“Heroes Like Me”—Envisioning Possibilities for Enacting Culturally Inclusive Digital Multimodal Literacies

Abstract In fostering asset‐based literacy and language teaching in classroom and digital spaces, this study draws on OmoBerry, an educational YouTube channel, to demonstrate how educators can enact culturally inclusive digital multimodal language and literacy instructions with African immigrant youth. This inquiry illustrates how such a lens offers possibilities for integrating African systems of knowing and being with digital multimodal resources toward envisioning asset‐based education for African and African immigrant children. In conceptualizing a framework for culturally inclusive digital multimodal literacies, the study used grounded theory to analyze how OmoBerry videos provide pedagogical affordances for using African cultural semiotics and digital multimodal compositions including African digital storytelling and cultural artifacts as pedagogical resources for teaching African immigrant and Black children. Our findings show that asset‐based digital multimodal instructions centering African onto‐epistemic knowledge systems have the potential to foster culturally inclusive teaching through Sankofa; disrupt singular notions of language and literacy learning; and affirm sustainable literacy practices among African immigrant and Black children within the USA and globally. We recommend that educators and researchers invest in inclusive digital multimodal literacy instructions such as those demonstrated in OmoBerry YouTube videos, toward fostering asset‐based language and literacy teaching, cultural and linguistic justice, and participatory learning experiences for African immigrant youth.