Feb. 25, 2025 — When she moved from China to Canada at age 8, Tairan Qiu knew only a few words in English. Her mom would translate her homework into Chinese. Still, Qiu dove headfirst into books.

“I became an avid reader because my teacher always challenged me to keep reading,” said Qiu, who turned her passion for literacy and learning into a career.

Now an assistant professor at the University of Houston College of Education, Qiu has drawn national recognition as a leading early career scholar in the field of literacy education and research — earning three selective fellowships to support her professional development.

Notably, Qiu was awarded the prestigious Reading Hall of Fame Emerging Scholars Fellowship in 2023 for a two-year period through 2025. She also earned awards from the National Council for Teachers of English and the Literacy Research Association; she’s part of NCTE’s Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color Fellowship and LRA’s STAR (Scholars of color Transitioning into Academic Research institutions) program.

“I’m very honored,” said Qiu, the first UH recipient of each award.

‘Brave and Brilliant’

Through the fellowships, Qiu has been matched with three faculty mentors who, she said, are helping her navigate academia as a new professor and a transnational woman of color.

Her NCTE mentor, Endowed Professor Betina Hsieh of the University of Washington, praised Qiu as a “brave and brilliant scholar.”

“Tairan is of this generation of new scholars bringing globalized critical perspectives to the work of literacy education,” Hsieh said. “She is deeply committed to amplifying the voices of people whose stories don’t often get told. She thinks about these nuances that often get brushed over because people tend to racialize all Asians and Asian Americans as the same.”

Qiu’s Hall of Fame mentor is Kathryn H. Au, professor emerita at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, and her STAR mentor is Associate Professor Cati V. de los Ríos of UC Berkeley.

Finding Her Voice

Born in Kunming, China, Qiu moved with her parents to Vancouver, Canada, during elementary school. In their native country, they’d been college professors, but there, they took on factory jobs. On weekends, they often brought Qiu to the library.

“Even at a young age, I felt like reading helped me make friends in my own world,” Qiu said.

Hopeful for better opportunities, the family returned to China for Qiu to attend middle and high school. For college, Qiu decided to come to the United States. Following her parents into teaching, she studied secondary English education at Purdue University in Indiana.

“During that period, my classmates were mostly white; all of my teachers were white,” Qiu said. “I just felt like my voice, my experiences were all stifled and I was just expected to assimilate.”

The international moves and Qiu’s feelings of isolation have shaped her research interests. While pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Georgia, she found her passion in transnational literacies — which she explains as “the language and literacy practices of people who move across national borders, physically or through maintaining ties.”

Literacy, she said, should go beyond reading and writing to involve multiple forms of expression, such as art or cooking. In schools and society, immigrant and migrant students often are forced to assimilate, rather than encouraged to integrate their mother tongues and cultures into their learning, she said.

For her dissertation, Qiu spent three years getting to know a Chinese high schooler and her family who lived in Atlanta. She observed the teenager at home, at school, in the community and online to learn lessons that could help educators.

“The language and literacy practices she has at home are very separate from language and literacy practices she has to learn and assimilate to at school,” Qiu said. “Because of that, almost the whole time she’s silent in school; she just sits in a corner. At home, she’s dancing, talking, cooking. It’s really interesting and sad to see. She almost has a different personality in the different contexts she navigates.”

“I felt and feel the same way,” Qiu added. “When I first came to the United States for college, I didn’t talk for months to other students. I didn’t call my parents. It was such as culture shock. I felt like I couldn’t talk.”

Qiu said she found confidence to speak thanks in large part to her drama professor, a Black woman who seemed to understand. “Your voice matters, and I want other people to hear it,” she told Qiu. The message spurred Qiu to get involved on campus, joining Chinese student organizations and getting a job at the dining court, where she started socializing (meeting her now-husband) and opening up again.

Learning and Unlearning

As a doctoral student at the University of Georgia, Qiu expressed herself through poetry amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2020, during Lunar New Year, she wrote “The New Year’s Outbreak,” sharing how she missed her family in China.

She wrote, in part:

Tonight I cried.

Time flies.

Time flies.

I’m still learning.

Time flies.

I’m still unlearning.

Whoa, it’s been almost a decade.

Qiu talked to her parents daily but wasn’t able to visit until June 2024, after five years away.

“I brought my two children, and it was so beautiful to be in the presence of my community of family and friends,” she said. “When I’m here, I can only connect with them virtually. It’s a constant struggle for transnational migrants — you’re just so far away. Social media and chatting apps are your lifelines of survival.”

Breaking Silos

As she looked for faculty jobs, Qiu said she was drawn to UH because of the diversity. She wanted to connect with immigrant and migrant families for her research and to make a multicultural city home.

“I am also excited that my children can grow up in a large Chinese community while being immersed in the linguistically and racially diverse culture of Houston,” she said.

She’s begun connecting with the historic Third Ward neighborhood near campus and partnered with Project Row Houses, a local arts-based organization. They’ve created the Project Row Houses-UH Community Literacies Center, hosting literacy events on Saturdays that draw BIPOC and multilingual students and families.

The center, Qiu said, serves as “an alternative space that’s not like school,” helping elementary-aged kids develop literacy skills through art, music, play and other activities. The initiative also gives UH teaching students a chance to explore instructional strategies as they work with the children and receive feedback from professors and Ph.D. students on site.

“The purpose is really to create an ecosystem where pre-service teachers, teacher educators and researchers are learning from and with communities,” Qiu said.

The project launched thanks to a $15,000 grant through the Community Literacies Collaboratory by the Brown Chair in English Literacy at the University of Arkansas. The initial team included Qiu, Associate Professor Vera Hutchison, curriculum and instruction Ph.D. students Elisa Holcomb and Jordyn Simmons, and Brian Ellison of Project Row Houses; it has expanded to involve additional faculty, students and community members.

This spring, Qiu also hopes to start a language arts program for transnational girls of color, bringing together adolescents of different races and ethnicities to read, write, cook, eat and connect.

“Much of the transnational work is done in silos, with just a single race or ethnicity represented,” she said. “I want to bring everyone together to converse with each other.”

Ultimately, Qiu said, she hopes her research informs practices and policies in schools to be “more welcoming for people that are marginalized by their language, race, gender and immigration status.”

—By Ericka Mellon

—Photos courtesy of Tairan Qiu