“I would love for teachers to teach in a way that relates to my culture”: African immigrant youth composing digital collages

Abstract

We share digital collages composed by youth in Lit Diaspora, a community-based after-school literacy initiative involving Black African immigrant youth and adult collaborators, as one contemporary example of rendering visible the contours of the educational lives of African immigrant youth, among the fastest growing immigrant communities in the U.S. We do so amid anti-Black, anti-immigrant discourse and policy in schools, workplaces, and society in the U.S. and globally. Thus, in framing our inquiry, we examine how educators and researchers, attending to the varied diaspora digital literacies and educational experiences of African immigrant youth: talk back to deficit narratives of their lived schooling experiences; navigate literacy learning across contexts of families and elders; demonstrate social and civic literacies that extend youth's identities; and affirm cultural and embodied knowledge, language, and practices.