In seventh grade, my teacher announced that we would be reading aloud. Each student was assigned a passage. I was fifth. As the first students read, I wasn’t listening for meaning. I was preparing to survive. My body reacted before my thoughts—heat, tension, panic. When my turn came, I swore loudly enough to be removed from the classroom. Being sent to the office felt like relief. At the time, the incident was recorded as misconduct. Decades later, I understand it differently: the convergence of undiagnosed dyslexia, racialized expectations, and school practices that treated reading speed as intelligence and hesitation as defiance. That moment—and many others like it—became central to my doctoral research on race, disability, giftedness, and literacy.
When Research Reaches the Wrong People
My dissertation passed committee review. It was published. It was cited. And yet a contradiction became impossible to ignore. The students, families, and educators whose lives most closely mirrored the research almost never encountered it—not because the work lacked relevance, but because it lived behind paywalls, inside journals, and within academic language that assumes fluency in scholarship. This wasn’t just an access problem. It was a methodological one. Autoethnography claims to center lived experience, yet its dominant forms of circulation often exclude the very communities embedded in its knowledge. That raised a hard question: What happens when research about lived experience refuses to stay locked inside academic prose?
Why Form Is Not Neutral
Autoethnography emerged to challenge research traditions that treated objectivity as distance and lived experience as bias. It insists that meaning is situated, embodied, and connected to broader social structures—especially in education, where harm often occurs through everyday interactions rather than dramatic events. But even as autoethnography critiques exclusion, it often circulates through systems that reproduce it. Critical race theory and disability studies remind us that knowledge production is inseparable from power. Who gets to speak, publish, and be heard is never neutral. When qualitative research remains confined to academic journals, it risks becoming extractive—drawing from lived experience without returning to the communities that shaped it. The issue isn’t rigor. It’s alignment.
Why Visual Narrative Changed Everything
That tension led me to visual narrative—specifically, graphic novels grounded in the same data, theory, and analytic commitments as my academic work. This shift wasn’t about simplification. It wasn’t outreach. It wasn’t “making it fun.” It was a decision about form. Comics don’t just illustrate experience. They create meaning through sequence, pacing, visual metaphor, and silence. The space between panels—the gutter—asks readers to participate in meaning-making. Visual narrative doesn’t remove analysis. It redistributes it.
Figure 1: From Guessing to Decoding
Dyslexia, Literacy, and Representation
Research shows that dyslexia is often portrayed as a temporary obstacle or individual deficit, stripped of emotional, racialized, and structural context. Characters with learning disabilities are overwhelmingly white. Systems are rarely named. These representations shape how children understand ability, belonging, and self-worth. Visual narrative offers another possibility. It allows struggle to remain unresolved, makes internal processes visible, and shows literacy difficulty as embodied and relational—not personal failure. For literacy-related disabilities, where struggle is often misread as behavior, this matters deeply. What Stayed the Same Across All Forms
When I examined my dissertation, journal articles, and graphic novels side by side, the core analytic claims had not changed. What changed was how readers encountered them. Academic prose required abstraction. Graphic narratives invited readers into scenes—letting them feel first, then reflect. Engagement happened earlier. Recognition happened faster. Participation widened. Students, families, and educators who had never read an academic journal immediately recognized themselves in the stories!
Why This Matters
If form shapes meaning, then dissemination is an ethical choice.
For research grounded in equity, remaining confined to academic journals can undermine its purpose. Transforming autoethnographic research into graphic narrative is not a departure from qualitative inquiry. It is a continuation of it. When epistemological commitments remain intact, changing form allows research to travel further, live longer, and reach those most implicated in its questions. That alignment—between inquiry and responsibility—is the real work. Sincerely
Shawn Anthony Robinson PhD
Selected Publications
Volume 1: Doctor Dyslexia Dude (2018)
Volume 2: The Battle for Resilience (2020)
Volume 3: Cracking the Code (2021)
Volume 4: The Adventures of Doctor Dyslexia Dude: The Time-Traveling Word Machine (in-press)
Scholarly Monograph
Robinson, S. A. (2018). A Twice Exceptional African American Male: An Autoethnographic
Account. The International Centre for Innovation in Education.
