Reading and (re)writing democracy: Asian American girls claim civic space through literary inquiry

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to trace how Asian American girls engaged with civic learning in a virtual out-of-school literacy community featuring a curriculum of diverse literary texts. Design/methodology/approach The researcher used practitioner inquiry to construct a virtual literacy education community dedicated to the civic learning of Asian American girls. Findings The paper explores how participants mobilized critical practices of textual consumption and production rooted in their intersectional identities and embodied experiences to make meaning of the civic constraints and affordances of marginalized identities and to read and (re)design author choices for civic purposes. These findings – examples of youths’ critical civic meaning-making – indicate how they claimed space for Asian American civic girlhoods in literacy education. Originality/value This paper foregrounds how Asian American girls mobilize critical processes of text consumption and production to assert civic identities in literacy education – a significantly under-examined topic in literacy studies. This work has implications for how literacy practitioners and scholars can prioritize Asian American civic girlhoods through pedagogy and research.