UNESCO (2004a) speaks of the importance of critical literacy (Street, 1995; Wagner, Venezky, & Street., 1999;Robinson, 2003) in an age where symbolic violence and oppression of diverse views threaten democratic civiclife. This paper reports the findings of a post-modern qualitative research which examined a postgraduate student's voice and experiences in terms of a pedagogy committed to building critical literacy for multilingualstudents through a Critical Literacy Awareness (CLA) Perspective and Method. The paper qualitativelyexamined the postgraduate student's talk and reflective logs as a point of entry into her negotiations of plural,intersecting and/or conflicting identities and discourses and in relation to ideological perspectives on literacyand contested ways of knowing (Wallace, 1988; Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; Kress, 2003; Koo, 2008a). Thefindings indicate that for it to be empowering of learner diversity, teacher talk and interventions have to engagewith student's unequally valued language and multicultural resources in context and to work with the competingand dominant discourses which are recognised as legitimate in education and the workplace (Luke, 1993).