Challenging epistemic exclusion: Creating a space for understanding Caribbean family literacy practices

Hardacre, Charlotte ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3155-4132 and Kinkead-Clark, Zoyah (2025) Challenging epistemic exclusion: Creating a space for understanding Caribbean family literacy practices. In: Family and intergenerational literacy and learning: international perspectives. UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 275-291. ISBN 978-92-820-1259-8

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Abstract

The Caribbean’s unique cultural identity is shaped by a complex interplay of historical, linguistic and geographical factors. One of the most notable features of the region is its diverse language landscape, which is the result of centuries of colonialism, slavery and migration (Bryan, 2004; Nero and Stevens, 2018; Siegel, 2010). The use of Indigenous and Creole languages, such as Jamaican patois, within families helps to preserve linguistic diversity and cultural heritage and plays an important role in defining cultural identity (Smalls, 2018; Williams, 2020). However, there have been frequent attempts to understand these distinct Caribbean practices through a Eurocentric lens, which has led to dismissal of local knowledge, epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) and the creation of a narrative that is not representative of the region’s reality (Smith-Christmas, 2018; Hardacre and Kinkead-Clark, 2019)