rudeness. However, in the context, she asserts herself, and her voice, as one that can’t be walked over. Venus expresses her joys in singing and songwriting and has taken active roles in her school community to sharpen those skills. She highlights her biggest talent as singing and has set her future goals in songwriting for artists such as Beyoncé and Emeli Sande. As a student, Venus has found community with the school thespians for three years and has always taken part in the end-of-the-year school play. For Venus, defining herself is practicing resistance. She knows her tendencies to be both reserved and quiet as well as energetic. She loves reading sci-fi books and wants to produce music in the future. She’s an active thespian and tries to find several outlets to be creative: school projects, plays, writing songs, social media. She opts to operationalize

Blackness from a position in which she doesn’t have to take on labor mandated with label

(though limited) of Blackness.

Sabrina’s response to the journal prompt reveals a young girl who feels very good about who she is. Sabrina talks about herself from many dimensions. She is able to articulate the joy she has meant to her family and what makes her special in her family dynamic as the only girl.

She understands what makes her happy: being active, making people happy, and helping. She writes, “I’m an active girl. I like to play a lot of games. I really don’t like to stay still” (2015).

Sabrina also shows a distinct grasp of time. She knows the years her brothers were born, the exact date of the earthquake in Haiti, and the exact date of her emigration from Haiti. She has written about this date her family left Haiti in a previous writing prompt; its repetition suggests the importance of February 17, 2010 to her.

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Sabrina also engages in a tug of war when writing about her conceptualization of womanhood and girlhood. Very early in her prompt she identifies as a young lady. She justifies her self-identification,

I’m a young lady because im not 18 or 25. I’m a girl. That’s growing up to be young

lady. People say you’re not a lady until you become 30, but I think you become a lady

when you marry. (2015)

Assuming that she is speaking from a traditional idea of marriage, her rationale does the work of linking maturity and adulthood to marriage to a man, despite being aware of others providing an age marker. This could be interpreted in different ways. From a traditional Caribbean standpoint, women are often considered fully adult when they are able to take on the full responsibilities of maintaining a household. Haitian women are often referred to as the “poto mitan” of Haitian society, which roughly translates to pillars of society. I will note that the “poto mitan” construct of Haitian women is debated by Haitian feminists and is critiqued for celebrating women who successfully manage local economies, raise children, and maintain households without allocating any of the social power or protections for being able to accomplish those tasks.

Later in her writing, Sabrina flat out rejects traditional frameworks for girls. She also is a mover and a shaker, and embraces being active. She writes, “I really don’t like to stay still. I like to play football with my family, I play basketball at school, and play soccer at home. I think staying active is a good thing.” Furthermore, she names herself a tomboy, saying “I don’t like to do girly stuff. I like to do boy stuff (video games) specifically Halo. That’s my favorite video game” (2015). Sabrina also relishes being the only girl in her family. She retells the feelings around her birth as experienced by her mother:

I’m my parents’ daughter. When my mom made me, she was really happy because she

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always wanted a girl. When she saw she had two sons one after another, she gave up, she

thought that she will never have a baby girl. But it happened I was born. (2015)

Sabrina describes who she is in relation to how she treats people around her. She opens up with a narrative about being a godmother and how that was the happiest day of her life. She also spends time talking about her family and the importance of her birth, where she grew up and how she plays around with them.

Lovely wrote a declaration of love to herself, and for herself. Her first sentence sets the tone and reads, “I am a: gorgeous Haitian young woman who is afraid of the future and is both beautiful and rare” (2015). Her journal entry details all the things that make her extraordinary: gorgeous Haitian young woman, intelligent, dreamer, an aunt, loveable, and on a mission. She also describes things she marked in contrast to her positive qualities: afraid of the future, emotional, short, awkward, insecure, and full of secrets. Lovely characterizes herself as a young girl who is rooted and knows each tentacle of those roots—family, strengths, uniqueness, race and ethnicity, and beauty. She paints the many facets that describe who she is and what she feels about herself as a young woman.

She indexes girlhood using adjectives we associate with “woman/girl”: beauty, gorgeous, long hair, excellent sister and daughter, as well as aunt. She also generates a construct of the

“transitioning tomboy,” and claims “I am a tomboy transitioning with long hair who is on a mission.” In terms of popular culture, she frames herself as a geek that loves anime and Vampire

Diaries, a television drama on the CW channel. She also alludes to being a trustworthy Catholic.

Lovely has attended a private Catholic School for most of her k-8 schooling experience so that influences her identity as a spiritual person, although I am unsure of how she relates

“trustworthiness” to being Catholic. I interpreted being “blessed” in this context as Lovely

128 perceiving favor with God; things could be so much worse but there’s a god that is looking out for you and ensuring your success as his believer or follower. There is love and grace granted so you accept those things. Lovely understands Black and Blessed as two favorable things working to create her magic.

Lovely's journal entry talked about change, mapping the road ahead, knowing that she has to have her mind wrapped around what she wants to become. She is bringing in Discourse on

Christianity: “Black and Blessed”; “independent and trustworthy catholic”; “She loves her religion and music.” Lovely has a conversation about girlhood: “Gorgeous Haitian (young inserted) woman. An intelligent dreamer who is emotional short and awkward. An aunt full time who is very loving and loveable” transitioning tomboy. Excellent sister and daughter. Girlhood has elements of self-love and self-esteem, confidence and independence, awkwardness and transition, and gives love and take care of little ones. Duty to be a good woman to others in family. In the purview of Lovely's world she includes herself, her family, her future, and responsibilities, religion, and counterculture (fandom for Vampire Diaries, anime, sci-fi).

Antoinette constructed her entry as a series of bulleted identity statements. She started this entry with being a student, and then scratched the order to put in first that she is a strong believer of the Great I am. What then ensues are a series of succinct points that lists out major qualities about herself that shape who she is:

I am a student and I acknowledge the fact that I'll always be one...I am different from the

different concept of 'normal', but then again, I don't believe in normal...I am not your

average bookworm...Over the last 3 years, I've become more of an introvert/loner...I am

Haitian-American, but mostly Haitian. (2015)

Discourses in Antoinette's journal are that of God being the “Rock and Salvation,” which comes

129 from a biblical reference of Psalm 62 verse 2 and is often used to reinforce the idea of a reliable, steadfast God. She taps into religious rhetoric and her training as a believer and saved person.

She also uses the Discourse of an inquirer and seeker of knowledge: “I love being able to pick into the brains of others and learn interesting facts about everything and anything” (2015). And also, the she finds obligation to disseminate knowledge: “When I receive accurate knowledge from someone, I don't just keep it, I spread knowledge and pray that they'll do the same” (2015).

Antoinette uses these different identity statements to tap into multiple social registers. Each identifier comes with its subsequent language style. When talking about being a believer, she uses key phrases such as the Great I am, rock and salvation, and gladness in never being forsaken. She speaks of being a scholar, picking people's brains, sharing knowledge, and learning interesting facts. Being a bookworm/lover of books and reading relate to her being introverted.

These passions allow her space and time to meditate and reflect about life. When discussing her

Haitian heritage, Antoinette evokes pride in her culture and where she has come from. She writes just a little about being Haitian/Haitian American and the pride associated with that.

Heart's Desires. In the heart map activity, the girls sketched a heart shape and then filled that with the things they desire for themselves. From this activity, the girls were the then prompted to turn those desires into a written prayer to God in which they shared what was in their hearts, the things they needed, and what they wanted assistance obtaining. After analyzing the diagrams and the prayers, I have found the following: The girls' desires conceptualize and ground womanhood/womanness in multiple realities as caregiver, lover/partner, scholar, spiritual, and career-oriented/professional— with their own emphases on different roles. Also, the heart maps reflect a combination of the girls' most basic desires for love happiness, health, and stability. However, the hearts were also a place to implicitly name insecurities, fears,

130 longings, and vulnerabilities. Their desires span communities and encompass connections to self, and family (future and present). In the prayers, God is framed using traditional Christian

Discourses of the Lord as Almighty, powerful, protector, and benevolent. These Discourses of the monolithic God and source encourage and facilitate literacy events that center vulnerability, openness, and flaws, and allow girls to push outward beyond themselves.

What stood out about Nadège’s diagram was she did not ask for one material item. Her desires seek out healthy relationships: “friends that get me and share common interests,” “peace in my heart with family,” “a new bond with God,” and larger overall values/qualities: love, unity respect, stronger faith, patience, and healing. Last, she articulates wanting a successful high school experience, getting good grades, being the valedictorian, participating in sports, and having a drama-free experience. The one thing that could be interpreted as self-serving is her desire to get into better shape and have some abs. Upon observation, doing well in school is something that weighs on her as she articulates what that looks like. It’s just not relegated to grades, but also having a good set of friends and being active in extracurricular activities. I also read a desire for self-improvement and things that contribute to the greater good. The majority of the larger Discourses that Nadège brings up center around the idea of success in schools, which she characterizes with earning high grades, achieving valedictorian status, and winning a best all- around award. Being successful in school means being a good academic with support from friends you can vibe with and playing team sports.

Many of Venus’s desires align with furthering her passions. She wants to meet the influencers of her industry, she wants resources that will help her to improve her own craft, and she is image-conscious. She desires travel, which I admire. Some kids in Miami struggle with imagining a world outside that city. And she isn’t afraid to break her comfort zone: learning to

131 surf, going to Europe, writing a book. Venus is ambitious. At the center of her desire is ambition.

But also, she writes of a commitment to improving herself as a person: becoming a better communicator and having a successful career. Venus is also steeped in pop culture. She references artists such as Todrick Hall, and names famous places like Coney Island, the UK,

Disneyland, Paris, California. She’s a consumer of pop culture and fashion. Her “heart” is situated in this medium.

Sabrina’s desires are interesting because they reveal some of the personal things that she might want to change about her body, such as “longer hair, smaller feet, and regular height”

(2015). I read these as possible insecurities she might have as being a young girl of short stature.

But then she also asks for deeper things such as having patience, respecting elders, being true to herself, being true to her heart, getting closer to God and love, as well as being a good scholar,

“having A and Bs.” She also desires a future in which she is Dr. Pierre Louis and is employed and has saved up money. Maybe this is part of her diasporic dreaming. Discourses present in

Sabrina’s heart are that good students get the top grades, and culturally specific Haitian

Discourses that include having respect for “gran moun” or elders. She also draws on the need to get closer to God and striving always for ways to maintain a relationship with God. She also brings in the conversation about being true to herself and her heart, which is significant. In my opinion, it demonstrates a girl who is training up in self-preservation and grounded-ness, which is impressive, and necessary for Black girls her age.

Lovely’s heart map and prayer don’t focus much on materialistic things. She first asks for ability to be successful academically. She wants to get As and be goal oriented. The second half of the prayer speaks of finding the right husband in the future and children. Lovely is exceptional as a participant because I feel she most consistently imagines and speaks into her writing a desire

132 for a partner and children. She prays for non-tangibles such as happiness, health, family, and help making new friends, and above all, more faith in God. However, she also marks herself as a growing teen when she writes about wanting clothes, beauty, and Apple products. More often, though, she writes of making friends, being herself, and “staying weird.” She embraces weirdness and I like that about her. Lovely’s revels in being weird. She tells us what being weird means for her: a love of Vampire Diaries, anime, and science fiction. The idea of keeping her future husband safe and clean sounds like it has Christian undertones. Making new friends in

August also alludes to the new academic year in high school, where Lovely will be entering public school for the first time. Larger discourses present in Lovely’s writing include the idea of doing things to do well in school (good grades, being goal oriented, and finishing school). She also prays for the nuclear family: husband, kids, job, success, money, and a house. I am reading that as middle class living. So Lovely taps into discourses about school, family/future/life goals, and religion (having more faith in God). There are touches of consumerism in her heart map, but for the most part it reads like the things a girl age feels compelled to want. Someone to love them, happiness, success in life, friends, beauty, and things to make her acceptable to her peers.

Lovely’s social languages include someone who belongs to a faith denomination. The structure of her prayer writing addresses God, expresses thanks for things she already has and then what she desires for herself. The prayer asks for a husband who is safe and clean. Not sure what a clean husband might mean. She also writes from a successful/motivated student identity. She identified the things that she would need to do well, and, being goal-oriented, she recites very specific keys to success.

Antoinette drew the heart but didn’t map it like the other participants; instead she listed out her desires in a systematic fashion. Her desires and life plans read almost identically; the

133 things she wants are also the things that are part of her life plans. Discourses present in

Antoinette's desires are the discourses of duty: taking care of her mother by having a successful career and alleviating the stressors of taking care of her and her brothers; going back to Haiti to help family and fellow country people. Antoinette also speaks from a vulnerable place and writes about her desire to be loved and have meaningful relationships, which she qualified with not being neglected, having a friend to rely on, and someone to see her for who she is. She also constructs her notion of a strong student: getting As, obtaining scholarships, and continuing learning. Last, Antoinette expressed her desires to be spiritually grounded: reading the Bible more and keeping strong faith in the Lord. Overall, she writes in social languages student, daughter, Haitian transnational, and Christian.

Conclusion

This final section discusses these findings and grounds the girls’ autobiographical writing through the perspective of the counternarratives and figured worlds. I also discuss the intricacies of the various modes of literacies present in their literacy events. Finally, the section discusses the implications these findings have for literacy studies and literacy instruction. After employing

Gee's (date) framework for CDA, and Solόrzano and Yosso’s (2003) critical race methodology, I came to the following findings for the girls' autobiographical writing. In the context of schools, the girls in this study highlighted relationships with adults and peers rather than the inner workings of classrooms or discussions of knowledge and course content. All the girls describe sanctioned school institutional practices, along with their levels of adherence to those protocols.

Girls take up three tropes when discussing Miami: tourist attraction, diverse cosmopolitan center.

Two girls offer strong counternarratives from a Black immigrant perspective: Miami as a city with narratives of violence in Black and Black immigrant communities, thriving music, and

134 segregation along racial lines. When storying their identities, the girls ground themselves in Haiti and Miami, family, and spirituality. The girls’ writing also highlights the ways in which Haiti,

Miami, family, and spirit has impacted them. Family functions differently for each girl by providing spaces of support and tensions, as well as senses of legacy. All girls are able to write about the nuances in the intersections (Haitian/Black/American) and present different alignments with Blackness, Haitianness, and Americanness. Their alignments reveal the controlling

Discourses attached to these identities.

For the most part, resistance to the marginalizing Discourses of Blackness and

Haitianness meant reinforcing Diasporic connections or refusing the labor of acceptance. When describing who they are, the girls generate autobiographical texts that situate their agency and empowerment in their talents, their personalities, and relationships they are able to occupy on their own terms. The girls' desires conceptualize and ground womanhood/womanness in multiple realities as caregiver, lover/partner, scholar, spiritual, and career-oriented/professional--with their own emphasis on different roles. The heart maps reflect a combination of the girls' most basic desires of love happiness, health, stability, but the hearts also functioned as places to implicitly name insecurities/fears/longings/vulnerabilities, and span connections to self, family (future and present), and communities.

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Chapter 5

Speaking Her Truths: When Black Girls Take the Floor

Introduction

The heart of this study reimagines teaching and learning spaces in which young Black girls are free to shape, explore, and contribute to classes designed with them specifically in mind.

This chapter reveals the complexities and nuances of Black Haitian girls’ intersectional identities and the ways their intersections enrich teaching and learning spaces when they are wholly centered. The chapter answers the second research question: in what ways do H/HA girls generate Discourses of race, place, and girlhood through discursive practices in HELP’s classroom? To engage this question, this chapter focuses on several recorded classroom discussions during the “What’s Hot?” afternoon literacy block. The “What’s Hot?” portion of the class was specially designed for students to bring all sorts of popular culture narratives (PCN)

(Staples, 2011), such as YouTube videos, memes, articles, music videos, blogs, etc., for the class to view and then deconstruct. This chapter contains four major sections. The first, “Talking

What’s Hot” describes the hour during the afternoon literacy block in which discussions centered on student-selected PCNs. The second section details the findings for and ultimately responds to the chapter’s primary research question. The findings sections grapple with resulting themes: mapping cultural epistemologies and racialized identities, Black Haitian girls’ diasporic dreaming of place, and wrestling Black girlhood from patriarchy. The third section explores the emergence of Haitian youth literacies mobilized during the classroom discussions and their significance in the participants’ developments of agentic Discourses of race, place, gender, and liberatory counternarratives. The final section of this chapter concludes with commentary on

136 power in relation to Black girls’ intersecting identities, and the affordances of student-selected texts to facilitate exploration and development of literacies.

