Diggin’ in the Racial Literacy Crates

In this article, we introduce co-excavative letter writing as a method for developing racial literacy, deepening relationships, and challenging standard forms of knowledge production. Jordan and Karen, students in Yolanda’s cotaught graduate seminar, developed an epistolary exchange as part of their “(un)final project.” Collaborative epistles challenged the writers to explore their positionalities, allowing them to trace interrelated issues of power and identity in their past and present experiences. The co-excavative letter-writing process makes explicit the individual voices that combine to create coauthored academic articles, highlighting the process of collaboration in a way that traditional academic production obscures.