Patriann Smith, Ph.D.

On Tuesday, February 13, 2024 Teachers College Press hosted the webinar “Black Immigrant Literacies: A Prism of Promise,” a conversation featuring esteemed scholars, Drs. Allison Skerrett, Aria Razfar, Shondel Nero, and Vaughn V. M. Watson, and moderated by two exceptional minds, Drs. Eurydice Bauer and Gwendolyn McMillon. A video of the webinar is now available below.

About the Book

“Black Immigrant Literacies” (Teachers College Press, 2023), the new book by Patriann Smith, presents a framework to revolutionize teaching in ways that draw on students’ assets for redesigning, rethinking, and reimagining literacy and ELA curriculum. Through authentic narratives of Afro-Caribbean youth, she describes how teachers and educators can: (1) teach the Black literate immigrant; (2) use literacy and English language arts curriculum as a vehicle for instructing Black immigrant youth; (3) foster relations among Black immigrants and their peers through literacy; and (4) connect parents, schools, and communities.

In the video of the webinar below, you are invited to learn more about how to center, affirm, and develop Black immigrant literacies in ways that allow all youth to engage with and honor their legacies.

About the Webinar

This webinar, based on the new book “Black Immigrant Literacies: Intersections of Race, Language and Culture in the Classroom” authored by Dr. Patriann Smith and published by Teachers College Press, extends, in part, long-standing conversations regarding the instantiation and re-instantiation of the overt role of small island states of the Caribbean in what are often considered to be, large nation US affairs. 

As Dr. Smith observes, the Caribbean peoples have often played a major role in what is often thought to be the liberation of individuals in the US, and vice versa, but this reciprocity is often overlooked, downplayed, or often, made obscure. As she reflects on her writing of the book, she asks the question, “why?”

Inspired by first female Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, who has recently cut ties to the British Monarchy in the small island state of Barbados where “the business model of using slaves on [Caribbean] tropical farms” referred to as “plantations” was created (Higgins & Henry, 2023), Dr. Smith’s echo of the call for a mining of the Caribbean as an “untapped civilization” functions as the basis for this webinar.

The webinar seeks to show how the book “Black Immigrant Literacies: Intersections of Race, Language and Culture in the Classroom” helps to resurrect the overtly dormant yet long-standing and covert representation of Caribbean literate knowledges across the American landscape, a key element in instantiating liberation through the persistent painting of imaginary presents and futures. As Dr. Smith notes, according to Mia Amor Mottley:

“Our people humanised the violent, inhumane slave plantation society that the British colonialists had established… [But] we are still faced with the insidious nature of a culture that is intended to dehumanise black people wherever blackor blackness is found, and our parliaments therefore, while we shall be in the vanguard of removing all laws of discrimination, it is the mental emancipation that shall forever always matter.” (Michael Safi, December 3, 2021) 

A Prism of Promise for Reinstantiating the Shared Vision of Black American and Caribbean Liberation

In the words of Mia Amor Mottley, as aligned with Dr. Smith’s vision, we see the promise of Black Immigrant Literacies, designed at its core to demonstrate the ways in which overt racialization of language in the US resurrects what has long been a covert racialization of languaging in the Caribbean.

To unmask this reality while also #silencinginvisibility of Black immigrants, and of Black peoples more broadly, is to make vividly clear, the capacity of Black Immigrant Literacies for demonstrating the potential of lost Caribbean imaginaries in the shared promise of Black American and Caribbean liberation, and in the liberation of Africans at large. In doing so, this book presents Black Immigrant Literacies as a prism of promise – a reminder of the possibilities that continue to await a commitment to solidarity across the Black diaspora.

Thanks to all who’ve purchased the book, shared its insights, and joined the conversation. For those who haven’t, be sure to grab your copy of the book here.