“Talking What’s Hot?”

To prepare for our weekly “What’s Hot?” literacy hour, students emailed me PCNs throughout the week up until the end of the school day on Wednesday. Their daily schedules at HELP allotted unstructured time in the computer lab, during which students could choose and send texts. I reviewed the students’ submissions and linked all PCNs that were similar in topic or shared common themes. On Thursdays, for one hour before dismissals, the class screened 3-4

PCNs on the projection screen. I encouraged students to take notes of their thoughts, questions, and reactions to the PCNs in their journals, and gave them approximately five minutes between viewings to write down concluding thoughts on the PCN. After each viewing, we would push the desks to the corners and assemble into one large circle to encourage dialogue and form healthy discussion habits, such as looking at the person you are addressing, waiting your turn to speak, active listening, and presenting or challenging ideas to peers. I remained outside of the circle and recorded the ideas students contributed on the classroom’s white boards. Of the eight recorded discussions, this chapter will focus on five in which the girls are active discussants on topics of race, gender, and place.

The first discussion took place on June 16, 2015, early in the program, when a group of girls began discussing the importance of feminism. Though the conversation did not anchor a specific PCN, the girls referenced several popular culture moments to ground their positioning.

On June 18, 2015, the second discussion took place. This centered on four texts: a

Rachael Dolezal interview, Rihanna’s “American Oxygen,” Key and Peele’s episode “Alien

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Imposter,” Todrick Hall’s “Beauty and a Beat,” and Tre Melvin’s “Pursuit of Watermelondrea.”

Race, gender, and beauty were all possible topics of discussion in the videos from Todrick Hall,

Tre, and Dolezal. The overall discussion focused on race and racism. But there were moments when the questions turned to Discourses of gender in relation to Black women.

On June 23, 2015, the third discussion took place. The primary media that anchored this conversation was a blog from Very Smart Brothas that highlighted the recent crisis of Haitian

Dominicans losing citizenship, becoming stateless, and being forcibly deported back to Haiti by the Dominican government. The blog explicates colorism and racism and includes a side note on the convenience of Blackness, which takes up most of the conversations.

On June 25, 2015 the texts included Caitlyn Jenner’s one-minute Vanity Fair promotion,

Ruby Rose’s music video “Break Free,” V. Bozeman’s music video “What is Love?” and

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TedTalk “We Should All be Feminists,” and an anti-feminist

YouTuber’s rant on women hitting men. The students worked through the ideas of gender equality, why feminism is necessary, transgender people, and gender identity.

On July 13, 2015, the fifth “What’s Hot?” discussion took place. Conversation focused on the following PCNs: YouTube video of poet Danez Smith performing “Dear White America,”

Eric of the comedy team Reckless Tortuga’s “Racism in the Elevator,” and a Vine of African vs.

White parents’ discipline stereotypes.

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Table 5.1 Student-Selected “What’s Hot?” Media Texts

Classroom Discussion Date PCNs June 16, 2015 ● General discussion of feminism June 18, 2015 ● Interview with Rachael Dolezal ● Keye and Peele, “Alien Imposter” ● Todrick Hall, “Beauty and a Beat” ● Tré Melvin, “Pursuit of Watermelondrea”

June 23, 2015 ● Brandon Harrison, Very Smart Brothas, “On the Dominican Republic and the Convenience of Blackness” June 25, 2015 ● Vanity Fair, Promotional Video, Interview with Caitlyn Jenner ● Ruby Rose, “Break Free” ● V. Bozeman, “What is Love?” ● Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TedTalk, “We Should All be Feminists” ● YouTube video Anti-Feminist Compilation video (video removed from platform) July 13, 2015 ● Danez Smith, “Dear White America” ● Reckless Tortuga, “Racism in the Elevator” ● YouTube Video, African Parents vs. White Parents (video removed from platform)

Findings

Black Haitian Girls’ Diasporic Dreaming of Place

When the girls in this study unpacked the American Dream, as depicted by Rihanna, arguably the world’s most famous Black Caribbean woman, they engaged in Diasporic

Dreaming: the process of looking forward towards new possibilities, coming to terms with the limitations of “home,” and also understanding the sacrifice and drudgery of “now” as transnational beings. This finding comes from the June 18th discussion interpreting Rihanna’s

2015 music video, “American Oxygen.” While soliciting students’ reactions, Nadège and

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Antoinette broke into an intense side deliberation over the American Dream. Their opposing interpretations of the American dream also included discussions of place and the social meanings of the United States from their perspectives as Black immigrant girls born in Haiti.

When the floor opened up to discuss the music video, Nadège shared her excitement, and extols, “That is going to be on repeat for me” (June 18, 2015). She makes clear her connection to the music video: her diasporic dreams of America are embedded in the music video as Rihanna contests the idea of “America” and “American” from her Caribbean perspective. She explains,

“Like, when she was first talking about the American dream, it's the most perfect thing ever. And she just slapped ‘em in the face” (Nadège, June 18, 2015). What draws Nadège to Rihanna’s construction of America and Americans is Rihanna’s use of imagery and lyrics to resist WSP ideology that erases the voices and contributions of people of color. The video included Black

American resistance movements to contextualize her ideas of “New Americans,” the oft-repeated lyric in the song. Rihanna’s music video is also an entrance point for Nadège to map out historical legacies that construct the America she and her family embody, and construct a counternarrative of America in the same breath:

She was talking about how like people struggled to have the American dream that we

have today. Blood was shed, a lot of sweat. It's hard work to have the America that we

have today and it's still not perfect. (June 18, 2015)

It is at this moment that Antoinette interjects; she calls out after Nadège, “The American Dream is fictional. We still don’t have it” (June 18, 2015). Antoinette is cynical, skeptical, and dismissive of the romanticized construction of the American Dream. Her response is rooted in the realities of hardship for immigrant people in the United States. This prompts a back and forth that I eventually turned to and asked they bring to the floor.

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Nadège counters Antoinette’s assertion and offers, “I'm saying like, if by American

Dream you're talking about expensive cars and all that stuff. That's not true for everyone, but we do have better opportunities in America than we would have if we stayed back home” (June 18,

2015). Nadège speaks of her diasporic dreams as a young Black Haitian girl as she asserts the potential of the American Dream after Antoinette’s downright rejection of it. She makes her case by pointing out aspects of the American Dream that are problematic and detached from the realities of Black working-class immigrant people. But then, she offers the potential and affordances that being in the United States has in regards to the limitations of home. Nadège says, “I’m not going to lie, education in Haiti is expensive. I'm just saying. And then there’s the expectations. You can’t send your child any type of way in Haiti. People will talk” (Nadège,

June 18, 2015). Nadège also decodes Haitian schooling social norms. The idea of not having children represented “any type of way” illustrates the added pressures of financing your child’s education while also meticulously tending to their appearances—especially girls—to signal that they are cared for and come from respectable homes.

Venus does not enter the fray, but dishes outside commentary that articulates her pleasure in the music video and provides comedic relief. For her part, Venus points outs, "I thought it was really nice when she was singing "Real America" and it showed the white kids and the Black kids together, and the man helping the woman. Yeah, that was nice” (June 18, 2015). She also plays a supportive role with interjections of jokes and snaps when her peers point out something she missed or presents an interesting stance. Venus remarks, “I didn't realize. I didn't see that.

Mm-hmm (affirmative), girl. Kiss your brain” (June 18, 2015). When the group discussed the images of the Ku Klux Klan in Rihanna’s video, Venus quips, “I'm not gonna Google that. I'm gonna be scared for answers” (June 18, 2015).

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The exchange on place is a brief, hot flash point that quickly receded into other topics.

But the moment highlights how, for Black immigrant girls, conceptualizations of place impact their trajectories, how they situate themselves within broader Discourses of citizenship, and their ownership of these collective nationalist identities.

Mapping Black Cultural Epistemologies and White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideologies

In conversations marked by recognition of race and racism, the girls in this study set the tone and laid the groundwork by asking provocative questions. They mapped out Black cultural epistemologies—collections of Discourses in sociocultural and historical contexts, WSP ideologies that shape their realities—and connected their inquiry processes to their lives and popular culture. They simultaneously checked, challenged, and supported each other during their ruminations. They bore uncomfortable truths of themselves. Each girl took up these roles in different capacities depending on their perspectives in the conversations.

In the video compilation depicting the cultural differences in parenting styles, the main character, a young Black male, is at home with a white male friend. The Black male character

“talks back,” which results in his parent physically punishing him. The video then cuts to the two friends at the white male character’s home. One of his parents asks him to complete a task, and he verbally accosts the parent to no physical consequence, leaving his Black male friend astounded. When working through the vine video of disciplining methods of “African” and

“White” parents, Antoinette queried aloud and provided a foundation for discussing normalized violence against Black bodies, particularly children. In this discussion, Antoinette succinctly articulates foundational epistemologies that govern Black bodies: anti-Blackness and Whiteness.

She does this by naming the normalized acceptance of violence towards Black children.

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It’s ok if we’re hit .... If we have a white friend, their way of discipline is talking. Which I

think, there should be a mixture of discipline. Discipline, as in beating and talking,

because it sometimes it can't always be beating your child. (Antoinette, July 13, 2015)

Antoinette’s initial comments lay the groundwork for other Black girls in the room to inquire about social dynamics that incite Black parents to use physical violence when disciplining their children. They discussed the urgency of Black parents making sure their children understood the ways in which the world worked against them, and marked the differences in realities for Black children to their white peers.

In this same “What’s Hot?” session, the class viewed the comedy team Reckless

Tortuga’s “Racism in the Elevator,” a sketch uploaded on their YouTube channel. In the video, a

Black man enters an elevator and the white woman occupying the car becomes apprehensive and clutches her purse. The Black male character breaks the cinematic fourth wall and addresses the audience, pointing out that Black people notice this microaggression and stating his frustrations with white women in particular. He shouts, “Boo!” startling the white woman in the elevator car to emphasize his point. In this moment, Antoinette unpacks “fear” as it relates to the historical oppression of Black people and identifies it as the root cause of white people’s fear of Black people in modern times:

A long time ago, it's not that we feared the white people, but it's like the "who will they

beat? It's like this fear thing. But now it's like the white people are scared of us, like we're

gonna do something, like payback. So, I think like they live between. Some white people

do it unconsciously, pull their bags or whatever. It's funny how they don't think that

Black people are the only ones capable of digging into their bag and white people

couldn't. (Antoinette, July 13, 2015)

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Antoinette also maps out the epistemologies of fear in regards to racialized body politics, and levels a critique of irony in regards to the shortsightedness of racism and white supremacy. She also negotiates the politics of power and anti-Blackness in everyday interactions with white people who occupy the centers of social spaces. As the class worked its way through analysis of the PCN texts during HELP’s literacy blocks, the other girls in this study also took up the process of mapping Black cultural epistemologies and White supremacist ideologies as well.

On June 18, 2015, the “What’s Hot?” session featured a 4-minute NBC Nightly News interview between broadcast journalist Savannah Guthrie and Rachel Dolezal that aired the night before. That summer, news of Dolezal’s “transracial” identity as a white woman who identified as Black exploded onto the news cycle and brought about intense discussion of race, privilege, and identity. The girls in this study used the PCN to unpack whiteness and WS ideologies in real- time.

In the discussion, Lovely took on a declarative stance in naming Whiteness; she presented a working thesis of white people and used the Dolezal interview as data to further develop her theories:

Me? I feel like it [Dolezal interview] kind of proves a point. I had made this point a

couple weeks ago that white people - most white people - want to be Black. I don't know

if for some reason certain white people don't kind of respect our peoples, but they love

our culture and yet they just want to be like us, I guess. Some of them get dreads and

stuff like that. I guess. (Lovely, June 18, 2015)

Her commentary transcended the conundrum of Dolezal’s “transracial” identity and actively mapped out the undercurrent of WSP ideologies. She adds, “It’s like we’re important to them, yet we’re not important to them” (Lovely, June 18, 2015). She brings attention to the paradox of

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WSP’s love of Black cultural offerings despite its hate of Black people.

On the other hand, Nadège immerses herself into an inquiring stance and takes on a different approach to interpreting the Dolezal interview. She tries to apply the themes and concepts of the program to the “transracial” phenomena presented:

At first, I didn't really understand her. I still kind of don't, but I'm going to give her the

respect of that's what she wants to identify as. This whole week, we have been talking

about duality, right? So, I'm thinking maybe she just considers herself that. Remember

when you put on the board, "What else do you identify yourself as?" We might identify

ourselves as like some part of- we might identify ourselves as something that, from looks,

people won't be able to tell. (Nadège, June 18, 2015)

Nadège makes connections to the past conversations we had on Blackness in various contexts and mulls over the concept of identity in relation to Dolezal. She theorizes aloud and uses as much evidence she can to generate some conclusions to explain the end result of a White woman, who against better judgment, wants to identify as Black:

Maybe some sort of argument occurred during her teen years and when she got to her

early adult years, she just broke off from them because of that. And her brother was upset

because here's her sister having all this good stuff work for her and she's just going to

break it off to try and be something that she not, in his perspective. (Nadège, June 18,

2015)

In trying to make meaning of Dolezal’s interview, Nadège’s inquiry also helps her to articulate power and privilege located in Whiteness.

I have a theory on that. So, I'm thinking that when she was younger, she started to

identify herself as Black. But, you know, she was whiter then, in appearance wise. So,

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her parents maybe- because you know how parents are. “No, honey. You're white. You're

privileged. All this good stuff work for you. Don't try to identify as Black.” (Nadège,

June 18, 2015)

She verbalizes the unspoken dialogue, or Discourse of Whiteness, that Black kids aren’t typically privy to, but eventually understand as part of the grooming process when growing up white in the United States. Overall, Nadège’s ruminations reveal her sensitivity to humanity, framing

Dolezal as a person-first and trying to provide the benefit of doubt before writing her off. It also shows that, even as an 8th grader, she is not naïve about the implications of being white or Black in the United States.

This is not to say all the girls were patient enough to entertain Dolezal’s “transracial” ideologies. Antoinette offered scathing critique of Dolezal and plays the role of the skeptical cynic in this particular discussion. She is unmoved and even frustrated with Dolezal because her line of reasoning is unclear and Antoinette perceives her as evasive. Antoinette scoffs:

Me! I think this lady is delusional. The whole time doing the interview, she was giving an

unclear answer. It's like "This lady just asked you a simple question." And she said

something about "That's asking me am I human or not human? I’m like what the...?”

(Antoinette, June 18, 2015)

Antoinette wrote her joys of academic rigor and engaging with texts of substance, which is why this particular interview almost offends her. She objects, “It's really hard to see her point of view when she's being unclear and she's not really answering the question.” (Antoinette, June 18,

2015)

Venus’s participation in the Dolezal discussion is brief, but she chimes in to clarify a point that one of her classmates provided. She informs the reference to Raven Symone. Venus

146 explains, “Raven Simone. It's not that she didn't want to be African American. She said in an interview, she didn't want to be labeled. She was tired of being labeled with a group. She just wanted to be Raven Simone” (Venus, June 18, 2015). I suspect, based on Venus’s journal entries negotiating her own Blackness, Raven Symone offers an appealing construction of Blackness because her stance intentionally rejects pre-determined labels.

