Piecing (Me)aning Together: YA Literature, Participatory Digital Spaces and the Making of Black Youth Literary Publics
School of Information Studies | Dominican University
Dissertation Research in Progress

Origins of the Research
The origin of my interest in this topic stems from:

  • Over a decade as a K–12 librarian serving adolescent readers in independent schools.

  • Professional curiosity about how Black teens in those school environments engage with young adult literature.

  • Encountering a disconnect between the Black teens who were clearly readers but often reluctant to participate in readers’ advisory conversations or discuss their reading interests.

  • Observing Black teens engaging young adult literature using discursive and multimodal practices on social media.

  • Recognizing parallels between the Black teens in school environments and those of Jade, the protagonist of Renée Watson’s Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winning novel, Piecing Me Together. The novel provides a literary connection to my professional experiences, inspired my dissertation title, and offers a lens for understanding the experiences of Black teen readers in predominantly white independent schools.

Black Youth Literary Publics
Black Youth Literary Publics are participatory digital spaces in which Black youth engage young adult literature through discursive and multimodal practices that facilitate collective meaning-making, racial identity negotiation, and community-building.

This concept positions Black youth as readers and consumers of literary content who actively shape how literature is interpreted, how race and racial identities are explored, and how formal and informal communities form through shared literary engagement.

Research Questions
RQ1: How do Black youth collectively construct and express meaning through engagement with young adult (YA) literature via discursive and multimodal practices in participatory digital environments?

RQ2: How do these practices constitute processes of racial identity negotiation and community-building within racialized digital information environments?

Research References
A full of references is available here.