Exploring the Literate Trajectories of Youth Across Time and Space

Author: Maisha T. Winn

Here, I offer a retrospective research narrative of four of my works, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (published under Maisha T. Fisher, 2007b); Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (published under Maisha T. Fisher, 2009); Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom (with Latrise P. Johnson; Winn & Johnson, 2011); and Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Winn, 2011). I revisit these texts in order to contribute to a larger discussion of how activity systems and youth participation in these activity systems provide support for youth to build and sustain literate identities in both schools and in out-of-school contexts.