Edited Book
Robinson, S. A. (2018). Untold Narratives: African Americans who received Special Education services and succeeded beyond expectations. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Special Issues (Guest Editor)
Robinson, S. A., McGregory Jr, R., Spearman, H., & Thompson, C. L. (2018). Retaining African American males with learning disabilities in higher education: Implications for degree attainment. Journal of Research Initiatives, 3(2).
Robinson, S. A., & Thompson, C. L. (2019). Promoting Academic Readiness for African American males with dyslexia: Teaching Implications for Preschool - Elementary School.
Reading and Writing Quarterly, 35(1), p. 1-64.
Journal Articles (Peer-Reviewed)
Robinson, S. A. (accepted). Black Boys, Dyslexia, and A Reading Tool: Implications for classroom instruction. Journal of Negro Education.
Robinson, S. A. (accepted). Black Literary Perspectives. In Winn, T, M., & Winn, T, L., (Ed.s.), Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education. Bloomsbury.
Robinson, S. A., & Neat, K. J. (2023). The Reading Journey of Zion—A Case Study of Race in the Context of Special Education. Urban Education, 59(8),
Robinson, S. A. (2021) A Black, Dyslexic, Gifted and Male Entrepreneur: The Unheard Voice. Journal of African American males in Education, 12(2), 2-16.
Robinson, S. A. (2020). Culturally Responsive Representation in Graphic Novels Matter for African American Boys with Reading Disability. Journal of African American Males in Education, 11(1), 23-36.
Robinson, S. A. (2019). Critical Literacy Impacts African American Boys’ Reading Identity. Gifted Child Today, 42(3), 150-156.
Robinson, S. A. (2018). Resilient Scholar: A High Achieving African American male with a Learning Disability. Journal of Research Initiatives, 3(2), 1-12.
Robinson, S. A. (2017). Triple Identity Theory: Conceptualizing the Lived Experiences of a Gifted Black male with Dyslexia. Journal of Research Initiatives, 3(1), 1-10.
Robinson, S. A. (2017). Express Yourself: An Auto-Ethnographic Poetic Account. The International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity. 5(1&2). 149-154.
Robinson, S. A. (2017). Intersection of Race, Giftedness and Dyslexia: Triple Identity Theory. Advanced Development – a Journal on Adult Giftedness, 16, 78-94.
Robinson, S. A. (2017). Phoenix rising: An autoethnographic account of a gifted Black male with dyslexia. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 40(2), 135-151.
Robinson, S. A. (2017). Me Against the World: Autoethnographic Poetry. Disability & Society, 32(5), 1-5.
Robinson, S. A. (2016). The Voice of a Gifted Black male with Dyslexia Represented Through Poetry: An Auto-Ethnographic Account. The Journal of Poetry Therapy. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Research and Education, 1-7.
Robinson, S. A. (2016). “Can't C Me.” Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 12(4), 1-4.
Robinson, S. A. (2016). Triple Identity Theory: A theoretical framework for understanding gifted Black males with dyslexia. Urban Education Research and Policy Annuals, 41(1), 147-158..
Robinson, S. A. (2013). Educating Black males with dyslexia. Interdisciplinary Journal of Teaching and Learning, 3(3), 159-174.
Book Chapters
Robinson, S. A., & Ellis A. L. (2023). Representation of Afrocentric Superheroes and building a Reader Identity through Graphic Novels. In Robinson, S., & Ellis, A. (Ed.s), Critical Literacy and Its Impact on African American Boys’ Reading Readiness. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Robinson, S. A., & Thompson, C. L. (2019). African American Boys with Dyslexia and their Literacy Development. In Robinson, S. A., & Thompson, C. L. (Ed.s.), Promoting Academic Readiness for African American Males with Dyslexia: Implications for Preschool to Elementary School Teaching. Routledge.
Robinson, S. A., & Ellis, A. (2023). Critical Literacy and Its Impact on African American Boys’ Reading Readiness: Implications for Special Educators. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing,
Robinson, S. A., & Thompson, C. L. (2019). Promoting Academic Readiness for African American Males with Dyslexia: Implications for Preschool to Elementary School Teaching. Routledge.
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