On July 13, 2015, we watched Danez Smith compete in the preliminary round of the

2014 Rust Belt Poetry Festival with his original spoken word piece, “Dear White America.” His performance notifies White Americans of his exit from the planet because of their complicity in the oppression of Black people. Smith’s spoken word as a PCN text again facilitated dialogue around what it means to be Black and the cultural ways of knowing that make sense of the existence of Black people in the American context. In this conversation, the girls detail the ways

WSP ideologies police young Black people and strip them of opportunity and joy. The girls also embody vulnerability when discussing racialized identities through the lens of fear and complicity.

Antoinette grounds collective diasporic Black experiences in the legacy of the

Transatlantic Slave Trade and onward, saying “I think us, being what we came from and what we've been through, I think we should be like the smartest people alive or we should be proving people wrong” (Antoinette, July 13, 2015). Antoinette conveys her recognition of power and agency in the collective oppression of Blackness and the sort of dexterity it required to survive those circumstances. She concludes her thought by saying, “But instead we're sitting in the prison cells and it's kinda heartbreaking” (Antoinette, July 13, 2015). Her statement points to the tragedy when those powers are forcibly captured, limited, and laid to waste.

In this conversation, Nadège is coming into young adulthood in real-time. Her reactions

147 to Smith’s piece articulate a growing skepticism/discernment/distrust of White people, which is part of young Black person’s induction into adulthood:

You know what I think about this? I want to be able to say not all white people are like

that, but like everything he said in there was so true. And it's very hard to explain. I didn't

hear anything about this racism. I didn't even know racism was still alive, until all this

news started coming in with all these racial tensions going on. (Nadège, July 13, 2015)

She also marks the moment in which she becomes more conscious of the realities of racism in the States and the news of racial tensions: “All right. For me to be living in society today, I'm kind of scared. Like one day, out of nowhere, my family might be taken away from me because all the stuff that's going on right now” (Nadège, July 13, 2015). She comes to terms with the immediate impact racism can have in her life as a young Black girl and feels that weight of those implications.

Venus also allows herself to be vulnerable by bearing an uncomfortable truth of complicity in anti-Black, racist ideologies of Black boys: “You know what Antoinette said, about the group of boys. I'm not even gonna lie, when I see a group of boys and they're all Black, I honestly am scared, even though I'm also Black. I'm like...” (Venus, July 13, 2015). In that moment, she understood the incongruousness of these thoughts by pointing out, “even though

I’m also Black...” It is unclear what she will do with her revelation. However, this could have been a possible starting point for her to think more deeply and challenge those dissonant ideas.

One particular PCN generated an exchange in which the group effectively “checked” one participant as to why white people should refrain from using “nigga.” On June 23, I selected the primary PCN, which was a blog post from the media site, Very Smart Brothas. The post highlighted the state-manufactured humanitarian crisis of Haitian Dominicans losing citizenship,

148 becoming stateless, and being forcibly deported back to Haiti by the Dominican government during that summer. The blog explicated the intersections of colorism and racism, with a side note on the “convenience” of Blackness, which takes up most of the conversations. In this noted exchange, Antoinette tries to disconnect the colloquial use of “nigga” from its painful histories and is soundly checked at the end of the conversation. This moment shows what happens when

Black discourse styles aren’t overly policed in a literacy space.

When the conversation around the convenience of Blackness landed on white cultural appropriations, the classroom brought up pop culture figures such as Iggy Azalea, Kim

Kardashian, and Eminem and the roles they played in that appropriation process. Antoinette, maybe in frustration or lack of understanding, offers:

I think there's too much division and Black and White divisions because he's using like

Black people say this, white people say this... I feel like a Black person says "nigga" it's

fine, it's cool, but a white person that says "nigga", they get persecuted. (Antoinette, June

23, 2015)

Antoinette’s assertions prompt simultaneous responses from two female classmates, who at the same time say:

Female Classmate 1: “Because they’re not white.”

Female Classmate 2: “Because they not a nigga.”

Female Classmate 2’s retort garnered an immediate outburst of laughter from the students and myself. This was her third year in the program and third straight year in my class. She was a master of dry cutting humor. She meant for this comment to be funny, but the meaning of her joke points out what’s problematic about Antoinette’s ahistorical construction of white people’s

“persecution” for saying a word Black people can say freely. Embedded in her terse interjection

149 is the articulation of white people not having the shared history of slavery and oppression and instead having the power to enact it in contemporary times. Antoinette responded with some clarifying statements:

A Black comedian, can say anything, like calling a white person a cracker or whatever or

a nigga or whatever, The dude with the perm. What's his name? [Kat Williams] the way

he talks is sort of maybe racist, but a white comedian has to be careful with what they

say. (Antoinette, June 23, 2015)

Female Classmate 1 quickly offered her perspective and contextualizes the word by couching it in its history, “it's because of their history, that's why. White people are not allowed to say anything about Blacks, because back in the days, the way that they made jokes, it was extremely racist and everything and hurt everyone's feelings” (June 23, 2015).

This was a significant moment of discussion because a community of girls gathered around a harmful and problematic assertion by one of its members. They offered her a different perspective to interrupt narratives of exclusion that WSP ideologies promote around the usage of the word, “nigga.” They reminded her of the legacy of that word and how it can be simplified to a matter of denial and equal treatment. Also, they were allowed to talk freely in their own discursive style to unpack a highly volatile word. Female Classmate 2’s joke pushes Antoinette to clarify her thoughts and exposes her historicized perspective. They were able to do the work with little to no management from me because of their ability to talk freely, frankly, and authentically.

When discussing race, the girls are not making distinctions between cultural or ethnic heritage. They identify threats of violence, aggression and histories of oppression that span the

African Diaspora. The girls’ work in these discussions demonstrates their ability to name guiding

150 epistemologies of Blackness as well as wariness of WSP ideologies inherent in Whiteness. They take on the seriousness of their racialized identities in anti-Black contexts with the support of their peers, and they experience the feeling of being “gathered” when engaging problematic

Discourses. Their conceptualizations of race and racism in their academic engagements facilitate their embodiment of inquiry, vulnerability, truth saying, and discernment.

Wrestling Black Girlhood from Patriarchy

Discussions concerning gender rendered the messiest of exchanges around what it meant to be a girl/woman, who can embody those gendered identities, the added social pressures for

Black women, and the uses of feminism. The girls in this study took various stances on these topics. However, the collective theme present in their work as scholars of gender was their efforts to push and pull against normalized gendered expectations for girls. Their ruminations were encouraging but had limitations, which is to be expected of 13-year-old girls. Their work around gender in the classroom arced toward a conceptualization of Black girlhood that was unencumbered, wrested from patriarchy, and theirs by design.

This theme of Black girlhood generated findings specific to the conversations among the girls in this study. First, Black Haitian girls find themselves navigating multiple cultural frameworks of Haitian-rooted patriarchy, Christian conservatism, and anti-Blackness when developing Haitian youth literacies. This especially came into play when discussing transgender identities and Caitlyn Jenner’s debut in the summer of 2015. Second, they occupy contradictory stances on gender and gender identity, the role/necessity of feminism, and respectability. The

“What’s Hot?” experience facilitated moments of dissonance, questioning, and articulation of complicated positionalities. Third, there were moments when they supported each other’s stances in regards to feminism and gender norms, but then clashed on respectability, Black women body

151 politics, and genderqueer identities. Last, during these observations they were vocal and assertive in their rejections or acceptances of ideas around construction of their girlhood and did not look to the boys in the room for confirmation on the stances they took.

Feminism was one of the first topics covered in the “What’s Hot?” segments in the literacy block. On June 16, 2015, two girls in the classroom began making compelling arguments about the necessity of feminism. One girl argued the concerns of women are effectively silenced when society focuses on her looks rather than what she’s saying, and minimizes the importance women play in keeping social structures together. In this discussion, Nadège showed up in supporting and intellectualizing/explanatory roles. She spoke up and reinforced her classmate’s arguments:

Were you responding to_ , what she had said? Because, really, that isn't saying

that we didn't need feminism anymore. She was saying that in the past, there have been a

lot of stuff that weren't ideal and that people stepped up to the plate and changed that.

(June 16, 2015)

Afterwards, she made a case for why feminism is still necessary, despite patriarchal resistance to anti-sexist efforts:

Anyways, I just wanted to say that people are opinionated and we as women do get

recognitions for some stuff that we are known for, which is like taking care of kids and

all that stuff. I think that if you were trying to say that people going to get angry and

overreact, it doesn't matter if people get angry and overreact because if you really, really,

really want change then you step up no matter what and you tell people like it is and you

just show that you want to make a change in a peaceful matter. (Nadège, June 16, 2015)

Two more girls in the class then pointed to the racialized and gendered beauty standards imposed

152 on young Black girls. As one of the young boys tried to jump into the conversation with an opposing, “Why are always the men the ones that...” (Jerome, June 18, 2015), another female classmate excoriated his point and boys in general for their roles in fostering unhealthy body images for girls. The female classmate pointed out this trend she had observed:

Female Classmate 1: I strongly believe it's the guy's fault because they have created

...You know how we make our own definitions; our own words and the guys took

advantage of that and they told girls and women that they were ugly the way they are

and they should be like other girls who are slim and fit and everything. Now, girls are

going home, crying and stuff like that because of what the guy said. They're trying to be

like the other slim girls and then they're like ...

Female Classmate 2: White girls.

Nadège: We're supposed to look like a Barbie doll.

Nadège once again backed her play, and showed support by adding, “We're supposed to look like a Barbie doll” (June 18, 2015). Her comment encapsulates the overall sentiment of her classmates’ venting. Barbie comes to represent the unrealistic ideals imposed on young Black girls: skinny, long-haired, blonde, and white. In this moment, Nadège demonstrates that she recognizes the harmful cultural norms ascribed to Black girls and women, and rejects them outright of.

As conversations about women often do, the students’ discussion veered to women’s behaviors that “encourage” sexist aggressions from men. Lovely articulates her construction of gender in terms of what it means to be a Black woman. She first uses Christian discourses to make sense of the objectification of women. Lovely then further explains her understanding of the impact of the male gaze and the intersectional body politics policing Black women’s body:

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As an example, I went to school one day and there was this lady...It was me and a group

of kids safety patrolling and there's this lady, she came to pick up her kid and she was

wearing these “ti bout9” shorts. I'm talking about in school to pick up her kid. It's a

private school. It's a way to come inside the school and present yourself that way. She

was wearing some see-through stuff...Me, personally I just felt like ... She's Black and

stuff. I feel like she portrayed herself in the wrong way. The boys that I was with kind of

agreed. They were like, "Oh, that's why men are seeing ..." Let's say white people are

seeing Black women in a certain way and we show our bodies too much. (June 18, 2015)

Lovely also makes the argument that it would be more appropriate if more women portrayed themselves more modestly. While she admits, “it will still not be better money wise,” she adds

“they’ll kind of see you in a different light because you're actually changed and grown from wearing see through things” (June 16, 2015).

Lovely’s school example is an intersection of many social structures. First, when she says, “ti bout” shorts in Creole, she is accessing a system of knowledge rooted in Haitian culture and patriarchal ideology. When the phrase “ti bout” is used as an adjectival phrase to qualify women’s clothing, it intimates derision towards women who wear short clothing, or show too much skin. The use of this phrase in this context taps into that same patriarchal policing mechanism which dictates behaviors and reception of women in Haitian culture. Lovely also signals her Catholic private school training. Although she attends private school in Miami, a majority of Haitians practice Roman Catholicism. The school itself serves a large population of

Haitian and Haitian American students and is culturally aligned with the belief systems in

Lovely’s home life. She marks that her school space is also governed by a set of expectations for

9 Creole for very short.

154 women and, in this example, mothers. Last, Lovely’s engagement with respectability politics also points to the gaze of whiteness. She clearly articulates the ways Black women are up against racist and sexist ideologies, and particularly Black women’s racialization as hypersexual beings.

Thus, Lovely turns to respectability to shield from that racialization, and takes part of the sexist gendered Discourse of Black women; a Black mother is to be covered and modest and not draw the attention or disdain of white people.

Lovely’s supposition garnered an immediate reaction from another female classmate, and like Antoinette, she was “gathered” for the ways in which the ideas of modesty for Black women are problematic. Her female peer interjected, “Yes, we should not dress like that but also it's your body and you should be able to do whatever you want with it” (June 16, 2015). Her classmate rejected the idea of fitting your personhood to meet imposed standards. She also took Lovely to task on the Christian and racialized component of her argument:

Plus, it's not our place to judge people because we have problems with our own self.

Even if we do change the way we portray ourselves, people—not even only white people

but people abroad are still going to have their opinions about each other and stuff like

that. (June 16, 2015)

Lovely’s peer addresses the contradiction of a religious school context passing judgment as well as the idea that modesty will protect Black women from predetermined racialized Discourses of

Black women’s sexuality.

Black women body politics also reappears in the discussion of Rachel Dolezal and her performance of Black female aesthetics. In the discussion, Antoinette asked the only question that frames “transracial” identity from a gendered perspective. Antoinette asked, “I saw something while looking at the pictures, she just wanted a weave around her hair. My question is

155 why” (June 16, 2015). I read this question a couple ways because the importance of hair for

Black women. Why would a white woman wear weave? Why would a white woman wear texturized hair extensions that are associated with Black women’s hairstyles? Why would a white woman with socially accepted “good hair” wear hair extensions? Again, Antoinette’s question highlights the ways in which the girls understand the intersectional nature of body politics that dictate the choices of Black women. When caricatured by a white woman, these body politics become glaring and deserve discussion.

The screening of Tré Melvin’s “The Pursuit of Watermelondrea” on June 18, 2015 set into motion a conversation about the aggression, shaming, and ridicule that target women rather than questioning or curtailing behaviors of men. “The Pursuit of Watermelondrea” is a YouTube video in which two friends see an attractive woman, Watermelondrea—Tre Melvin dressed in drag—and bet each other whether one of them could get her number. One of two proceeds to approach Watermelondrea, intrudes on her space, solicits her number, then insults and threatens her with violence when she rejects his advances. Watermelondrea becomes “possessed” when the male suitor insults her hair extensions and beats him up as a result, to which the young male suitor strikes her unconscious, runs away and gives his friend the lost wager of $20 after failing to secure Watermelondrea’s number. Aside from the obvious commentary of the ghettoization of

Black women, the Nadège and her classmates named how patriarchy plays out in their own urban social contexts.

Nadège was the first in discussion to comment on the video and point out a manifestation of patriarchy: the consequence of women rejecting men is verbal abuse and/or violence. She noted, “When she said, “No,” the dude just like put her down when talking about her looks.

What he did there was put down her self-esteem so that he could boost his ego” (June 25, 2015).

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Nadège highlights the ways toxic masculinity translates into aggression and violence towards women. The male character, who feels entitled to Watermelondrea’s attention, can equally show romantic interest and contempt for Watermelondrea because his fragile ego, not her safety or well-being, is what is clearly at stake in the situation. From Nadège’s comment, a male classmate commented on how inappropriate his approach was, which prompted further discussion from the other girls. They called out the video as “representation of straight men” who make girls they find attractive uncomfortable and “don’t take no for an answer,” noting how easily men attack women either verbally or physically because they said no to their advances.

Antoinette’s critique of women reveals some of her sensibilities when it comes to what women should validate when seeking a partner. Her assertions completely diverge from that of her female peers when saying the following:

Usually they always ask a guy that's trying to pursue them do they have a job, criticize

the way they look, and bring down the guys feelings. So, they are looking for this perfect

guy that, I wouldn't say never find, but they are looking for in the wrong way. It’s like the

way they approach to find this perfect guy. I know, but I'm just saying. (June 18, 2015)

Antoinette’s critique implies that women should not seek male partners solely on superficial aspects such as money or looks. There is naiveté in her conceptualization of the proper way for women to respond to romantic advances. These are deemed “the wrong way” of approaching a guy, and she rejects the idea of a “perfect guy” as someone who can meet these standards. In this moment, she parrots racialized and sexist Discourse ascribed to Black women: A Black woman should avoid looking like a gold digger seeming overly critical of men. By taking issue with

Watermelondrea’s questioning on whether her suitor was gainfully employed, Antoinette fails to recognize the ways girls/women often have to abide by standards that appease patriarchy. She

157 also demonstrates underdeveloped critiques of patriarchy and how they impact Black women.

