Exploring Literacy Performances and Power Dynamics at The Loft: Queer Youth Reading the Wbrld and the Word

Abstract

This study draws on queer theory, critical feminism, Critical Race Theory, and New Literacy Studies to explore the ways in which queer youth read and wrote words and worlds in ways that both challenged and reinforced power dynamics in and beyond a youth-run center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. I conceive qfliteracy performances as a series of performances in which both worlds and words are read and written. Each performance is both similar to and different from others and both confirms and disrupts the others. I examine the literacy performances of youth who were a part of the Speakers* Bureau, a smaller group within the center who were educated as activists against heterosexism and homophobia. Through their efforts to interrogate and disrupt inequitable power dynamics outside the center, participants at times replicated such dynamics within it. By considering literacy broadly I was able to see the significant work these youth did to advocate for social change, and by recognizing literacy as series of performances I was able to see that in working for social change outside the center they both challenged and replicated inequitable power dynamics within the center. Possibilities for social change are thus situated in the perpetual interrogation of the relationships between literacy performances and power dynamics.

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