ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989, 2016) construct, known as intersectionality, and Vivian May’s (2015) interpretation of the commitments of this construct, to delineate how attention to the intersection of varied aspects of marginalized youth’s identity with gender can help us to understand the oppressions they face from school and community literacy practices. The chapter describes the origins and commitments of the analytic framework known as intersectionality. The chapter summarizes four recent studies of adolescent literacy to illustrate the lessons that can be learned when intersectional analyses are true to Crenshaw’s original commitments. The chapter also discusses how analyses that are true to the intersectionality’s original commitments are not just “good teaching” per se, but, instead offer a window into how the social world, including its literacy practices, are experienced by marginalized youth. Making these insights explicit for those who work with youth and for the youth themselves can help to illuminate a path forward to disrupting at least some aspects of inequity that are embedded in current adolescent literacy practices.