After some time exploring gender and patriarchy in media texts, one of the male students submitted an anti-feminist YouTube video to counteract his perceived attack on boys and men.

The video has since been removed from the social media platform. In the video, the vlogger compiles footage of women engaging in acts of violence against men. The vlogger uses this footage to blame the feminist agenda for women feeling free to strike at men who are not violent towards them, and for rendering men incapable of defending themselves. On June 25, 2015, the class screened this video along with portions of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TedTalk, “We

Should all be Feminists,” Vanity Fair’s promotional video of Caitlyn Jenner’s first major interview, and Ruby Rose’s music video, “Break Free.” The students worked individually and with each other in order to grapple with Adichie’s presentation of feminism and the backlash to feminist perspectives. Students were also tasked with working through an introduction to trans and genderqueer identities. It was on this day that the girls embodied the most glaring contradictions and uncertainty in discussion.

After screening of the PCNs, one girl opened up by clarifying what girls want in terms of gender equality. She argued, “we don’t need to do every single thing like men, be like a man...

Certain things like working and stuff like that, that’s what we’re going to be paid the same amount of money as the guys” (June 25, 2015). Her clarification sought to keep gender equality focused on economic parity where women’s work is systemically undervalued. However,

Antoinette dismissed that classmate’s arguments and asserted:

I think ask, and it shall be received. You can't just ask, like the girls in the video, they're

asking to be hit. They're asking for it. When the male hits them, they act surprised. I don't

think they should really be surprised.” (Antoinette, June 25, 2015)

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She frames her assessment of the situation in a “logical,” objective, and literal stance: a violent action begets an equally violent reaction. She advocates for individualistic personal responsibility that is decontextualized and specific to the instance. She justifies men attempting to or succeeding in hitting women in the video with the biblical reference of “Ask, seek, knock,” and cautions women not to “say things that you don’t mean” (Antoinette, June 25, 2015).

Antoinette exemplifies one way Haitian-rooted patriarchy and conservative Christian norms converge to shape the perspectives of young Black Haitian girls. In later discussions, those girls make astute observations of the manifestations of WSP. Antoinette further fleshes out these problematic conceptualizations of women, when she argues,

In the video, it shows back in the day, like boys used to hold the doors and take out the

coat and put it on the wet floor. It's not that there's not men that wouldn't do that. I think

it's just less of that just because of how we perceive ourselves, how some of us treat them.

(June 25, 2015)

Antoinette’s claims lock in on the behaviors of women that negate/prevent these desired behaviors from men to occur in modern times. Her arguments imply that girls/women have less respect for themselves or more open sexual expression, which makes men less inclined to exhibit favorable behavior. She misses the opportunity to question dated, patriarchal acts of chivalry.

Antoinette’s comments did not go uncontested by the other girls in the classroom.

Nadège took Antoinette's claim to task in several ways and immediately rebutted her points:

What you say in that was picture perfect, which in real life, not all dudes did that back

then. There aren't any perfect girls. A select few girls might have been bad to guys, and

they might have gotten heartbroken and all that stuff, but it's not because of the way that

we're treating guys that they changed. (June 25, 2015)

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Nadège’s counterpoints contextualize and de-romanticize the chivalry that her peer left unquestioned. She makes clear that not all men engaged in these practices that catered to the whims or needs of women. She rejects the notion of the “perfect girl” standard that merits chivalrous practices. The most significant point Nadège makes is that girls’ behavior— acquiescence to or rejection of prescribed gender roles—cannot be the primary factor determining how men treat women.

Overall, the anti-feminist rant video illuminated the ways in which the girls in the study and the girls in classroom in general struggled to connect individual instances of violence against women against larger systemic social structures which facilitate the marginalization of women, and Black women in particular. Though I made several attempts to point out the distraction of men who make these points, the girls discussed scenarios of violence against women in individualized, decontextualized vacuums. These discussions did not always account for the ways heteronormative norms constrain women, and how men who subscribe to the patriarchy duly punish those who dare reject those norms.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s, “We Should all be Feminists” provided the girls language

(such as power) and concepts (such as the basic tenets of feminism as basic rights for equal treatment of women) to work through understanding the oppression of women as a system.

Lovely and Antoinette, though hardliners in the construction of gender roles of men and women, experimented with ideas and go back in forth in thought, out loud, in real time. Lovely took on the idea of power and gender when processing the Adichie’s TED Talk on feminism:

I have something to say. It’s like what that lady, Chimamanda said. Feminism is the

political and social type things. When we talk political and social, we mean what men can

do, like a man can run for president. A woman can run for president. If a man gets paid a

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certain amount of money. A woman should get paid the same amount of money. That's

what we're trying to put that point across when we get for feminism because feminism is

actually not supposed to be how you treat somebody. It's not supposed to be like that. It's

supposed to be about … job wise. (June 25, 2015)

In these remarks, she accepts political and social equality but stops short of advocating for those same levels of partnership in other realms, presumably in interpersonal relationships. Lovely also accepts the idea of women not having power, “I think [Adichie] is good because it's kind of talking about how all these Black women fought for Black women's rights, but yet we don't have power to do things” (Lovely, June 25, 2015). Last, she discerns the silencing of women’s voices and perspectives. She connects Adichie’s speech to the earlier discussion: “Another thing that they showed on the [anti-feminist] videos was that they only showed the girl's point of view...They showed only the girl's part. It means that they don't know the whole thing that was going on” (June 25, 2015).

The double standard imposed against women was the only area in which most of the girls in this study could reach mutual agreement, perhaps because it's the most recognizable form of injustice in their social spaces. Lovely inquired, “Why are women who bounce around from men to men called THOT10 or slut, whatever, and then when men do that, they don't call them that?”

(June 25, 2015). Antoinette concurs on the discussion of double standards and presented an example of the different expectations when men cheat on women and vice versa. She observes,

“Oh, this reminds me. If a guy were to cheat on his girlfriend, the girlfriend usually takes him back. But if a girl is cheating ...” (Antoinette, June 25, 2015).

Although Lovely makes a few concessions about power, double standards, and economic

10 Abbreviation for “that hoe over there.”

161 parity between men and women, she toiled to reconcile Adichie’s offering with her Haitian

Catholic upbringing. She depends on her Catholic upbringing to support traditional conceptualizations of “man” and “woman” and their expectations in social spaces. When weighing the arguments of the anti-feminist video, Lovely posits

Me and my explanation is that God created Adam because from my understanding, I feel

like God created two of each animal at the time of Adam's time because if there's two of

each animal, He's like, "Okay, you will produce more," right? Then He created Eve when

he was sleeping because I guess he felt like his life was incomplete. He needed something

different, so he took one of Adam's ribs and made Eve. It's like for Him to Eve to be

fruitful, it's like the reason Adam was made for us is because he's the first, he's tough. He

has to be dominant, and he's the guy. (June 25, 2015)

Though Lovely eventually came to say that girls could get as strong as men, women should not pick fights with men they know can overpower them (June 25, 2015). Lovely’s retelling of creation helps to understand some of her perspectives and reluctance to accept gender equality fully.

The girls in this study were most resistant and less surefooted when discussing transgender identities. After viewing Vanity Fair’s promotional video clip of the interview with

Kaitlyn Jenner, and Ruby Rose’s music video “Break Free,” the girls voiced the cultural and spiritual dissonance her gender identity posed for them. This particular moment in discussion demarcated the borders of the dichotomous heteronormative nature of their gender constructions.

For Antoinette, and many of her classmates, gender identity is located in biology. When discussing transition, she did no see the alteration of appearance as a way to change genders.

Antoinette’s struggle comes with understanding gender as a social construction rather than a

162 matter of biological fact. As a classmate summarized Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, Antoinette posited that Ruby Rose’s transition into an alternative gender identity did not make much of a difference. Antoinette argued, “all she did was she changed her hair, she changed how she dressed, she changed the shoes she put, she took off her nail polish” (July 25, 2015). When I asked Antoinette whether she thought Ruby Rose’s transformation was serious, she countered,

“No, I said that there's not much of a difference. All the difference is that he actually went somewhere to put on boobs. What she did, is she didn't take them out. She just used tape or a bandage and wrapped it around” (July 25, 2015). In these remarks Antoinette expresses a need to make a distinction between the transitions in gender between Caitlyn Jenner and Ruby Rose.

Because Antoinette yokes gender identity to biological sex, her conceptualization of transgender identity is directly tied to surgical alteration of biological sex—which is why she characterizes

Rose’s transition as more cosmetic in nature.

Lovely rejects transgender identity on the grounds of Christian beliefs. Lovely used traditional Christian Discourse to rationalize Jenner can only be seen as a man despite coming out as a transwoman. Lovely posited:

What I mean, I agree and disagree with this because if God made you one gender, it's for

a reason. Like you said, He made you in his image, so you have a purpose in life, and

your purpose is the gender issue, to make a difference in life. (June 25, 2015)

Even still, in her explanation she is careful with her wording, hesitant. She sounds like she doesn’t want to offend, or sound hateful when giving her perspective.

I don't go against them because the Bible says that women who transform themselves into

men and stuff is kind of wrong because He made you in his image, and it goes against

Him. It's kind of like when they say, for example, let's say Caitlyn Jenner changes

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himself into a woman, but at the end of the day, he still knows he's a man. You know

what I mean? (June 25, 2015)

Her religion is the primary lens in which she tries to make sense of Caitlyn Jenner and resist the idea of someone being able to “change” his or her gender.

Nadège, on the other hand, uses the discussion space to question ideologies that she has been exposed to at different moments in her life. When discussing Ruby Rose's “Break Free” in conjunction to Caitlyn Jenner's interview, Nadège pushed on the idea that trans women aren't women because they cannot birth children:

Here's what I think. I remember seeing this thing. It was an argument where this person

said that a man becoming a woman, he will never be a woman because they can't have

children. The thing is that there are some women out there that can't have children, so are

you trying to say that because they can't have children, they're not women?

This comment made her query cis-women who cannot have children. Her questions rejected a problematic premise for womanhood. In the same breath, Nadège rejected transgender identity:

You can't wake up one day and decide, "Oh, I want to become a man." If I were to wake

up one day and see that I was a boy, I would not accept that. Even though sometimes it's

very hard to be a girl, that's just what I'm used to. That's who I am. That's how I feel

about it. (June 25, 2015)

She characterizes the decision to transition as spontaneous and superficial, revealing her lack of understanding of the phenomena of gender dysphoria. In this response, Nadège is unable to connect her struggles as a Black girl in a patriarchal social system to the struggles of queer and transgender women in the same system.

These exchanges, even while rooted in patriarchal and queerphobic normalized

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Discourses of transgendered individuals, revealed encouraging moments in the overall community of young girls contesting these stances out loud. One female classmate resoundingly stated, “If you want to be a woman, then go ahead and be a woman. If you want to be a man, then go ahead and be a man. That’s it” (June 25, 2015). As stated earlier, discussing queer gender identities exposed the peripheries of their understandings of socially constructed gender identities. The dissonance brought on by queer gender identities invoked the problematic

Discourses of queer people rooted in religious conservatism and patriarchy, which the girls were mindful to resist if not question in heteronormative contexts.

Conclusion

How do conceptualizations of race, place, and girlhood govern H/HA girls’ academic engagements in HELP’s classroom? The answer to this question lies in both what the girls offer as scholars and their embodiments of the media texts and engagements and each other.

Conceptualizations of “place” as Black immigrants spurred the girls in this study to engage

Diasporic Dreaming, a practice in which they looked forward to new possibilities, came to terms with the limitations of the homeland, and noted the sacrifices and drudgery of “now” present in the context of the host country. Their conceptualizations of race from their intersecting racialized identities as Black and Haitian developed their abilities to map Black cultural epistemologies and

WSP ideologies that shaped their social worlds, and connect those epistemologies and ideologies to popular American culture. Conceptualizing gender fostered messy dialogues in which the girls revealed contradictory stances on gender, feminism, and respectability. Their struggles with respectability politics and queer gender identities brought attention to the ways in which Black

Haitian girls find themselves navigating multiple cultural frameworks rooted in island patriarchy,

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Christian conservatism, and anti-Blackness when developing literacies.

The girls’ embodiments of engaged learning with the text and the others in their learning community emphasize the power in centering their identities in the classroom. The discussions were at times contentious, which was healthy considering the gravity of the topics covered. But there were also compelling moments when the girls supported each other, challenged their peers to think differently, and exemplified vulnerability when bearing uncomfortable truths of their own. They were “gathered” by their learning community, which challenged problematic stances that threaten their wellbeing as young Black girls in a White America. They were vocal and assertive. They spoke from informed perspectives as young girls and did not concede airtime to the boys in the classroom. When centered in teaching and learning spaces, Black girls fill the space with a full range of complex thoughts and emotions that edify literacy instruction.

Student-selected PCNs provide literacy educators with a method to activate these types of academic engagements. PCNs empower Black girls and other marginalized student communities to frame the conversations about their communities on their terms as learners. It is also important to consider what it means for literacy instructors to participate in a learning community where they share power with students. The students in the classroom brought into range content outside my purview, and pushed me to grapple with the literacy practices of my students in ways that sharpened my lens as their instructor. I was able to provide support in ways I previously could not have fathomed, which kept me an active teacher and learner.

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Chapter 6

Learning Her Truths: “Don’t be the Fish that Can’t See the Water”

Introduction

The final data chapter shifts analysis into the second unit of this embedded case study:

HELP. This chapter answers the final research question, how do the institutional practices of

HELP attempt to center the needs and talents of H/HA girls? How does HELP reconfigure learning spaces? The shift to this case has also warranted a shift in the methodological approach to data analysis. While the approach to data analysis in this chapter adjusts, it still adheres to the critical methodological frameworks that are the foundations of this study. In order to answer the final research question, this chapter examines institutional and classroom literacy practices of the

HELP program. I merge Janks’s interdependent model of critical literacy (2013) with Fisher’s

(2008) ethno-historiographical conceptualization of independent Black institutions (IBI) and literacy to make sense of HELP’s design and curricular implementation with young Haitian students.

Spirituality at HELP

As researchers, the program staff, myself included, found that youth of Haitian navigated their Haitian and American identities in the US but much of the literature on those experiences

“focuses on their academic, social, and potential economic adjustments from one generation to the next” (Desir, Hall, Shaw, Seraphin, & Gallagher, 2017, p. 352). Scholars have paid little attention to their spiritual development as young people, despite “religion being a complex phenomenon in the Haitian tradition” (Desir et al., 2017, p. 344). The most commonly practiced religions in Haiti are Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou. The program did not explicitly

167 promote any particular religion or its specific practices. Instead, the curriculum engaged in developing spiritual epistemologies, meaning, “how individuals know the transcendent and how they use and disseminate this knowledge in their lives and communities” (Desir et al., 2017, p.

336). As a program geared towards providing students the opportunity to explore their identities,

HELP deliberately includes spiritual activities in the curriculum. The curriculum was crafted with intentional distinctions between spirituality and religiosity. Instead of instilling students with “traditional beliefs, behaviors, and rituals to participate in and perpetuate the institution and religious community” (Desir et al., 2017, p. 341), spirituality manifested “as both the search for meaning and life’s purpose and the practices that deepened one’s experience of transcendence”

(p. 342).

Spiritual activities ranged from “honoring the youth and their family traditions and practices” (Desir et al., 2017, p. 353), searching for meaning and purpose in their lives in written purpose statements exercises, meditation, writing prayers, participating in spiritual folk dance traditions, and opening and closing each day with affirmations that honored ancestors and community. For my part as a choir director, I facilitated spiritual work by selecting music with heavy gospel influences, such as “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” or the contemporary gospel record by Michelle Williams (of Destiny’s Child), “Say Yes.”

