This article is organized as follows. First, the author introduces a few ways to consider and define spoken word in its current cultural and historical form. She then discusses spoken word literacy by bringing in the voices of youth spoken word artists to address further the question of relevance. In doing so, Ruth Kin connects how spoken word pedagogy and methodology generate and further literacy, including its decolonizing form, understood from intersubjective and sociological perspectives. Finally, the article ends with a further rethinking of literacy in relation to its decolonial means and possibilities that build upon and work through collective, arts-driven efforts for youth or by youth as practicing and emerging cultural workers and organizers.