Critical Literacy in the United States of America

Abstract

Critical Literacy in the United States has been shaped by ongoing legacies of slavery, colonial power, and genocide as well as by the social movements that have sought redress and liberation. Critical literacy researchers and educators contest normalized Eurocentric literacy and sociocultural practices that define the U.S. educational system and its structures. This scholarship has included the analysis of cultural forms and the disruption of normative texts from the perspectives of critical sociolinguistics and critical sociocultural theories. However, as this chapter argues, what is typically viewed as critical literacy research in the United States is a historically and predominantly white field that has disregarded critical traditions among Black and Indigenous people of color. This chapter addresses that neglect, includes recent work that draws on Black and decolonial critical thought, and argues for more attention to these traditions as well as global visions of critical literacy and grassroots, youth-driven forms of criticality.