ABSTRACT
Digital storytelling (DST) is a popular form of digitized writing for promoting voice and civic engagement. Research on DST celebrates its possibilities for promoting the voices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Examining BIPOC’s youths’ storytelling practices while accounting for the role matter plays in informing the storying process might enable understanding of how to trouble race-based embodied oppression. This case study of a Black male adolescent examined how intra-actions disrupted oppressive discourses about Black masculinity and poverty and sustained racism as it remains an enduring unified force embedded in policies and practices by including critically oriented New Materialist approaches that account for material and discourse. Findings complicated liberatory narratives centered in youth’s agency to transform conditions and illustrated how a Black male adolescent deconstructed and contended with racial capitalism and how racism controls, organizes, categorizes, and exploits bodies for monetary gain, control, and power.