Chapter Overview

The findings are divided into two sections that correspond with the data sets used in data analysis. The first section of findings centers on the institutional practice of the all-group morning meetings. I focused analysis on three specific morning meetings in which three guests visited the students and facilitated discussion: Nigerian-British educator and international

168 photographer Sokari Ekine, celebrated Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat, and the founder and

Executive Director of Pearl Girlz Joyce L. Davis. The second section of the findings unpacks my classroom practices as an instructor of HELP. I pore over the curriculum guide, lesson plans, and classroom routines that I instituted in my room to examine how my pedagogies as a literacy educator worked in conjunction with the philosophies of the program.

My overall argument in this chapter is that the HELP program functioned as IBI exercising transnational decolonizing pedagogy congruent with the African diaspora’s long traditions of literacy as liberation. Combining the models from Janks and Fisher, I demonstrate the ways in which the institutional practices of HELP work to destigmatize the Discourses of

Haiti. Specifically, HELP offers students an epistemological framework of the home island, provides an enriching foundation, and encourages solidarity with Black people across the

African Diaspora.

Critical Perspectives of Institutions and Literacy Education

Janks (2013) offers an interdependent model of critical literacy that calls for examining language and pedagogy through the dimensions of power, access, diversity, and design. This model fastens analysis on the ways in which institutions contend with the power of dominant culture to centralize language to advantage Whiteness, and disadvantage students on the margins of White Supremacist Patriarchy. The model also questions how literacy instruction remedies issues of access to students historically deprived of resources. Additionally, it tackles representation, inclusion, and Discourses of students othered by WSP instruction. Last, the model questions how deliberate institutional practices facilitate the implementation of all these components to reimagine schooling experiences for marginalized students and provide them “the

169 ability to harness the multiplicity of semiotic systems across diverse cultural locations to challenge and change existing Discourse” (Janks, 2000, p. 177).

I used the dimensions of Janks’s model to generate guiding questions to analyze my field notes of the three morning meetings, the student interviews, as well as the curriculum guides, lesson plans, and teacher memoranda. As a literacy institution that centers Haitian culture and identities, I saw reciprocal relationships between functions of power and diversity—in this context, I reframe diversity as identity, and well as a relationship between access and design.

Thinking of these domains as working in tandem, I generated six analytical questions, which are represented in the table below.

Table 6.1 Data Analysis for HELP Program

Dimensions of Analysis Analytical Questions Power and Diversity ● How does HELP interrupt schooling processes of (Identity) reproduction11 in their day to day institutional practices?

● How does the program centralize and/or make use of students’ intersectional identities? Access and (re)design ● What are the resources introduced in the learning community?

● What are the Discourses generated by institutional practices?

● How does the institution connect the local to the global?

● What are acts of subversion in language, text, and practice?

Fisher’s ethno-historiographical research of Black institutions and literacy practices in the mid to late 20th century also provided the blueprint for how IBI in American contexts have established

11 Reproduction- practices that centralize dominant structures/culture in classroom spaces. Excludes non-dominant students/experiences (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008).

170 epistemologies, curriculum, and pedagogies to implement literacy instruction that was deliberate in its intentions to serve Black communities. She examines the ways “people of African descent have employed literate practices to create and sustain independent institutions in the United

States and abroad that focus on the production and preservation of written and spoken words while generating a discourse of self-reliance on Black people” (2008, p. 3). Fisher’s conceptualization of independent Black institutions is particularly compelling because the framework does not apply a strict model, and explores the historical manifestations of IBIs and various forms of Black literacy practices. Her work does not set those traditions in a particular moment and acknowledges that they took many forms in many places and time periods within the African Diaspora. This leaves room for Caribbean imaginations and connections to the concept.

The two IBIs relevant to this study were Fisher’s interrogations of the Black News print news publication, and the after school spoken word club at Benjamin Banneker Academy for

Community Development in Brooklyn, New York, facilitated by a Black veteran public-school teacher and literacy coach, Cathie Wright-Lewis, referred to as Mama C. Black News was founded in 1969 by EAST organization of Brooklyn, New York. The EAST organization was a cultural and educational center for people of African descent and functioned as a food cooperative, restaurant, and site of the Uhuru Sassa School (Fisher, 2008). Black News, as a publication, “specifically addressed issues of ‘mis-education’ among Black and Puerto Rican youth in public schools” (p. 58). Fisher characterizes Mama C’s classroom as a “phenomenon of teachers implementing out-of-school literacy practices and elements of youth cultural productions such as spoken word in school contexts” (2008, p. 119). The objective of the spoken word club and its literacy activist, Mama C, “was to cultivate a new generation of readers,

171 writers, thinkers as well as ‘doers’ by guiding them on a journey through American and World

History” (Fisher, 2008, p. 119). Another important component of Mama C’s classroom was the encouragement “to link their lived experiences with the histories of Black people locally, nationally, and globally (Fisher, 2008, p. 119).

I synthesized Fisher’s evaluation of Black News and Mama C’s literacy classroom to induce the most salient characteristics of these two IBIs and determine how the HELP program added to the tradition of literacy as liberation, and complicated the frameworks of the tradition by incorporating transnational decolonizing perspectives of literacy. The table below represents the synthesis of these characteristics, and was the organizing tool for the analysis of field notes of the three morning meetings, the curricular materials, individual student interviews, and teacher memos.

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Table 6.2 Characterizing Independent Black Institutions

Independent Black Salient Characteristics Institution (Fisher, 2008) Subversive Epistemologies, Curriculum, and Pedagogy ● Challenge mis-education among Black and Brown children in public schools

● Challenge local schools to create culturally relevant curriculum

● Student-centered curriculum to inculcate Black youth with the value of self-reliance

● To be literate is to have educational, historical, political, and Black cultural literacies, and knowledge of music

● Validate children’s skills and knowledge set

● Reclaim Black cultural aesthetics, and also invent new cultural Black News products that explicitly reflect their realities. and Mama C’s Spoken Word ● Reading, writing and speaking as articulation and participation in Literacy Classroom the struggle

● The uses of hip hop to develop literacy practices prepare students to become active listeners and investing in hip hop as a tool for engaging other literate practices.

● Intergenerational exchange of knowledge through established literacy practices

● Engage in a literocracy—that is, an intersection of literate practices and democratic engagement (Fisher 2008, 2005)

Principles for Black Literacies Spaces

● Safe space for Black people to engage in their concerns throughout the African Diaspora

● Underscore the need to develop literate communities as a sustaining force to empower youth and their families

● Connect the local to the global by including issues that impacts Black people all over and modeling by listing demands and concerns for folks all over

● Challenge Black men, women, and children to name and define their purposes for learning and building literate lives and their commitment to strengthening their communities

● Anyone who came into contact with youth was an educator in his or her own way.

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● Teaching and learning occurred around the clock and could not be neatly packed into a traditional school day

● Help young people envision their futures

Findings

HELP’s institutional design included a wide array of practices that worked to decolonize

Haitian student perspectives to empower their multiple positionalities. This study has found that as an IBI, HELP reconfigured learning spaces by creating multiple interactions for students to engage in intergenerational literacy practices with elders, academics, and artists from their communities. These actors in turn, imparted to students’ literacies that disrupted harmful

(D)iscourses and challenged engrained “mis-education” (Fisher, 2008) of Haitian and Haitian

American students in Miami. As an IBI, HELP also generated a space for Black literacies where students co-constructed and produced literacy events with program personnel and community members. Last, as an institution, HELP generated space for students to experiment with identities and map out their futures. In regards to the second research question of how the institutional practices of HELP attempt to center the needs and talents of H/HA girls, I found that that centralization of Danticat’s short stories of intergenerational Black Haitian women in Krik?

Krak! addressed the curricular needs of Black H/HA girls to see their stories in classroom space.

The daily, all-girls counseling sessions, exposure to active Black American and Haitian women in the South Florida community recognized the needs for young Black H/HA girls process the impacts of their intersectional identities, as well as gain mentorship from older Black women firmly grounded in their identities as Black women.

This section shares the findings for the analysis of three HELP morning meetings. Every day during the duration of the HELP summer institute, all one hundred plus HELPers (middle school participants in the program), teaching faculty, staff, and peer mentors (called LIFERs)

174 would convene for an about an hour and half before the start of classes. This was an opportunity for students to receive breakfast and socialize with students in other classes, and for personnel to share program announcements. After at the end of breakfast, students would clear their food and sit in the lecture hall for the discussion portion of the morning meeting. It would begin with a student volunteer leading the call and response of the morning ritual. Often times, the morning meetings were a space for the founders of the program to engage with the students and unpack the theme of the week with brief lectures, media presentations, meditation, prayer, and/or brief writing prompts that students would complete while in the lecture hall.

Approximately once a week, a guest lecturer would facilitate a morning discussion with the students on a topic related to the weekly theme or their own work in the Haitian community.

Presenters have ranged from social workers discussing the importance of being informed when making decisions about sex, nutritionists, capoeira masters, film directors, painters, poets, and clergy. For the scope of this study, I focused on three particular presentations—Ekine, Danticat, and Davis—because of intentional ways they designed their presentation to address the institutional mission of the HELP program. Each presenter offered a unique perspective to the morning meeting. In Ekine’s presentation, I found that she played the role of the elder who passed on “correct” education (Fisher, 2008) on the African Diaspora, the legitimacy of Vodou as a religion, and alternative Discourses to humanize Haitian people. Danticat’s lecture and subsequent Q&A functioned as the elder storyteller in which she relayed her migration story to the United States and discussed the power of storytelling. Last, Davis’s workshop with the girls was an intervention to model how Black girls build relationships and solidarity with each other, identify behaviors that work to hurt and divide girls, and spoke to their specific experiences of marginalization ascribed to their body politic.

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Morning Meetings

“Correct” Education of the Diaspora, Vodou, and Haitian Communities. On June 19,

2015, Sokari Ekine facilitated the morning meeting during the week themed, “Self (Duality).”

Her presentation began with a picture of the African continent and described how she connects to

Haiti from Africa. Ekine then prompted students to engage in multiplicity, and asserted, “it makes you smarter.” From there she detailed her identities as a Nigerian-British woman who lived in Nigeria, South Africa, Spain and Haiti and unpacked her dual heritage of having a mother from Manchester, England and a Nigerian father.

Ekine then shifted the conversation by asking the congregation of students, “What is

Vodou?” The students’ responses announced the controlling Discourses of Vodou in their communities. One boy responded, “dark magic”, while Antoinette chimed in that Vodou is medicine, but people use it in the wrong way for other purposes. Another girl added, “originally used for healing, now something else, dark magic, bad stuff to kill people” (2015). One more girl added, “Ceremony that ancestors used to do to connect with magic” (2015). Ekine took the opportunity to unpack the word “magic” in the students’ response and queries, “What is magic?

What I turn water into wine? Isn’t that magic? They both require the power of a person. How do we use that power? Celebrating our ancestors, and drawing the spirit of ancestors, healing, communicating” (Ekine, 2015).

At this juncture of conversation, one of the co-founders of HELP, Dr. Charlene Desir provided a brief summary for students to help contextualize Vodou amongst other dominant western religions in Haiti. She put Vodou in conversation with Catholicism and Protestantism, and asserted, “Vodou was a religion. It was the first religion, coming from Africa. Native

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Americans and [Africans] were not allowed to practice their religion. People vilified Vodou”

(2015). She then connected the practices and products of Vodou to the everyday materials in their lives as Haitian youth. “Lwil mascriti12 and té 13came from Divine energy [and] connection to nature” (Desir, 2015). Desir concluded by calling students to research and find out more about

Vodou for themselves.

Ekine looped the conversation back to Vodou’s connection to the African continent. She explained, “Look at Vodou as a historical and cultural tradition which draws connections to Ibo and Yoruba” (2015). She discussed how the names of the different Haitian Vodou traditions were the same names used in Yoruba and Ibo traditions, and that the ancestors “brought those together in Haiti. The history of Haiti is the bringing together of people” (Ekine, 2015). This portion of Ekine’s presentation accomplished a range of things. As a community elder of the

African Diaspora by way of Nigeria and the UK, Ekine still drew direct connections from herself and the continent to the students in the program. With the assistance of Dr. Desir, she disrupted the vilification of Vodou and provided counternarratives to its epistemologies as a medium to connect to ancestors, nature, and bring people together. The conversation intertwined multiple discourses of Blackness, spirituality, and non-western epistemologies that drew explicit bonds between Haitian culture and the students’ everyday cultural practices.

The ensuing segment in Ekine’s lecture negotiated the significance of the Atlantic Ocean in relation to the African Diaspora. Ekine segued by declaring the Atlantic Ocean a historical landmark for the African Diaspora. From there, she delved into Haiti’s colonial history: theft of

12 Haitian castor oil. The oil is understood to have healing properties and is used frequently for ailments of the skin and body.

13 An umbrella word for a variety of herbal teas used to treat minor ailments such as indigestion, etc.

177 resources, death, revolution, and death. She links that history to where Haitian ancestors came from, and stated, “Europe was built on the blood of the slave triangle. The Atlantic is still taking the body of ancestors, refugees, and Africans crossing North Africa” (Ekine, 2015). After her mini-lecture, Ekine then asked the students a series of probing questions:

Think of the Atlantic as a huge burial ground. What is the meaning of this water to us?

Think of what the water means for you to go back. Think about the people crossing from

Haiti to the US or Africa. I want you to talk and think about the meaning of the water.

(Ekine, 2015)

Students were given time to talk to each other and respond to the question. Desir then prompted students to talk about multiplicity: “Who are you and how does the Atlantic run through your spirit? The Caribbean and the power behind the water, the combination of African nations, indigenous people and European blood mixed into one identity” (Desir, 2015). The second portion of Ekine’s lecture ended with founders Desir and Pamela Hall discussing why this knowledge matters for students. Hall stated the tragedy of not knowing who you are until you reach college, and “how important knowledge is to break what people say about you” (2015).

The final segment of Ekine’s guest lecture delved into her work as a photographer in

Haiti. Ekine shared photographs from her collection, Black Looks 2: Haiti-People. The stills that

Ekine shared during the morning meeting was shot in 2014 in Port-au-Prince, and in neighboring campsites. The Black and white photographs featured men, women, children, and families at home or at work. During the slide show presentation, Ekine asked students to study an image,

“[Look at the image], and how they are different from what you see in Haiti” (2015).

Responding to one image of a family: father, mother, and daughter, Antoinette assessed,

“they take images [of Haiti] on poor parts, and not happier side, and focus on sick people… [the

178 family] look happy and beautiful scenery” (2015). Ekine adds her interpretation of the photo as a mother who cares for her daughter and a father who works hard, “there is a lot of love” (2015).

Nadège commented that she sees a hardworking family, and by the father’s hands, she can tell he does a lot of hard work. Another male student commented, “They’re a family that loves each other that have each. Pride in his girls” (2015). At an interesting junction, one student posed, “do they want more,” and another added, “do they like their lives? Would they accept more?” Ekine flipped to another photo in the slide show, became animated in this exchange, and asked students, “What makes them happy? Are they happy? What’s behind the smiles…ask if they want more? Question that. Stuff? Think about when balancing your life…is it the more that makes you happy? Is happiness your success, pride, knowledge? Think about it” (2015).

The presentation ended with a questions and answers portion in which students asked a range of questions pertaining to how Africans crossed the Sahara Desert, how Ekine built a relationship with her translator in Haiti, and when would she back to teach them more? At dismissal, I escorted the girls in my group to the restroom and they spoke some more about

Ekine’s conversation and revealed the ways in which they struggled with her offerings. One girl confessed that she was confused about the discussion of Vodou and the “African stuff.” Nadège said she didn’t feel safe to ask questions during the session, while another girl mentioned that she had a ton of questions she had, but didn’t ask. A fourth girl divulged that she understood how the

Vodou was used for healing and ancestors, in response to the first girl’s confusion. Finally, the girl with all the unasked questions explains, “Remember in the African movies14 where they have that one part where Vodou is used as revenge? That’s what we are trying to change” (2015).

