Performing literacy: A narrative inquiry into performance pedagogy in a marginalized community

Eight participants and the researcher as a co-participant share their experiences of pursuing literacy in school and in an out of school performance space. In a purposeful interrogation of the narratives that constrain and bind the lived reality of North American Africans in West Oakland California one of the most impoverished urban areas in North America the inquiry offers a historical overview of factors that impinge on the likelihood of standard literacy acquisition being a priority in marginalized communities. This research investigates the role of language and rhetoric, along with concepts of hexis and habitus, in an effort to offer an explanation for the disengagement of students of color in traditional class spaces. This work offers a different interpretation of the data offered by Ogbu and McWhroter in regards to educational achievement or the lack thereof in the North American African population. It also considers the disparity in the treatment of North American African children and their white counterparts in the public sphere. This Narrative Inquiry looks at performance pedagogy as a method of encouraging and facilitating the acquisition of whole literacy. The inquiry critically engages narratives of inability and claims of anti-intellectualism and offers a counter-narrative of creativity and an insider's view of a community space that has as its intention the embodiment of the agentive self in the service of crafting self-directed futures in marginalizes spaces. This work intends to make visible here-to-fore invisible narratives and to illuminate a suppressed story of thriving and resistance. This inquiry is informed by Gardner's theories of cultural literacy, and the extensive work of Glynda Hull with members of West Oakland community where this inquiry is geographically situated.