Transgressive Book Talk: Young Adolescent Literacies in Safe School Spaces

• In Event: 31.091 - Fairmont Royal York Roundtable Session Five
  In Roundtable Session: 31.091-2 - Supporting Young Adolescents' Needs and Success in School

Abstract

One researcher worked with 2 young adolescent females over 4 years to examine ways that the girls’ literary understandings and identities developed when afforded a school space to explore non-school sanctioned literature. From grades 6-9, about every 6 weeks the researcher and two girls would discuss self-selected books. Working from field notes, 14 full transcripts of discussion, weekly journals and observations, three categories were created to describe the girls’ developing literacies: (1) Transgressive Talk, where the girls took up “unsafe” topics inspired by literature; (2) Self-Understanding, a category that describes how the girls came to assess and monitor their own reading; and (3) Embodied Empathy, where the girls used literature to read the word, the world and each other.

Author

• Mary Beth Schaefer, Saint John's University