14 Nigerian Nollywood films are often sold in Haitian general stores across the city. Students often talk about which movies they have seen and their take on stories.

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Ekine’s guest presentation with the students took place on the second week of the 7-week institute and set the tone early on the program’s stance on Blackness, the Diaspora, spirituality, and the types of interrogation the students would engage in when figuring out ways to express their identities throughout the program. Fisher (2008) comes across the concept of “correct education” in her examination of Black News, and traces its origins to a lecture given by John V.

Churchill in 1970. Churchill defines “correct education” as “a system here that struggles against the opposing system by producing a new world” (Fisher, 2008 p. 70). “Correct” education is “a blueprint to combat mis-education and begin the reeducation process” (Fisher, 2008, p. 69), for

Black youth. Ekine engaged in this process of “correct” education by interrupting colonial

(D)iscourses of Vodou by discussing its origins to the African continent and how it has served

Haitian ancestors in their efforts to remain a collective in the fight for their liberation. Ekine also provided “correct” education in regards to how to visualize Haitian people outside of the frameworks of poverty and helplessness. The discussion generated by her photos of Haitian families and women demonstrated to students the ways to take up the images and ultimately narratives of Haiti and Haitian people that center on their humanity rather than Western capitalist frameworks, which enhances focus on their lack of material wealth and resources. While hardship is certainly a part of the realities for Haitian communities, Ekine’s visual gallery with students functioned as a step in the direction of seeing those communities in addition to the social structures that bind them to poverty.

Noted Haitian Elder Urges Stories and Storytelling. On July 9, 2015 Edwidge

Danticat, arguably the most distinguished Haitian author in the United States, visited HELP and delivered a talk to the students. Danticat is a perennial speaker at the institute and a highly anticipated visitor. Before her visit, each class is instructed to select a few students to perform

180 their work prior to her talk. In 2015, the morning meeting began with a volunteer conducting the call and response morning ritual. Nadège, who had performed an original spoken word piece the previous year, chose to perform a poem from an anthology of Haitian poems (Laraque &

Hirschman, 2001) that we read during our literacy class titled, They Say, by Suze Baron. Another one of my students performed, “Refugees,” by Patrick Sylvain. After the student performances, co-founder Hall formally introduced Danticat and emphasized her contribution and support of the program since its inception.

Danticat read prepared remarks detailing her migration story from Haiti as a young girl to

New York City (NYC). She began recounting her migration story by explaining to the students the context of reception for Haitian immigrants to the US. The CDC [marked] Haitians as AIDS carriers, described dead refugees on the beaches, junior high fights, not being allowed to attend the field trip to the Statue of Liberty (Danticat, 2015). She also talked about how much harder it was to acclimate to NYC in those time than in Miami in today’s age. Danticat was also intentional in citing the people who came before to the US and how they paved the way for other immigrants to be able to make it.

Her talk then shifted to the idea of writing through despair. She advised students, “You need to get it out” and that “writing was a way to get it out” (Danticat, 2015). She then recounted with students the ways in which she took up writing to help her process her new positionality and reality as a young Black immigrant girl in NYC. She recapped how she wrote in a journal, joined her high school paper, and used those opportunities to write about her positive memories of

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Haiti. Danticat then honed in on the major theme of her talk, the power of writing and sharing stories. She stressed, “whether you say through music, art…self-expression is a life skill” (Danticat, 2015). Danticat then proceeded to pass on words of advice to students, such as, “expose yourself to the field that you’re interested in, you can Figure 6 Danticat during morning lecture with students, (July 9, 2015) eliminate and see what you want to do” (2015). In sharing her words of advice, Danticat explained why she felt drawn to giving students her story, “[I’m] planting seeds in you that some of us may not have had planted in us. Please take the opportunity to reflect. Don’t be the fish that doesn’t see the water” (2015). She then breaks down the ways in which the students can learn to be discerning in their lives: “take everything you learn in the classroom to siblings. Keep learning. Keep striving. Read for fun and learning” (2015). And with that, she concluded her talk with students.

The rest of the hour was allocated to question and answers with the students. Antoinette posed the first question and asked Danticat about what she knew about the deportation of

Dominicans of Haitian descent. In our literacy block, we read Danticat’s short story, “Nineteen

Thirty-seven,” which is a fictional story set during the state-ordered massacre of up to 35,000

Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic. I accompanied the story with the current event blog post from Very Smart Brothas (Harrison, 2015) of the 2013 legislation “La

Sentencia,” which stripped Dominicans of Haitian descent of citizenship and mandated they leave the country in June of 2015. Danticat engaged the question very candidly and discussed the

182 driving forces of migration, “an imbalance of resources” and described migration as the issue of our time. Danticat also spoke of the work she was doing in Miami at Little Haiti Cultural Center in conjunction with fellow MacArthur Grant Recipient, decorated Dominican author, Junot Diaz, to draw attention to the situation. But she also couched La Sentencia within the larger context of anti-Black sentiments towards Haitians. It is worth noting that in October of 2015 the two would also go before the US Congress to urge the US government to act against the mass deportation of

Haitian Dominicans.

Conversation then shifted when Nadège asked Danticat if she interviewed people to write her stories. Danticat depicted her time as a graduate student at Brown University in Providence

Rhode Island. In that time, she accompanied a family of refugees and heard their stories firsthand. She also drew on what was happening in the news— the coup of 1994, and negotiations of military and government, to influence her storytelling as an author. When asked what inspired her to write stories, Danticat took students back to her days in Leogane, Haiti,

“back then, there were lots of Black outs,” which would provide moments for people to gather and tell stories. She encountered great storytellers who sang and were animated when engaging in the stories and remarked, “I figured what a wonderful way to tell a story” (Danticat, 2015).

In one of the last questions posed by the student audience, Danticat honed in on what it means to be grounded what you believe and uninhibited by people’s thoughts. Danticat affirmed,

Am I ever afraid what people might interpret in my book and how they respond? Goes

with the territory. Learn this as soon as possible: not everybody’s going to like you.

Whatever you do, there is a risk of rejection. I worry once the work is out. You don’t

want to censor yourself. You become a prisoner of people’s perceptions and thoughts. As

long as you believe in what you’re doing. (Danticat, 2015)

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After answering a few more questions, the talk with Danticat ended with students and staff lining up for photos and autographs. Danticat’s guest lecture served as another opportunity for students to interact in an intergenerational exchange of knowledge during a literacy event. She encouraged not only being reflective but also to pass that knowledge along to those coming behind you, so that they can benefit from shared cultural knowledge. Danticat took full advantage of the moment to share with students her journey to the US as a Black immigrant girl, and implored that the students not be “fish that does not see the water” (Danticat).

The space also gave room for students to discuss global issues impacting Haitians in the

Diaspora, as well model what it meant to exercise your voice in solidarity for those in your community. In regards to building Haitian epistemologies and literacies, the talk advocated for importance of oral and print literacies. A good portion of Danticat’s lecture with students emphasized telling and writing stories as a life skill and necessary for young Black youth to “get out” the ways intersectional positionalities influence their lived experiences. Overall, Danticat’s exchange with students supported the tradition of Black literacy spaces by explicitly sharing experiences, providing lessons in growing up Black and immigrant, and using the literacies to be grounded in those identities.

“Be that voice that supports another girl.” The last guest speaker to visit the morning meeting with students was Joyce Davis, the Executive Director and founder of Pearl Girlz, LLC, on July 21, 2015. Pearl Girlz, LLC is “a girls’ empowerment organization dedicated to bringing educational awareness to the hidden culture of female aggression and girl bullying through prevention and prosocial training programs” (About Pearl Girlz, LLC., n.d.). Davis’ workshop was especially tailored for the girls in the program, thus the boys and girls were separated for the duration of the workshop. Davis’s intervention modelled how Black girls build relationships and

184 solidarity with each other, identified behaviors that work to hurt and divide girls, and spoke to their specific experiences of marginalization ascribed to their body politic.

After the girls had settled into a classroom, Davis introduced herself as a former 8th grade teacher, who built the Pearl Girlz curriculum especially for empowering girls. The girls in the room introduced themselves by stating their names and current passion. From there, Davis narrated a moment in her girlhood. Davis recounted how as a child, her family moved around a lot and the time her family moved from Chicago, Illinois to Whitestown, Indiana. She remembers the first day of school being very nervous and shaky as the new girl, and the students looking at her as if she were an alien, since the community did not have many Black people. She learned to stand up for herself in a moment of racist bullying because her mother’s voice was the strength she needed at the time. Davis asserted, “We need as girls someone to go to. You can be that one voice that supports another girl” (2015). From there, Davis articulated the objective for the workshop, Pearl Girlz: to develop methods to “mediate and react to irritation, create layers of protection to help you feel good about yourself and good about you…your response to a situation has the power to change the entire situation” 2015).

The workshop transitioned into a brainstorm of the concept of self-esteem and what constituted healthy self-esteem versus unhealthy self-esteem. As a group, the girls defined self- esteem as how good or bad you feel about yourself. The girls further discussed factors that lead to unhealthy self-esteem and healthy self-esteem. The girls then discussed ways to focus on more healthy aspects of self-esteem. Nadège offered, “being clear about what we will and will not do

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for others, and knowing your limits” (2015). Venus supported that idea and added not giving up to peer pressure.

Antoinette offered, “Knowing you can’t do everything,

acceptance of your Figure 7 Board work after all-girl, “Pearl Girlz” morning session (July 21, 2015) shortcomings, and having a realistic appraisal of oneself” (2015). Davis asked the group, “The ability to define and direct oneself, what does that mean?” (2015). In an interesting moment, Lovely reiterated the program’s discourses on identity, “When you know who you are people can’t tell you who you are” (2015).

One of the most significant moments in the workshop was when Davis opened the floor for the girls to discuss thoughts or actions that might have been hurtful to another girl. Lovely shared some feelings that she momentarily harbored against another girl in the room. She opened up by saying, “Jealous, today actually. I have relaxed hair but it is not as healthy as I would like it. But I saw Jessica’s hair which is long and nice…” (Lovely, 2015). Davis affirmed Lovely for sharing her feelings of envy of another girl, then coached her on “taking responsibility for that feeling you have” (2015). The girls completed a handout which stated the “5 Ways to Build Your

Self-Esteem” which included tips such as, “Think positively about yourself…STOP when you catch yourself thinking something negatively about yourself, and replace it by thinking something good instead” (Pearl Girlz, 2013). The handout asked girls to articulate the facets of themselves that made them beautiful and valuable. The girls in this study wrote statements that

186 indexed personality traits such as, “I have a great family,” “I embrace my weirdness” and “I am hardworking and smart.” The session ended with Davis directing the call and response reading of

“Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou.

Davis’s workshop alongside the daily all-girls counseling session provided opportunities for the girls to develop social and emotional skills, process their feelings, and learn ways to manage conflicting emotions. The workshop specifically focused on the ways girls can learn to be supportive of themselves and each other, which included discussing the ways Black girls experience specific forms of bullying or internalize unhealthy Figure 8 Girls reciting portions of Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” (July 21, 2015) attributes as it relates to their positionality. In discussing unhealthy self-esteem traits, the class contributed ideologically laden cultural phrases, such as “not being light enough,” or “no edges,” or “not being cute enough.” These point to issues of colorism, critiquing of Black girls’ hair, and standards of beauty, alongside the typical ideologies that police girls in general such as weight, intelligence, and worthiness. For young Black girls, having space to unpack these restrictions to girlhood outside the male gaze encourages healthy exchange about how these restrictions are problematic and encourage divisiveness. The one critique of the workshop would have been a conversation on how these restrictions are part of larger social systems rooted in White Supremacist

Patriarchy. But as Danticat mentions, this workshop helped to plant a seed in helping the girls in

187 the program to think of ways of being and other ways of supporting each other.

The morning meetings with Ekine, Danticat, and Davis all served different functions, but when placed in conversation with each other, they all demonstrate the systemic ways the HELP program established itself as a transnational IBI. In thinking of the ways in which the morning meetings have taken up subversive epistemologies, curriculum, and pedagogy, the Black women facilitators challenged “mis-education” by explicitly making connections to the African

Diaspora. They also provided counternarratives of Vodou as a diasporic practice and demonstrated how their immigrant stories and culture can be at the center of their learning and success. Their work with students also supported the literacy practice of intergenerational knowledge exchanges. All three women used morning meetings as a discursive space to enlighten, clarify, and share experiences and plant seeds within students. In regards to constructing a vibrant space for Black literacies, the morning meetings with Ekine, Danticat, and

Davis all centered events and histories that spoke directly to Black and Haitian people. They all worked towards providing students with perspectives to empower them in their growth as young people. Empowerment happened through illustrating the collectiveness in Black experiences, as well as the power to recognize how your emotions and actions could be used to support people who look like you. All three women also took on the role of “educator” to encourage students to be grounded and informed in their intersections as Black immigrant youth.

Teaching and learning at HELP

Teaching and learning took many forms inside and outside the HELP classroom. This section of the chapter focuses on the secondary English curriculum, student engagement in the enrichment activities, and participation in the summer showcase. A central finding when looking

188 at the rituals, text, learning activities, and enrichment opportunities of the program was that

HELP’s curriculum intentionally operationalized literacies from a sociocultural standpoint that centralized students’ cultural identities and their home language of Haitian Creole. The program also provided language to identify the structures of White Supremacist Patriarchy in the history and migration narratives of Haitian and Haitian American. Students’ learning contexts took on multiple modalities throughout the day and weeks of the program, and reflect the holistic approach to empowering students of color in an urban setting.

A curriculum of Black feminist Haitian narratives. The cornerstone of the HELP curriculum are texts of Edwidge Danticat. At the 6th grade level, students read Behind the

Mountains (2002), and in the 7th The Skin I’m In (1998) by Sharon G. Flake. In the 8th grade, students read multiple short stories from Danticat’s Krik? Krak! (1995). As a literacy instructor, I taught “Behind the Mountains” with grades 6, and Krik? Krak! with my combined class of 7th and 8th graders. I focus on my work with students reading Krik? Krak! I argue that the curriculum of HELP supported Black feminist approaches to literacy instruction. The short stories of Krik? Krak! center Black female protagonists as mothers, daughters, elders, sex workers, and domestics. In reading these rich short stories with compelling Black Haitian female characters, students must also grapple with their positionalities in Haitian society as women.

These stories also normalize women’s voices controlling narratives and perspectives. These tensions were most apparent in our class’s reading of “Night Women,” a 7-page short story narrated by a sex worker. As a literacy instructor, I pushed to read this short story, normally skipped because of its mature content. I felt the de-stigmatization of women in sex work was an opportunity to not only push students, but also myself as literacy instructor. The reading of Night

Women required pre-reading strategies to air out the Discourses of women in the sex industry, as

189 well as using supporting texts to contextualize the lived experiences of the girls and women who get pushed into the industry. As pre-reading activity, I facilitated an open word-association activity in which I asked students to generate words that came to mind with the phrase, “women of the night.” Unsurprisingly, students tapped into the dehumanizing gendered discourses of women in sex work. Their responses included whore, demoralized, slut, desperate, nasty, prostitute, deviant, THOT (that ho over there). From, there students unraveled the meanings behind these labels and why they get Figure 9 Board work of word association activity ascribed to women.

In reading Night Women, I asked students to make note of all the things we learned of the nameless woman in the story. The majority of students highlighted that the woman is a loving mother, and the notable absence of his father. They also write about her beliefs in God and her desire to want more for herself, feeling older than her 25 years. One girl asks poignant questions, such as “will she teach her son to not be like the men that come to her? Was his father her pimp?

Was she raped? Did he sell her?” (2015). While students did make critiques of the woman in the story, I observed that, for the most part, they tried to dig deeper with the text and extract as many meanings as they could from the 7 pages detailing an evening in the character’s life.

