Many Black young adult novels have civic literacy themes and messages, including Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give and Dear Martin by Nic Stone.
Dear Martin
Brandy Colbert
Brandy Colbert is an award-winning, African-American female author of young adult (YA) fiction books for middle grade students.
Baszile lives in Los Angeles, California.
Author’s Website: https://www.brandycolbert.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandycolbert
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandycolbert/
Brandy Colbert’s Books
“The Only Black Girls in Town” by Brandy Colbert
Black young adult novel for middle school readers
What is Critical Literacy Education?
Baker-Bell, et al. (2017) and Lewison & Van Sluys (2002) provide good overviews of the major components of critical literacy education. Social justice goals fueled critical literacy education because critical literacy education’s goals were to disrupt power relationships in language and literacy (Baker-Bell, et al., 2017; Morrell, 2005) across “four interrelated dimensions: (a) disrupting the commonplace, (b) interrogating multiple viewpoints, (c) focusing on sociopolitical issues, and (d) taking action and promoting social justice (382)” (Lewison & Van Sluys, 2002, qtd. In Rodesiler and Premont, 2018, p. 82).
Critical literacy education (Janks, et al., 2014; Lewison, et al., 2002, & Morrell, 2005) is rooted in a sociocultural perspective of literacy learning (Heath, Gee, Streeter), New Literacies studies, critical theory (Freire), and critical race theory (Derrick Bell).
Researchers use critical race theory as a framework to examine the intersection of race with society as a whole, as well as individuals and institutions (Allen, 2015).
Foundational, Morrell’s (2005) notion of Critical English Education was “explicit about the role of language and literacy in conveying meaning and in promoting or disrupting existing power relations”.