Chosen spaces are community organizations and programs, elective classes, and/or extracurricular clubs that students choose to participate in and have the agency to refuse their membership in. The youth's chosen spaces represent an alternate possibility for what English language arts (ELA) education could look like and how it might better sustain the lives and stories of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander (BIPOC) youth, as these identities and memberships necessarily intersect with gender and sexuality, dis/ability, language, land, migration, class, and more. As the nation navigates the realities of a global pandemic and uprisings in defense of Black lives and Indigenous sovereignty, the current moment begs educators to reexamine their practice and ideas of what teaching and learning can and should look like. In this article, the authors invite educators to consider how the sounds of youth, speaking their truths through poetic agency, can help them to imagine another path forward for ELA education. This being a path where BIPOC young people (and teachers!) are not required to leave vital parts of themselves outside of the learning space (whether brick and mortar or virtual), but rather, spaces that invite and require their wholeness. As coauthors and educators, they share how teachers and the youth they teach and learn with can use "counterstories" and "refusals" to foster such learning settings.