A Poetic Analysis of Youth's Critical Literacies as a Way of Being in and Beyond School

ABSTRACT This article explores the critical literacies of Black and Latinx high school students who participated in a youth participatory action research project focused on racial injustice in education. The author utilizes poetic analysis of data collected in research about youth's work to viscerally render youth's everyday ways of employing critical literacies to care for their community, understand injustice, and experience happiness. This analysis uses asset orientations to literacy to make the case that youth's critical literacies are connected to long traditions of resistance employed by people of color to navigate racist realities, existing before and beyond critical literacy instruction in schools.