Using transnationalism, multiliteracies, and transnational literacies as the theoretical frameworks, this qualitative case study explores the transnational language and literacy practices of one female China-U.S. transnational adolescent, Meiyi, and her family. The data corpus includes critical ethnographic data generated over three years. Through data generation and analysis guided by Portraiture, I explore Meiyi and her family’s transnational language and literacy practices in multiple geographic locations, including in the United States and China, across various contexts (e.g., home, school, communities, and digital spaces), and through various modalities (e.g., print text reading and writing, pictures, conversations, painting, cooking, etc.). In this study, I intentionally and unapologetically focus on the translingual and transnational multiliteracies of Meiyi and her family that centered on their intergenerational knowledge, lived histories, care, love, and joy, to push against assimilationist stances in education. The findings of this dissertation study suggest Meiyi and her family’s transnational literacies dynamically and fluidly encompassed their intergenerational relationships across and in between national borders, contexts, and times. The family’s intergenerational multiliteracies functioned to sustain and extend Meiyi’s myriad transnational literacy practices. In turn, the literacy practices Meiyi engaged in helped her navigate her translingual and multiliterate life across contexts and borders. This study contributes to scholarly, pedagogical, and societal conversations that aim to address the discrepancy between the hegemonic reality to which East Asian (im)migrant students and families must assimilate in schools and society at large, and their translingual, intergenerational, and multiliterate realities at home and in their (trans)local communities.