I further challenged students to think of other ways to frame women in sex work and

190 brought in two media texts: a news report from the Washington Post, “Report: U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti had ‘transactional sex’ with hundreds of poor women” (Moyer, 2015), and a publication from Black online media organization, The Root titled, “The Sex-Abuse-Prison

Pipeline: How Girls of Color Are Unjustly Arrested and Incarcerated” (Saar, 2015). These texts were used to shift perceptions and allow students to think of women in humanizing frameworks that explored patriarchal social structures that pushed some Black women and girls into vulnerable situations. As part of the reading, students were tasked with annotating the texts with questions and responses. A handful of students to took to the inquiry process and annotated a series of thought-provoking comments to the text. In the Washington Post report, one girl gravitated to the following passage:

For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household

items were frequently cited as the “triggering need,” the report said. In exchange for sex,

women got “church shoes, cell phones, laptops, and perfume as well as money” from

peacekeepers. (Moyer, 2015)

She wrote in response, “If woman (sic) were in need why would they exchange sex? Wouldn’t they go to the government are (sic) family members?” (2015). Two other girls made note the finding that “most [Haitian women] were unaware the United Nations prohibited sexual exploitation and has a hotline to report it” and “only seven interviewees knew about the United

Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation and abuse” (Moyer, 2015). Some girls speculated whether the women were too scared to report that too many didn’t know. Venus lodged a critique of the UN, and states, “they’re being very quiet and slow about what is happening…if the UN was more together maybe this might not happen” (2015).

Malika Saada Saar’s piece on the sex-abuse-prison pipeline elicited the most poignant

191 responses in student annotations. Saar (2015) makes the case that girls who run away from abusive environments or forced into sex traffic are often criminalized for running away or jailed for prostitution. One girl angrily wrote, “why does no one arrest the men that buy and sell them?

It’s not their fault that they’re being trafficked” (2015). Venus added, “that seems stupid to me.

They’re (sic) being locked up while the real bad people get to live their lives :/” (2015).

Much like “Night Women,” the short story, “Children of the Sea”, created moments to bring in historical Haitian media texts and current reports to contextualize the fictional accounts of refugees fleeing the oppressive Duvalier regime that controlled the island from 1957-1986. As the first short story, we spent time unpacking the forces that drive people to emigrate, even in dangerous situations. The reading of “Children of the Sea” was frontloaded with viewing old interview footage between Francois Duvalier and American journalist, Ralph Renick from a

Channel 4 WTVJ Miami broadcast, “Haiti…Papa Doc and His People” from March 22, 1966. In this 3-minute clip, students watched Duvalier explain how infamously ruthless paramilitary armed forces known as the Tonton Macoutes, were politically engaged men from mostly the peasant class who supported the agenda of his administration. As a class, we segued into the learning more about Duvalier’s successor, his son, Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier by screening Soledad O’Brien’s Al Jazeera America interview with Jean-Claude Duvalier on

September 4, 2013. From the interview footage, students learned that, after 25 years in exile,

Baby Doc returned to Haiti and passed away without ever being formally charged with corruption and human rights violations lodged against him during his years as president from

1971-1986.

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To read “Children of the Sea” during the morning literacy block, students paired themselves together and read 5-10 pages each day. Rather than assign comprehension questions to check for their understanding, students wrote in dialogic journals to guide their reading. The Figure 10 Footage of Interview with Papa Doc (Courtesy of the Wolfson Archive) double-entry logs designated one side for self- selected excerpts from the short story, and the other side would be a series of emotive reactions, questions, comments, and thoughts that the text evoked within them. I encouraged them to use symbols, social media colloquialisms, jargon/language (such as OMG, WTF, etc.) and emoticons to document responses in their double entries. Towards the end of the literacy block, students would share excerpts from the story that elicited the strongest reactions. The students’ writing signaled that were most grappling with why people leave their homeland and what happens to them when they do? Also, how much of the negative Haitian refugee experiences are rooted in racist xenophobia of the Black foreigner? The students’ dialogic journal presented an array of responses from the tenderness expressed the young lovers, and hardships narrated on the sea journey in the story. However, students were particularly attuned to distress detailed in the story.

The most jarring depiction for students was the use of rape and incest as a violent tool to inflict terror. The following was a reoccurring excerpt in the students’ dialogic journals,

They have this thing now that they do. If they come into a house and there is a son and a

mother there, they hold a gun to their heads. They make the soon sleep with his mother. If

it is a daughter and father, they do the same thing. (Danticat, 1996, p. 12)

Students’ responses to this excerpt often asked why, “why would they do that?” (8th grade girl,

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2015); “why did the Macoutes force families to sleep together? (7th grade girl, 2015), “my reaction is that why the [Macoutes] making them have sex with their kids?” (8th grade girl,

2015). A number of students also expressed plain disgust. “I am disgusted by this. Why would they make family sleep with each other?” (8th grade girl, 2015), “That’s disgusting and I think that’s sad that people enjoy watching stuff like that happen” (8th grade girl, 2015).

Their writing also revealed the ways in which they tried to rationalize the motivations behind this sort of terror. One 7th grade girl speculated, “maybe the soldiers found it fascinating when they see other people in pain and hurt” (2015). Another 8th grade girl asked, “Isn’t there at least 1 soldier who doesn’t agree with this?” (2015). Two students wondered if these sorts of violations would lead victims to suicide. Last, one-8th grade girl aptly posed, “We also feel that the soldiers forced either out of pleasure or because they were forced by Duvalier. I think a lot of them are scared [for] their own lives. In fear, they do some unreasonable, unspeakable, fear- driven actions” (2015). In giving students the freedom to direct their own inquiry of the text, they generated a range of questions that indicated deep levels of engagement with the text and the jarring themes it presented.

Similarly, students reflected on (D)iscourses of Haitian refugees from other Black communities. In the following excerpt, the unnamed male character adrift at sea as a refugee contemplates his fate aboard the raft.

Maybe we will go to Guinin, to live with the spirits, to be with everyone who has come

and died before us. They would probably turn us away from there too. Someone has

transistor and sometimes we listen to radio from the Bahamas. They treat Haitians like

dogs in the Bahamas, a woman says. To them, we are not human. (Danticat, 1996, p. 14)

th Students expressed confusion at the idea of anti-Blackness from other Black people. One 8

194 grade girl notes, “Why does he feel that they would turn them away, if Africans are people like them also? Why do they treat them like dogs if they’re practically people of the same color and race?” (2015). Another 7th grader notes, “I feel really mad because they were (sic) human too.

[angry face emoji].” Other student responses were variations of asking why and declaring anger.

These kinds of stories that are relevant to their histories generate an attentive energy in the class. Students, for the most part, did the work of deconstructing text, asking interrogative questions, and expressed nuanced thinking. It was also space to bring in a variety of outside multimodal texts that enriched the knowledge production process. Alongside the video footages,

I was able to pair short stories thematically with Haitian poetry in Haitian Creole and English and students read both in languages to decipher meaning and relate to the experiences of Haitian migrants. It was from these texts that some of my students chose to recite to Danticat on her visit to the camp. Danticat is not the only Haitian author worth noting. However, her work provides a crucial entry point into vibrant Haitian storytelling from Haitian women’s perspectives. The

HELP curriculum rooted in Haitian feminist canonical texts gave students access to themselves in a literacy classroom that is often missing in their traditional schooling experiences.

Multimodality in Literacy Instruction. As stated previously, students’ learning contexts at HELP took on multiple modalities throughout the duration of the program, which reflects the holistic approach to empowering students of color in an urban setting. The enrichment

Figure 11 Self Activity learning blocks were facilitated by community members

195

from a range of creative disciplines. The objectives of

the enrichment learning activities were for students to

engage in multiple forms of expression to develop

healthy identities. In the first week of the program,

students worked with a popular Haitian spoken word Figure 12 Enrichment Block Capoeira with Master Mario hip hop artist. “Mecca aka Grimo” walked students

through crafting poems by completing identity maps, writing journal prompts and stringing

together stanzas to conclude their poems.

Incorporating the body, movement, and music were major parts of the enrichment experience.

Students also participated in week-long Haitian folk dance and capoeira workshops with local

dancers and capoeira masters.

The highlight of the enrichment experience was

the filmmaking workshop conducted by Rachelle

Selnave, an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, creator of

Ayiti Images Film Series, and Adjunct Film Professor

at Miami Dade College. Students had the opportunity

Figure 33 Footage from HELP Filmmaking Workshop to write and direct their own film produced by Selnave. (Salnave, 2015)

In the film Selnave inquired, “what do you see in the mirror?” The film is a compilation of

footage shot by students responding to Selvnave’s

question and capturing candid moments in the

program. Students had a chance to use filming

equipment and learned the ropes of capturing video,

recording audio, and staging participants in Figure 14 Sabrina in HELP Film (Salnave, 2015)

196 the interviews. They were also responsible for writing the script to go along with the film.

Students who volunteered to be interviewed also took the liberty to speak in two languages, both

English and Creole (translated in English subtitles) to detail their aspirations alongside storying their positive attributes.

Almost every aspect of enrichment learning culminated in the end of summer performance showcase. The showcase was an opportunity for students to demonstrate what they had learned of themselves as well as what they learned about their

Haitian culture through spoken word, dance, singing, Figure 45 Nadège in HELP End of Summer Showcase playing instruments and the arts. All the community members who had participated in the previous week would return to fine tune dance routines, practice songs, and finish paintings to be ready for the show. The girls who participated in the study were active performers in the show. Nadège performed a powerful spoken word piece,

“Who am I?” Sabrina participated in the capoeira demonstration with Master Mario. Venus and

Lovely sang multiple songs. Antoinette recited a

Bible verse in French to open the show. The showcase marked the end of program and was highly attended by community stakeholders of the program, parents, families, friends, and campus

Figure 16 Folk Dance Routine for End of Summer Showcase faculty members. The performance organizers were mindful to make sure every student played a role in putting together show. Artwork was displayed prominently in the auditorium lobby, students were in charge of staging and preparing

197 acts. Staple song selections for the showcase included the singing of the Haitian national anthem to open the show, and the Black National anthem to close. As a literacy instructor and student choir director in the program, it was a satisfying moment to see shy students break open or students with strong talents in the arts take full command of the stage and blossom into assertive performers.

Conclusion

The HELP program is an independent Black institution exercising transnational decolonizing pedagogy congruent with the African diaspora’s long traditions of literacy as liberation. The combined models from Janks (2013) and Fisher (2008) point to the specific institutional practices that signal critical implementation of literacy perspectives alongside empowering Black youth through literacy. HELP’s institutional practices demonstrate the ways in which its curriculum strived to destigmatize the Discourses of Haiti and provide students with an epistemological framework of the home island that provides an enriching foundation and encourages solidarity with Black people across the African Diaspora.

The three morning meeting presenters, Ekine, Danticat, and Davis, engaged in literacy practices meant to sustain Black literacy spaces for Haitian youth. Ekine embodied the practice of “correct” education by interrupting colonial Discourses of Vodou, providing an Afro-centric perspective of its origins, and how it has served Haitian ancestors in their efforts to remain a collective in the fight for their liberation. Ekine also provided “correct” education that visualized

Haitian people outside of the frameworks of poverty and helplessness. Danticat’s guest lecture was a storytelling endeavor that took up intergenerational exchanges of knowledge. Danticat’s oral literacy event was also a space for students to discuss global issues impacting Haitians in the

Diaspora, as well model what it meant to exercise solidarity with those in your community.

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Danticat’s lecture with students emphasized telling and writing stories as a life skill necessary for young Black youth to “get out” the ways intersectional positionalities influence their lived experiences. Danticat’s exchange with students supported the tradition of Black literacy spaces by explicitly sharing experiences, providing lessons in growing up Black and immigrant, and using the literacies to be grounded in those identities. Davis’s workshop, alongside the daily all- girls counseling session provided opportunities for the girls in HELP to develop social and emotional skills, process their feelings, and learn methods of conflict resolution.

The morning meetings took up subversive epistemologies, curriculum, and pedagogy.

The Black women facilitators challenged “mis-education” by explicitly making connections to the African Diaspora, providing counternarratives of Vodou as a diasporic practice and demonstrating how their immigrant stories and culture can be at the center of their learning and success. Their work with students also supported the literacy of practices of intergenerational exchanges knowledge. All three women used morning meetings as a discursive space to enlighten, clarify, share experiences, and plant seeds within students. All three women also took on the role of “educator” to encourage students to be grounded and informed in their intersections as Black immigrant youth.

HELP operationalized literacies from a sociocultural standpoint that centralized students’ cultural identities and their home language of Haitian Creole. The institution provided students language to identify the structures of White Supremacist Patriarchy in the history and migration narratives of Haitian and Haitian American. Students’ learning contexts took on multiple modalities throughout the day and weeks of the program, and reflect the holistic approach to empowering students of color in an urban setting. The HELP curriculum, rooted in Haitian feminist canonical texts of Danticat, gave students access to themselves in a literacy classroom

199 that is often missing in their traditional schooling experiences.

How did HELP reconfigure learning space? From the standpoint of power and diversity/identity, the students’ abilities were framed from an empowerment model. While students completed pre and post literacy tests to satisfy the requirements of the grant, students were not tracked by ability level. All had access to the same literacy instruction and program resources. These are institutional practices that I identify as disruptive of reproductive schooling processes. Additionally, Black and Haitian identities are centralized in texts, guest lectures and workshops, enrichment activities, and identity development projects. Students encounter consistent counternarratives, Haitian epistemologies, and diasporic knowledge. In regards to access and (re)design, learning took on many forms and students got access to multiple forms of generational knowledge, teachers, and creators. The learning day contained rich reading and writing instruction, but also emphasized movement: dancing, singing, painting, and community building. The second question asked how HELP supported the needs and talents of Haitian and

Haitian American girls in the program. Black Haitian and Haitian American girls in the HELP program had access to Black Haitian feminist literacy instruction, were able to move, dance, write, create, and speak by their design and in their image. They were spaces created especially for their intersectional perspectives. They had a range of tools available to construct visions of themselves that embraced all aspects of their literate identities.

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Chapter 7

Conclusion

This study was designed to fill in multiple gaps in the way literacy scholars examine the literate lives of young Black immigrant girls. Black Haitian girls exist within multiple intersections that are not adequately studied, to their detriment. This study and its design offer theoretical and pedagogical insights on what it means to teach and study Black girls from diasporic communities. The primary objective was to create a space in which literacy studies and literacy instruction took into consideration the intersectional lives of Black girls to create emancipatory learning experiences in reading and writing instruction. This case study was guided by three primary questions: How do Haitian and Haitian American (H/HA) girls enrolled in HELP narrate their identities, place, and girlhood in autobiographical writing? How do conceptualizations of identities, place, and girlhood govern their discursive engagements in

HELP’s classroom? How does HELP, as a culturally-based and spiritually-grounded literacy program, reconfigure learning spaces? In what ways do their institutional practices attempt to center the needs and talents of H/HA girls? To answer these questions, I conducted an embedded case study to examine the literacies of five Haitian and Haitian American girls, and the institutional practices of the HELP program.

My study yielded the following findings. The girls generated autobiographical texts that mostly reproduced dominant Discourses of place, negotiated their alignments to dominant

Discourses of identities, and situated their girlhood in terms of their talents, agency and relationships (R1). Adolescent Black immigrant girls are cognizant of dominant Discourses about race, ethnicity, gender and take these Discourses into consideration when deciding who they are. These findings revealed that the girls in this study did not think of place as readily as

201 they would race/ethnicity/gender. While they are frequently asked in social interactions to negotiate the intersections of their identities as Black and Haitian girls, they have not had the same opportunity to negotiate the places around them from critical perspectives. Place is an underexplored area in autobiographical writing, but crucial for girls in urban spaces to conceptualize. I argue that examinations of place as a social construction is an important aspect of the literacy instruction of Black immigrant girls because it provides yet another avenue for them to reimagine and transform their environments. They wrote about girlhood based on proximal relationships and tangible self-qualities. This finding begs for scholars and educators in in literacy studies to re-evaluate relationships with the Black girls in their learning communities, and the impacts on their identity development and learning experiences in classrooms. The relationships you build with young Black girls impact their conceptualization of girlhood.

