Abstract
"The Wealth We Carry: Mapping Literate Identity Across Affinity Spaces" investigates how Black alumni associations function as intergenerational, culturally sustaining literacy spaces that preserve identity, memory, and community beyond the boundaries of formal schooling. Grounded in Afrocentric epistemologies of Sankofa, Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth, Gee’s Affinity Space Theory, and the Multiliteracies framework, this three-article dissertation conceptualizes literacy as a lived, communal practice expressed through story, tradition, and digital creativity. The first article, an autoethnography, traces the author’s literate becoming within historically Black educational spaces, illustrating how language, culture, and faith cultivate resilience, resistance, and belonging. The second article presents a qualitative case study of the Dillard High School Alumni Association, demonstrating how ceremonies, mentorship, and storytelling function as intergenerational literacies that sustain collective identity. The third article introduces the Media Multimodal Master (MMM)-to-Sankofa Framework, a model for understanding how Black literacies develop across physical and digital homeplaces. Together, these articles reveal alumni associations as dynamic affinity spaces in which literacy operates as cultural inheritance and community design—recovering the past to imagine new futures. Ultimately, this study argues that the wealth we carry resides not only in what we know, but in how we intentionally transmit that knowledge across generations.