Writing for their lives: The non-school literacy of California's urban African American youth

Journal of Negro Education, The, Spring 1996 by Jabari Mahiri, Soraya Sablo

"Jus' Living" depicts the intense peer pressure Robert faces as he grapples with the decision to join or not join a gang. On one hand, it shows how grinding and gang-banging in poor communities are viewed not only as quick ways to make cash but also as a respected route to manhood. When Robert begins to have second thoughts about this type of lifestyle, his friends press him ("I thought you was a real old school gangsta"), and Robert opts to join and to live with the consequences. The play continues, noting that to be initiated into the gang, Robert must participate in the drive-by shooting of Dino, a rival gang member. In retaliation for Dino's murder, the rival gang comes to Robert's neighborhood with the intent of killing him. However, in an effort to protect her son, Robert's mother gets caught in the cross-fire and is killed.

As in her poems and songs, "Jus' Living" reveals Keisha's adeptness in the use of sophisticated rhetorical devices. For example, she uses foreshadowing to provide subtle clues to the drama's tragic ending. For example, at one point Ms. G says to Robert: "You and Rocheed always act like ya' handicapped and always looking for me to do everything. Well one day I ain't gon' be here, then who you gon' be danging and telling it ain't no milk?" Later, when Robert informs his friends of his decision to start gang-banging, his brother's girlfriend, Shyra, responds with "Why you gon' do yo' momma like this?" Although she is suggesting that Robert's gang association will bring disgrace to his mother, Shyra's comment prefigures Ms. G's death.

"Jus Living" is a remarkable dramatic piece. The real drama, as we later learned from interviews with Keisha, was the extent to which this plays scenes were collateral to scenes from Keisha's life. As she later informed us, her own older brother was very much like the character Robert in her play, and Robert's mother was based on her mother.

TROY

Troy, a 17-year-old African American male in the 11th grade, had been composing and performing rap verses and songs since sixth grade. He told us that he aspired to become a professional rapper some day. When we met him, he was performing his raps individually and as a member of a group called Realism. When asked approximately how many raps he had written, he replied: "Too many to count." Troy shared some of his compositions with us orally and, when we requested it, he also brought in transcribed lyrics for a few of his favorites.

Like many rappers, Troy stored a lot of his songs in his head, but he was able to recall and recite an amazing number of raps-his own and others by professional rappers-on demand. Although he engaged in a mix of oral and written literacy practices, Troy considered himself a writer. He signed all his work "writer/lyricist, TROY." As a result, to more fully understand and position Troy's compositions within the framework of this study, we as researchers had to revisit our notions of what constitutes writing. The fact that the texts stored in Troy's mind could easily and consistently be transformed into oral and/or written texts led us to define their creation and performance as literacy events. Just as a writer can compose and store a text in a computer and afterwards select among several options and formats to print or reproduce it in another material form, we concluded that Troy composed and stored his texts in the microprocessors of his mind and selected among several options-oral, audiotape, or written text-for their material reproduction. In the process of producing meaning in these texts, Troy's raps evidenced a number of literacy skills and literate behaviors that reveal how literacy is actually construed and used in the context of urban African American youths' everyday lives.