How Broken English Made Me Whole
How Broken English Made Me Whole by Jamila Lyiscott is a 2015 Personal Development book written by TED speaker Jamila Lyiscott, paired here with the talk they gave.
This critical ethnographic study investigated an afterschool Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) space that seeks to develop New Literacies and academic literacies in urban youth between the ages of 13-19. Utilizing a sociocultural lens, which asserts that literacy is a social practice (Gee, 1991), I examined the racial and literate identities of research participants who self-identify as Black and explored the potential of this participatory space to develop their literate identities and to broaden their critical meta-awareness. My findings suggest that prioritizing the Social Dimension of literacy is urgent for Black students in the classroom, that culturally sustaining literacies can have a powerful iterative relationship with academic literacies in the classroom, and that YPAR instruction must more intentionally attend to the role of literacy in youth qualitative inquiry.