We are each other’s breath: tracing interdependency through critical poetic inquiry

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we utilize poetic methods that seek to surface, but not overdetermine, the unanticipated relational excess produced through literacy practices. Karen, a queer white woman, and Jordan, a cis-gendered heterosexual Black man, wrote a series of letters to one another throughout the Spring 2020 semester. We turned to critical poetic inquiry to analyze the letters, interested in poetry’s capacity to highlight literacy’s critical power and its emergent potential. We found ourselves implicated in each other’s lives in new ways; we found our relationship both strengthened and tested. Such relational indeterminacy creates methodological challenges in literacy research. We found critical poetic inquiry to be a uniquely useful method for expressing the ambiguity and incommensurability of literacy as ‘affective encounters’ (Lenters, 2016), particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as our interdependency and mutual obligation is highlighted.

KEYWORDS:

• Literacy
• racial literacy
• methods
• poetic inquiry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Zaino

Karen Zaino is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and a lecturer in English Education at Queens College, CUNY.

Jordan Bell

Jordan Bell is an instructor of English and Philosophy with research interests in Racial Literacy, BlackCrit, Black Educational Spaces, Critical Race Theory, and Epistolary Spaces.