From the Bronx to the World

Critical Literacies and Coalition-Building in a Black Girl’s Digital Activism

Bibliographic Data

ID24020172
AuthorsTashal Brown (0000-0002-2940-6835, University of Rhode Island, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume58
Issue2
Publication date2026-08-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Urban Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0042-0972 • E-ISSN: 1573-1960
PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/s11256-026-00839-y
OpenAlexW7196924947
LanguageEN
References cited29

This paper examines how Black girls enact critical and multiliteracies through digital activism. Focusing on Shauna, a Black high school student of Jamaican heritage living in New York City, the study explores how she uses social media to engage with sociopolitical issues and advocate for justice. Specifically, it investigates how Shauna draws on an intersectional analysis and a coalitional mindset to interpret contemporary issues affecting marginalized communities and shape her digital activism. The insights from this paper demonstrate that Shauna’s digital activism is deeply connected to her participation in a social justice educational space that centers dialogue among girls and women of color. Through these experiences, she developed critical language and analytical tools for examining power and oppression, which she later applied in digital spaces to engage agentic discourse and action. By centering Shauna’s experiences, this study contributes to scholarship on Black girls’ literacies and social justice education by illustrating how dialogic educational spaces can cultivate critical literacies that support youth activism, coalition-building, and civic engagement.

Critical discourse analysis · Critical pedagogy · Critical theory · Dialogic · Intersectionality · Mindset · Power (physics) · Power structure · Scholarship · Social justice · Critical Race Theory in Education · Literacy, Media, and Education · Multilingual Education and Policy

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access