In this introductory chapter, an invitation is provided to begin a journey into the intricacies of Black Caribbean immigrant literacies through the use of Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as exceptional Black imaginaries already inscribed in the world. Through the adept depiction of racialization and transracialization steeped in the Black experience in the US as juxtaposed against the notion of Black immigrants as a ‘model minority,’ the necessity for examining race in relation to the languaging and semiotizing of Black Caribbean immigrants is outlined. Presenting a brief overview of the emerging global project focused on racialized language, this chapter lays the groundwork for the painting of a compelling portrait of the holistic literacies of Black Caribbean immigrant youth. By signaling the attention to an ultimate positioning of flourishing as a necessary imperative for and alternative to rethinking literacies based on ‘success,’ the chapter concludes with a focus on solidarity between Black Caribbean and other populations as a key impetus for this work.

In this chapter, I acknowledge the intertwined histories of Afro-Caribbean languaging, Englishes, and literacies across the Black diaspora. In doing so, I draw from the notion of ‘transcendent literacy’ to attend to the long legacy of languaging emerging out of the Black race and reaching across the Black diaspora while also lamenting the invented illiteracy often imposed in characterizations of Black peoples worldwide. Acknowledging the traditional lineage of ‘Diaspora Literacy’ in making visible interconnections across Black peoples within and beyond the US, I then present Caribbean Englishes across the Black diaspora, describing the languaging, Englishes, and literacies of English-speaking Afro-Caribbean students in the Caribbean and in the US. Based on this discussion, I call for a silencing of the historical tradition of invented illiteracy used to characterize Black peoples across the diaspora and invite a strengthening of accessible knowledges surrounding the rich literate and linguistic heritages they inherently possess. Through this discussion, it is possible to understand the broader transnational contexts influencing racialized translanguaging and transsemiotizing in Black immigrant literacies and thus, the inherently induced economic bases for racialization of language.

In this chapter, I begin by complicating how Black immigrants’ perception as a ‘model minority’ in the US creates a challenge for equitably engaging with their literacies and languaging as a function of schooling. Joining the conversation on immigrant and transnational literacies, I present foundational language and literacy research in the US that has functioned as a backdrop against which Black Caribbean immigrants’ literacies and languaging are considered. To situate Afro-Caribbean languaging, Englishes, and literacies within its broader contexts, I then discuss education, migration, and cultures across the Black diaspora addressing the historical and contemporary educational landscape of Black people in the Caribbean. I further accomplish this situational placement of Afro-Caribbean languaging, Englishes, and literacies through a discussion of the historical and contemporary socio-educational landscape of Black immigrants in the US. Through this broadly painted portrait operating at the interstices of the educational, racial, historical, social, linguistic, and religious domains in the lives of Black Caribbean peoples and specifically youth, this chapter serves as a nuanced and contextual backdrop against which to understand the analyses of Black Caribbean immigrant youth’s language and literacies presented in this book.

In this chapter, I present findings from interpretive analyses of the data as they relate to the multiliteracies and translanguaging practices engaged in by six Black Caribbean immigrant English-speaking youth across their Bahamian and Jamaican Caribbean home countries and the US. Specifically, I contextualize these findings within (decolonizing) interpretive analyses that clarify the raciolinguistic and raciosemiotic ideologies informing students’ multiliteracies and translanguaging practices. This chapter shows how the literacies of Black immigrant youth are enacted holistically by adeptly illustrating the languaging associated with these literacies and the ideologies influencing these literacies. Based on these findings, I propose and discuss the framework of semiolingual innocence for understanding how elements of multiliteracies and translanguaging practices as well as the raciolinguistic and raciosemiotic ideologies intersected to clarify the literacies leveraged by Black Caribbean immigrant youth. In turn, through semiolingual innocence emerging from transracialization of the Black immigrant as an analytical prism, I invite a reinscribing of the innocence of Black youth, whose ancestors have for centuries leveraged semiolingually, sans white gaze, their multiliteracies and semiotics for agentively reading and writing themselves into the world. Moreover, I argue for a semiolingual innocence of all youth, made possible through the cultivation of translanguaging and transsemiotizing imaginary presents and futures.

This chapter provides the reader with a depiction of the methodology involved in conducting the study of Black immigrant youth’s literacies presented in the book. I begin with an overview of who I am, how I am situated in the study, and what I bring to this book as a person and as a Black-immigrant-scholar-single-parent-mother-educator. A discussion of the (decolonizing) interpretive research design is then presented and justified. The context of the study is described, followed by a detailed description of participants and informants (i.e., secondary participants) involved in the study. The protocols for collecting data are discussed. This is followed by the procedures for collecting data from participants. The analytical discussion follows, accompanied by an example of the analytical process used to organize and narrate the data. Credibility, verisimilitude, and transferability are then addressed.

In this chapter, I present a conceptual framework for understanding the perspectives used as lenses to examine the construct of Black immigrant literacies in this book. The chapter begins with a historicizing of multiliteracies and translanguaging followed by a description of the way in which literacy has emerged as a sociocultural and multimodal practice. Raciolinguistics, a raciolinguistic perspective, transracialization, as well as language and raciosemiotic architecture are then presented in tandem, highlighting how linguistic and broader semiotic affordances work based on ideologies steeped in racialized language and semiotics. In turn, raciolinguistic and raciosemiotic ideologies influencing multiliteracies of Black immigrant youth are discussed as well as mechanisms such as a transraciolinguistic approach which function as an avenue for understanding how Black immigrants leverage literacies in relation to peers. Following this, translanguaging based on an integrated model of multilingualism is presented along with a description of the ways in which Black immigrants’ language practices have been examined and intersect to undergird the current study regarding the literacies of Black immigrant youth. In doing so, connections across these concepts as well as the potential influence of race-based ideologies for clarifying Black immigrants’ multiliteracies are illuminated through attention to translanguaging and transsemiotizing with Englishes.