Black Immigrant Literacies

Learn how to center, affirm, and develop Black immigrant literacies in ways that allow all youth to engage with and honor their literacies. This book presents a framework to revolutionize teaching in ways that draw on students’ assets for redesigning, rethinking, and reimagining literacy and the English language arts curriculum. This novel framework has five mechanisms through which Black immigrant literacies and languaging can be better understood: the struggle for justice, the myth of the model minority, transraciolinguistics, the local-global, and holistic literacies. Presenting authentic narratives of Afro-Caribbean youth, the author describes how teachers and educators can: (1) teach the Black literate immigrant; (2) use literacy and English language arts curriculum as a vehicle for instructing Black immigrant youth; (3) foster relations among Black immigrants and their peers through literacy; and (4) connect parents, schools, and communities. The text includes lesson plans, instructional modules, and templates that range in their focus from K–12 to college.

Book Features:

• Details how teachers, curriculum, and instruction can benefit from understanding the experiences of Black immigrant students, and how that experience differs from other Black American students.
• Highlights authentic narratives that center the holistic voices of Afro-Caribbean immigrant youth from Jamaica and the Bahamas.
• Demonstrates how students grapple with racialization, becoming immigrants, and the responses of others to their use of Englishes in the United States.
• Offers research-based methods for teaching all students to draw on their metalinguistic, metacultural, and metaracial understandings in literacy and ELA classrooms.
• Presents concrete strategies for supporting Black immigrant populations in establishing and sustaining a sense of community across linguistic, cultural, and racial contexts.

Patriann Smith is an associate professor in literacy studies at the University of South Florida and coauthor of Affirming Black Students’ Lives and Literacies: Bearing Witness.

“Smith proffers a nuanced and rigorously researched Black Immigrant Literacies framework to provide an avenue to centralize race in the teaching of Black immigrant youth, and to give them an opportunity to thrive….She speaks to every audience that has a role in the education of Black youth—teachers, parents, peers, community members, administrators, policymakers….This book invites you into the conversation with honesty, grace, and love.”
—From the Foreword by Shondel Nero, professor of language education, New York University

“In Black Immigrant Literacies, Dr. Patriann Smith masterfully reveals the unique and rich Black Englishes and literacies of Black Caribbean-originated youth. She addresses with courage various ethnoracially tinged tensions and myths pertaining to distinctive Black demographic groups in the United States, and ultimately offers educators and scholars a framework for working alongside all minoritized youth of color toward solidarity and racial justice.”
—Allison Skerrett, professor, The University of Texas at Austin

“Black Immigrant Literacies is one of the best books I have read on marginalized populations in the United States and the rapidly increasing population of immigrants. I can see myself going back to this book again and again, learning more each time I read it. You cannot leave this book without new insights about the nature of the colonial entanglements of race, language, and identity. It is well worth reading!”
—Patricia A. Edwards, professor, Michigan State University

“Patriann Smith’s Black Immigrant Literacies is an important new text that describes the theory, use, and implications of a novel instructional approach. This approach foregrounds the unique literacies of Black immigrant youth, and situates them as ‘raciosemiotic architects’ of a world that will embrace their aspirations in new ways. This is a must-read for educators who long for schooling that centers the assets of those who will help us realize a more just future.”
—Kathleen A. Hinchman, emeritus professor, Syracuse University

“For years teachers, educators, and policymakers have been perplexed by how to value and effectively leverage Black immigrant languages, literacies, and epistemologies in their classrooms. By drawing on authentic narratives of the language uses of Afro-Caribbean immigrant youth, this book provides research-based methods for educators, especially those working in monolingual-, monocultural-, and monoracial-dominant settings. The Black immigrant literacies framework will help teacher educators transcend barriers and model relations of solidarity among schools, parents, and nondominant communities. Black Immigrant Literacies, quite simply, is a guide for the linguistically, culturally, and racially perplexed.”
—Aria Razfar, professor of education and linguistics, University of Illinois Chicago

Contents (FINAL)

Foreword Shondel Nero  vii

Acknowledgments and Dedication  ix

1.  Introduction  1
The Framework for Black Immigrant Literacies  2
Authentic Narratives  4
A Call to Teachers, Educators, Schools, and Policymakers  6
Envisioning Imaginary Futures With Black Immigrant Literacies  8
Overview of the Chapters  9

2.  Reenvisioning the Literacies of Black Immigrant Youth  10
A Brief History and Demographics of Black Immigrants in the United States  10
Intersections Surrounding Black Immigrant Youth as a “New Model Minority”  11
Languaging and Englishes of Black Immigrants: A Selective Review  15
Peer Interactions in the Black Immigrant Experience  22
Reenvisioning the Literacies of Black Immigrant Youth  23
Summary  26
Questions to Consider  26

3.  The Framework for Black Immigrant Literacies  27
Elements of the Black Immigrant Literacies Framework  27
Intersectional Lenses Undergirding Black Immigrant Literacies  32
Applying the Black Immigrant Literacies Framework  39
Questions to Consider  39

4.  Teaching Chloe, a Black Jamaican Literate Immigrant: Entanglements of Englishes, Race, and Migration  40
Chloe’s Authentic Narrative: Entanglements of Englishes, Race, and Migration: “You’ll Never Hear Her Speak, Like Broken”  41
Insights From Chloe’s Authentic Narrative  47
Questions to Consider  65

5.  Teaching Ervin, a Black Bahamian Literate Immigrant: Fostering Peer Interactions  67
Ervin’s Authentic Narrative: Rac(e)ing Englishes as a Multilingual Migrant: “Talking Like I’m Ghetto”  68
Insights From Ervin’s Authentic Narrative  75
“Black Enough” as a Way to Belong  75
Questions to Consider  102

6.  Bridging Invisible Barriers With Black Immigrant Literacies: Building Solidarity Among Schools, Parents, and Communities  103
Parents  104
Schools and Teachers  118
Community  119
Summary  119

Afterword  133

Appendix  136

References  140

Index  155

About the Author  164

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