Grappling with race, place, and girlhood produced classroom discussions in which girls supported each other, challenged their peers to think differently, and exemplified vulnerability when bearing uncomfortable truths of themselves (R2). Black girls demonstrated the range of their intellectual and emotional intelligence. They can handle tough subject matter, particularly tough subject matter that directly impacts their social world as Black immigrant girls. In the 21st century literacy classroom, educators are responsible for considering ways to activate the range of Black girls’ intellectual thought. When unsure, trust their judgment in introducing a variety of media texts to pinpoint the Discourses developing their literacies as young girls.

HELP reconfigured learning spaces by functioning as an IBI exercising transnational decolonizing pedagogy congruent with the African diasporic traditions of literacy as liberation

(R3). Black Haitian feminist literacy instruction, freedom of choice in self-expression, and safe all-girl spaces were some of the ways HELP centered the needs and talents of H/HA girls. In

202 order for learning spaces to serve Black immigrant students, institutions need to speak to the major aspects of intersectionality in identities. Meaningful literacy instruction must render students visible. Their narratives must be woven into the text. Additionally, Black girls have intellectual and emotional range, thus institutions should consider the range of support they require as well.

Recommendations for Literacy Instruction

Why should the place, identity, and girlhood of Black immigrant girls in urban settings matter to English/Language Arts teachers? Well, it matters for a couple reasons. First, engaging place as a social concept emboldens students to interrogate the historical and contemporary

Discourses that have positioned them in a particular way in their overall community. Grappling with place helps girls to get a better grasp of social structures and the ways communities discard people or facilitate attachments among them. Most importantly, grappling with place puts students in a place to be empowered, to make a difference, and have voice in those areas.

Through this process, girls become invested in making those communities serve their needs and work in their interests as young citizens.

As noted by Marleine Bastien of Fanm Ayisyen nan Miyami, gentrification has taken a strong hold in Haitian neighborhood cultural foothold of Little Haiti. Place in the context of my study builds on Kinloch’s (2010) research on place, race, and urban youth. My work with HELP in the city of Miami further contextualizes how immigrant communities are too impacted by the

“whitetification” of their cultural spaces. However, the most prominent difference between my work is the stark disconnect between the girls and “whitetification” of their community. The

HELP had little academic engagement to neighborhood of Little Haiti. They had little connection

203 to the overall discourse of how Haitians have shaped the city of Miami from stigmatized unwanted immigrants to an attractive cultural center of visual art, music, and cuisine for the city.

This disconnect from Little Haiti and its losing battle to gentrification also means a disconnect from Black Haitian feminist community organizers, and residents who have embodied resistance.

Therefore, having seen the other side of the coin, I underscore recommendations from Kinloch

(2010). Reading and writing instruction can embed “issues of identity, power, ownership, critical reading, and active writing” (Kinloch, 2010, p. 187). This can be done by generating multiple writing opportunities within the genre of setting. Task students to map the places in their lives, the Discourses associated with those places and their positionality within those locations. Just as the girls in this study were able to map White Supremacist Patriarchal ideologies in their analyses of multimodal media texts, their literacies around race, ethnicity, and gender, could supply critical engagements with place and the meanings embedded in spatial configurations.

Thinking about identity enriches instruction two-fold: informing the student and the teacher. For the educator, taking up autobiographical work for Black students provides a nuanced understanding of where they're coming from and how to incorporate their social realities into classrooms and curricula. This reflective writing makes for more relevant, more impactful instruction. Furthermore, Black students can properly center themselves in their own learning experiences. The exercise of defining themselves, on their own terms—to be able to speak into existence the things that they know to be true of themselves, but maybe had not had the opportunity to articulate—provides space for them to reflect on where they are and construct who they want to be. Self-definition is also happening in relation to local and global political events that shape their generation’s trajectory and quality of life. A learning space redesigned for the discursive practices that center Black immigrant youth identities in tandem with anti-

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Blackness immigration reform, climate change, gun violence, gender equality, and citizenship is a radical manifestation of emancipatory ‘correct’ education for marginalized Black immigrant youth in urban contexts.

Black girlhood matters because Black girls are on the margins of classroom spaces for various reasons. The process of demarginalizing them requires conscious deliberate pedagogy that does the work of taking up gender and rupturing patriarchal practices in the classroom. How do you give girls voice in a way that is true to who they are and allows them to define gender in the ways that make sense to them? As practitioners, we should focus on efforts to carve more space in writing instruction for girls to think about place. We should also think of ways counternarratives can inform their decision-making and identity development process and be intentional in creating positive dynamics with Black immigrant girls that engages the totality of their identities. In practice, this looks like creating moments in the classroom where girls lead as experts, where their experiential knowledge as young Black women facilitates opportunities for knowledge sharing.

HELP created such moments in multiple ways. Within the classroom space, the students read texts and received instruction that were specifically themed around Black female immigrant characters, discussions of feminism and what it meant to be a Black woman (and Black man).

They also had all-girl spaces to speak candidly about wanting support on particular issues. These examples are specific to HELP’s out-of-school context. However, the key take-away is that these practices were explicitly designated conversations of gendered Discourses that centralized girls in the classroom space.

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Implications and Recommendations for Literacy Research

Immigrant Youth Literacies

This study defines Haitian youth literacies as the ways adolescents of Haitian heritage use primary Discourses rooted in Haitian epistemologies to develop secondary Discourses of race, gender, politics, sexuality, and power. The study observes these processes of using and developing Discourses as they take place during the students’ engagements with reading/writing, speaking/listening. Chapter 5 focused explicitly on the discursive classroom practices of the girls in this study. To note the ways the girls engaged Haitian youth literacies, the analysis of this chapter paid closed attention to the Discourses of race, gender, and ethnicity present in their speech acts. The CDA/CRM framework called attention to the active Discourses of race, place, and gender, and, equally important, their counternarratives and the ways those literacies facilitated discursive resistance in the classroom for the young Black girls in this study. My concept of Haitian youth literacies further develops the genre of immigrant youth literacies in

Literacy Studies. It does so by providing a critical sociocultural frame to study immigrant literacies, which can supplement the cognitive and process-oriented studies of immigrant youth language acquisitions.

In the context of place and race, and with attention to the intersections of race- and place- based identities, primary and secondary Discourses sharpen one another in productive and empowering ways. However, in the context of gender, one knife also has the potential to dull the other. Intersectional oppressions of sex, race, heritage/culture and patriarchy can work to hinder young Black girls’ conceptualization of themselves and those who dare challenge WSP with non-binary queer identities. Haitian epistemologies and social expectations, while rooted in liberation narratives of revolutionary African ancestors, are also artifacts of global productions of

206 imperialism, racism, and sexism. Haitian youth literacies also exist in this historical nexus of liberation and oppression. As educators of Black immigrant girls, it’s imperative that we also do the work of identifying these manifestations and model interrogations of power and oppression in discursive literacy practices in the classroom. Practitioners have within their power to evaluate the layers of support available to students from diverse backgrounds and implement an entrée of support to Black girls. Literacy researchers can further examine the ways Black immigrant literacies can support other areas of adolescent development.

My concept of Diasporic Dreaming also broadens the genre of immigrant youth literacies because it is a lens that can be applied to multiple immigrant communities. The concept calls for the exploration of transnational student negotiations and relationships to multiple places that shift over time. Diasporic Dreaming gives literacy researchers a framework to hold fast the intersectional identities, linguistic diversity, and transnational body politic of immigrant youth in the US. In regards to place, the girl's Haitian immigrant perspectives provided a rich contextualization of the American Dream in which its limitations and also its potential are equally present. Their literacies as Black Haitian girls mediated the widely accepted and normalized ideology of emigration to the United States, alongside handwork, as the guaranteed upward social mobility. By negotiating the affordances and sacrifices of being Black diasporic citizens of Haiti and the United States, the girls contest the normalized ideology of WSP and provide perspective on what it means in the United States that centers their experiences of immigrants of color. The intersections of Black and Haitian identities created experiences in which the girls could speak to their positions as “Other” and the power and privilege located in

Whiteness. They are able spell out the WSP ideologies that regulate different social experiences.

They are also able to access diasporic Black cultural epistemologies to map out their

207 positionalities in WSP.

Global Black Feminist Perspectives in Literacy Studies

This study functions as my entrée into Black feminist literacy studies. I build on the work of Black American female scholars who have provided theoretical frameworks to reclaim the literacies of Black girls from the margins. Richardson, Fisher, and Staples developed research around the premise that Black people, Black girls included, have a rich history of literacies that are essential to our meaning-making and self-preservation as a people in White Supremacist

Patriarchal contexts. In centering the immigrant girls and the HELP as an IBI in this study, I add the transnational nature of these literacies and the complexities that come with maintaining membership to multiple marginalized communities. However, I have only scratched the surface.

The next direction for this literacy research is embracing Black feminist scholars who write from across the water. These so-called Third World perspectives spend more time unpacking Haitian cultural traditions from a postcolonial lens. Cultural anthropologist Gina Ulysse (2015, 2006), creative writers Edwidge Danticat (2011) and Ibi Zoboi (2014), and rhetorician Roxane Gay

(2014) represent a constellation of Black Haitian women who are deeply dedicated to the enterprise of unpacking the narratives of Haiti and Haitian women and taking patriarchy to task.

My goal as a critical sociocultural literacy scholar is to thread together these conversations and pull them into discussions of emancipatory pedagogy in the literacy classroom.

Haitian Studies

As a field, Haitian Studies has traditionally studied Haitian and Haitian American immigrant youth from the lens of racial and ethnic identity development, and educational

208 attainment, particularly as English language learners. The pitfall of these research paradigms over time is Haitian immigrant students being framed as racially and ethnically ambiguous, and operating from educational deficits as young people. The girls of this study have demonstrated that Haitian youth in the 21st century make multiple negotiations about intersectional identities that are complex and do not subscribe to the either/or binary of Haitian and Black. My work pushes Haitian Studies to examine the complicated processes of immigrant youth development that is made clearer with a critical sociocultural approach that attends to how students are engaging power, identity, and contributing to the transformation of their communities.

Researcher Reflections

In the beginning of this study, I used Denzin’s autoethnographic epiphany method to make sense of my teaching and learning experiences as both a young Black Haitian American girl, and a K-12 Reading and Language Arts teacher in the classrooms of Miami, Florida. As a young girl, my epiphany spoke to the damages of having a social studies teacher who was unaware of how my intersectional identities tied into to my learning experiences in her class. It clarified the role of laughter as an effective silencing tool for Black girls who dared to be. I finally “read” the messages of my 6th geography textbook, which loudly proclaimed that my heritage was singularly defined by Western capitalist conceptualization poverty and wealth. As a teacher, my epiphany signaled the trauma of feeling trapped by a curriculum in which I don’t believe. That curriculum had stifled my creativity as a teacher of color, punished the students I believed had everything to offer in my literacy classroom, and marked me as ineffective literacy educator.

With the conclusion of this study, I pause to reflect on the ways this teaching and

209 learning experience at the Haitian Empowerment Literacy Project also liberates me as a Haitian

American educator. A large part of my success as a literacy instructor, researcher, and Black

Haitian American woman in HELP’s context came from being able to see myself in the students and in the objectives of the curriculum. The institution gave me the trust and freedom to do right by students enrolled in the program. In many ways, this study was also an investigation of my re- engagement of my soul-ties to Miami as the place of my girlhood and fledgling teaching career.

The biggest takeaway from this scholar-educator experience was that my three years at

HELP offered me a space to heal from the trauma I experienced as a young Black girl in schools.

I also had space to forgive myself for my perceived complicity in a system that tore down at

Black and Brown students and made them feel as though they were not enough. I could fully embrace the totality of my identities at this institution. For that reason, I was better at guiding students on the stories and texts that linked to their lived experiences as Haitian youth. I was better at providing guidance on how to they could embrace their identities within the context of literacy, and in their own words. I was better at allowing the students to teach me about the ways in which the beloved Miami of my childhood had shifted and evolved into the place they now occupied and influenced as young people.

My analysis of the data I collected over time made these changes apparent to me.

Listening back to the old classroom discussions, there were so many instances of laughter. This time, however, laughter signaled moments of cleverness, wit, joy, ease, comfort. To hear myself laugh in those moments meant hearing the sounds of a Black woman educator fully immersed in the reciprocity of teaching and learning. I heard a Black woman educator completely at ease, untethered from having to dictate every moment of literacy instruction to a testing benchmark or data point. I heard a Black woman educator who enjoyed negotiating the teaching and learning

210 process with her students. I was no longer at odds with the curriculum; I was no longer handcuffed to teaching practices that did not enrich the literate lives of young Black immigrant kids in Miami.

In retrospect, the most significant realization has been the importance of visibility. One of the clearest out-of-school learning experiences was the first time I had ever read a novel with

Haitian characters. At thirteen years old I was voracious reader. My best friend and I would keep tally of our summer reading conquests, and reading was the only means by which to escape the boredom of being home all day. While at my best friend’s house, I saw a book casually perched on her bookshelf. The book was an aberration of the usual titles so I asked her whose book it was and if I could read it. She shrugged and told me it belonged to her older sister in high school but I could take it if I wanted to. I remember opening the book and reading the first couple pages then being completely floored when I came across phrases written in Haitian Creole. The language, which I associated with home life and a small community of Black people, was printed in a book. Up until that moment, I had never even thought that was even possible. For all the stories

I’d read, from Judy Blume to Jerry Spinelli, it never dawned on me that there could be a story written about my culture, my family, me. That book was Breathe, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge

Danticat’s first novel.

I share this memory for two reasons. First, I want to out my biased affinity towards

Danticat. For a long time, her work has been the canon of my Haitian American life. Second, I want to point to the significance of being visible in that moment. By all schooling standards, I was a well-read, high achieving student. But even with that literate identity, Black Haitian experiences were an anomaly, incongruent with narratives I was taught to value. My world literally shifted when I saw myself in those pages. Working at the HELP program brought me

211 back to this memory and deepened my commitment for children of color to see themselves in their literacy instruction. I have seen the power of visibility to shape the literacy practices of young Black students. As a scholar-educator of color, I will continue to advocate for the visibility of Black and Brown students in literacy classrooms.

212

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VITA Wideline Seraphin [email protected] 530-424-8483

EDUCATION

PhD Candidate, Curriculum and Instruction (Emphasis Area: Language, Culture and Society), The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Expected Graduation Date: May 5, 2019 Dissertation Title: In Her Own Words:(De)marginalizing Black Immigrant Girlhood in an Emancipatory Literacy Classroom

MA African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS) Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 2013

BA English, Secondary Teacher Certification Rollins College, Winter Park, FL 2009

PUBLICATIONS PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

Seraphin, W. (2017). Blackademic negotiations when the ivory tower isn't enough: Finding pathways to activism as an emerging black scholar. Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis, 6 (2), 65-102.

Seraphin, W. (2011). Tapping into cultural resources: A case for Haitian resiliency and viability outside of Haiti and into the American classroom. Black Diaspora Review, 2 (2), 27-35.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Désir, C., Hall, P., Auguste, S., Seraphin, W., & Gallagher, S. (2017). Discovering Haitian youth’s spiritual epistemology through a culturally based summer program. In H. Marcelin, T. Cela, & H. Dorvil (Eds.) Les jeunes Haïtiens dans les Amériques: Haitian youth in the Americas. Québec City, QC: Presses de l'Université du Québec.

Seraphin, W., Désir, C., Hall, P. (in press). “We are the Haitian think tank”: Cultivating critical perspectives in Haitian youth using Danticat’s, “krik? krak!”. In S. Banerjee, M.E. Hobson, D. Hoey, & C.L. Joseph (eds). Approaches to teaching the work of Edwidge Danticat.