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In this article, we argue that co-constructing knowledge, co-creating relationships, and exchanging stories are central to educational research. Relying on humanizing and Indigenous research methods to locate relational interactions in educational research allows us to engage in transformative praxis and storying, or Projects in Humanization (PiH). We contend that PiH focus on the creation and sustenance of relationships; the human capacity to listen to, story with, and care about each other; and the establishment of more inclusive, interconnected, and decolonizing methodologies that disrupt systemic inequalities found in Western constructs of educational research. More specifically, in this article, we rely on research vignettes to argue for a necessary commitment that researchers must have to sustain, extend, and revitalize the richness of the languages, literacies, histories, cultures, and stories of and by those with whom they work.

In this academic counternarrative, we examine how Black students and adults get positioned by, and come to resist, discourses that favor dominant linguistic and cultural practices. We ask, How do Black youth and adults resist the gaze of whiteness, or dominant discourses, in schools and communities, and what are pedagogical implications of such resistances? We address these questions by discussing three contemporary examples of injustices experienced by Rachel Jeantel, Amariyanna Copeny, and Black youth who continue the activism of Colin Kaepernik. Thereafter, we analyze data from three research vignettes of Black teachers and Youth of Color who produce counternarratives through storying. In our conclusion, we advocate for a pedagogical agenda in literacy studies grounded in cultural equality and linguistic, racial, and social justice for Black people and other People of Color. We situate this work as an academic counternarrative—an analysis of young people’s unapologetic affirmation of Black humanity, brilliance, and power.