Drawing on the lived experiences of high school-aged young Black immigrants, this book paints imaginaries of racialized translanguaging and transsemiotizing, leveraged transnationally by teenagers across the Caribbean and the United States. The Black Caribbean youth reflect a full range of literacy practices – six distinct holistic literacies – identified as a basis for flourishing. These literacies of migration encapsulate numerous examples of how the youth are racialized transgeographically, based on their translanguaging and transsemiotizing with Englishes, both institutionally and individually. In turn, the book advances a heuristic of semiolingual innocence containing eight elements, informed by the Black immigrant literacies of Caribbean youth. Through the eight elements presented – flourishing, purpose, comfort, expansion, paradox, originality, interdependence, and imagination – stakeholders and systems will be positioned to better understand and address the urgent needs of these youth. Ultimately, the heuristic supports a reinscribing of semiolingual innocence for Black Caribbean immigrant and transnational youth, as well as for all youth.

‘A métissage between biography and autobiography, poetry and strong poetry, languaging and translanguiging, this book is a bottom-up testimony explicating how a group of Black Caribbean immigrant youth situates themselves in a time and space while questioning the adequacy of that location. It is where language learning is no longer an abstract exercise but a question(ing) of desire and identity mapping and as such, it moves beyond grammar and syntax to semiotics and raciosemiotics.’

Awad Ibrahim - Vice-Provost, Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, University of Ottawa, and the author of Black Immigrants in North America

‘This book provides a trenchant analysis of the xenophobic devaluation of literacy and language practices of Black Caribbean youth living in the U.S. and offers a dazzling transraciolinguistic framework for analyzing the possibilities of resistance and opportunities for educators to support the flourishing of immigrant students.’

Lesley Bartlett - Professor and Chair, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of Humanizing Education for Immigrant and Refugee Youth

‘This book is a poignant exploration of the diverse learning experiences of six Black Caribbean immigrant youth. Smith reveals how these youth reclaim their language and identity despite challenges from institutions, and highlights how recognizing and honoring the linguistic experiences of young people can promote pedagogical creativity and equity in education for all students.’

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz - Professor of English Education, Teachers College, Columbia University and Co-Author, Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education

‘This book brings together Dr. Patriann Smith’s extensive research with Black Caribbean immigrant youth, as well Black immigrants and educators across contexts, to reframe our understanding of translanguaging, raciolinguistics, and semiotics through the border-crossing literacies and imagination of young people. Its extensive synthesis of current theory and research on race, language, and migration, and deeply nuanced portraits of Black Caribbean youths’ ‘holistic literacies,’ offer an invaluable resource for educators, policy makers, and researchers interested in charting an expansive, liberatory, and world making vision of education.’

Wan Shun Eva Lam - Associate Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University