Transnational Funds of Knowledge as Counternarratives: Chinese Students Respond to Multicultural Children’s Literature

Background: As of 2022, the United States had become a primary destination for nearly one-fifth of the world’s international migrants. Approximately 26% of U.S. children and youth under age 18, totaling 17.6 million, were identified as having an immigrant parent, a rapid increase from the 13% identified in 1990, and it is projected to be 33% in 2050. This demographic shift in the number of Asian (im)migrants and other (im)migrant populations has significantly reshaped the educational landscape. Children and youth from (im)migrant households often lead transnational lives, navigating translinguistic, transcultural, transborder, and trans-sociopolitical terrains across home, school, community, and digital contexts. These transnational experiences afford (im)migrant students rich funds of knowledge that critically inform students’ literacy practices, as well as broader educational trajectories in the United States. Yet, amid escalating anti-Asian and anti-immigrant rhetoric within an overtly imperialist and nationalist climate, the transnational funds of knowledge (im)migrant students bring are undervalued or rendered invisible within U.S. classrooms. Purpose/Objective/Research Question: Drawing on transnational funds of knowledge (TFoK), counternarratives, and past scholarship on students’ responses to children’s literature, this qualitative case study explores the transnational meaning-making—particularly counternarratives—of four transnational youth of Chinese descent upon reading and responding to texts focused on (im)migrant experiences in a community-based book club. This study will contribute to a growing body of work highlighting that TFoK afford (im)migrant children and youth multilingual, multicultural, and critical awareness of their literacy practices and the U.S. classroom, and advocates for educators to recognize and make use of students’ TFoK as they plan and implement instruction. This study is guided by the following research question: How do elementary-aged transnational Chinese students mobilize TFoK as counternarratives while reading and discussing picture books depicting diverse (im)migrant experiences? Research Design: The study was grounded in practitioner inquiry. Student participants were positioned as co-constructors of knowledge, co-learners, and co-researchers within a collaboratively established, community-based book club. The participation of four transnational Chinese students was documented through multiple data sources, including field notes, research memos, and audio and video recordings of interviews and book club meetings. Students’ written response journaling and visual responses (photographs) were also collected. Data were uploaded to NVivo to identify codes. Conclusions: Three themes were identified to reflect how elementary-age transnational Chinese students mobilized TFoK as counternarratives while reading and discussing picture books depicting diverse (im)migrant experiences: (1) students reclaimed multilingual identities by sharing their monolingual experiences at school and translinguistic experiences at home, serving as counternarratives to challenge English language hegemony; (2) students advocated for the affirmation, validation, and meaningful incorporation of their heritage language and culture in curricula and instruction, counteracting the cultural erasure in the formal schooling; and (3) students affirmed cultural and familial differences as a valuable resource instead of a deficit. Findings show that transnational Chinese students negotiated knowledge and experiences across linguistic, cultural, and national borders to challenge deficit perspectives embedded in texts and broader societal discourses.