From Storytelling to Writing: Transforming Literacy Practices Among Sudanese Refugees. Paper presented at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics/International Association of Applied Linguistics

This paper presents an analysis of the ways in which a community of orphaned Southern Sudanese refugee youth—the “Lost Boys of Sudan”—transformed traditional practices of storytelling as they adjusted to life in the U.S. The result of their experiences as orphaned refugees, this transformation reflects larger issues related to literacy, identity and community for these youth. Theoretical perspectives regarding literacy and narrative as social practice, reflecting participants ’ social, cultural, and political contexts, framed this research; these practices can reveal a great deal about issues pertaining to identity and community. Three orphaned young men were focal participants in this research, all refugees from Southern Sudan. Ethnographic methods including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and artifact collection contributed to data collection. Data analysis consisted of coding fieldnotes and interview transcripts for categories such as text type, language, and literacy practice domains; transcripts also were coded for emerging themes using discourse analytical methods. Results indicated that participants engaged with storytelling in three ways, through (1) explicit talk about storytelling, (2) enacted storytelling, and (3) transformed storytelling. Participants transformed the act of storytelling by altering the purposes, audiences, and media for storytelling that they had encountered or told before. Transformed storytelling revealed the importance of both becoming educated in the U.S. and also of maintaining a sense of Sudanese identity and community among these refugee youth; these issues also reflected an important tension between orphan identity and maintaining a sense of Sudanese community. Implications for literacy education are discussed