1 To Be Part of the Story : The Literacy Practices of Gangsta Adolescents ELIZABETH B. MOJE University of Michigan School of Education Despite a recent emphasis on conceptualizing literacy as a tool for changing thought and experience, when people whether the popular media, school personnel, or educational scholars speak of the literacy practices of marginalized adolescents, they rarely talk about such literacies as tools. Instead, the literacy practices of marginalized adolescents are often referred to in terms of deviance or resistance. Gangconnected youth, in particular, are routinely represented as engaging in acts of villainy or resistance, but are rarely represented as meaning makers, people who are expressing their beliefs, values, and interests. If literacy theorists want to claim that literacy is a tool for transforming thought and experience, however, then we need to extend that theoretical claim to all literacy practices by asking what unsanctioned literacy practices do for adolescents. Are these simply acts of resistance? Or do adolescent gang members, who are often placed outside the possibility of school success on the basis of physical characteristics and social affiliations, also use literacy as a way of exploring possible worlds, claiming space, and making their voices heard? This study uses data from three years of research with five gang-connected youth to illustrate how they used their literacy practices as meaning-making, expressive, and communicative tools. The data show how these youth used literacy practices to be part of the story, or to claim a space, construct an identity, and take a social position in their worlds. The paper concludes by arguing that literacy theorists, researchers, and practitioners need to acknowledge the power of unsanctioned literacy tools in the lives of marginalized youth and develop pedagogies that draw from, but also challenge and extend, these practices. Graffiti is a state of mind and a sign of respect. This quote, drawn from the writing of two seventh-grade boys, provides a glimpse into motivations for graffiti writing, one of many unsanctioned literacy practices of gangconnected adolescents. Whereas graffiti writing is often considered a deviant or resistant behavior, the words of these young men signal that for them graffiti writing is central to who they are as people. It is a way of conveying, constructing, and maintaining identity, thought, and power. Their words highlight the importance of graffiti in their lives. Teachers College Record Volume 102, Number 3, June 2000, pp Copyright by Teachers College, Columbia University
2 652 Teachers College Record The words of another adolescent in this case a 15-year-old, Laotian girl shed light on why some young people turn to such practices as a way of constructing and maintaining thought, identity, and social position. When I asked her why she had become more involved with gang practices as she moved from elementary to junior high school, Khek ~a pseudonym! responded, Well, Elizabeth, I guess just wanted to be part of the story. Growing up in a context in which her ethnicity, color, and social class did not make it easy for her to be part of the dominant story, Khek looked for other stories, stories in which she could be a valued participant. Khek s words illustrate that young people may turn to gang-connected literacy and language practices as a way of writing themselves into the world ~cf. Camitta, 1990, 1993!. Further, Khek s words, when taken together with the words of the young graffiti writers, speak to the importance of understanding how these unsanctioned literacy practices, though typically thought to be negative and perhaps worthless, may serve as tools for transforming thought and experience in the lives of marginalized youth. My interest in how youth use unsanctioned literacy practices as tools stems both from literacy theory and from classroom research that I started in 1995, a project that began as a year-long qualitative examination of literacy in two seventh grade, regular-level English classes that used reading and writing workshop approaches. Specifically, as I began to collect classroom data, I noted that students at times kept their academic and social literacy practices separate, code switching between what they seemed to believe were acceptable topics and writing styles during the writer s workshop and what they believed were acceptable topics and writing styles in casual notes to friends or on notebooks, walls, desks, and bodies. Later in the year, however, these topics and styles merged in both academic and social literacy practices. I was particularly interested in the students who were identified and identified themselves as gangstas or as affiliated with gangs. As I watched gang-connected adolescents use literacy, I was intrigued with the contradiction I saw between their motivation to rapidly internalize very specific and complicated gang writing styles, spellings, rules, and dress codes, and their seeming indifference to using conventional writing styles, spellings, punctuation, and grammars. I began to wonder what these uses of literacy meant for adolescents, particularly for those often identified as problems or at risk, those students, in other words, who were marginalized in school settings. The motivation and engagement in these unsanctioned gang literacy practices led me to suspect that something more than resistance or deviance was at work and pushed me to study the practices of several young people from that classroom. My research over the next two years revolved around these questions:
3 To Be Part of the Story What constitutes alternative or unsanctioned literacy? 2. How do adolescents learn and use different literacies at school, at home, and in their unsanctioned social groups? 3. What do these unsanctioned literacies accomplish for adolescents? In the remainder of this paper, I present data analyses that illustrate how these youth learned and used unsanctioned literacy practices as communicative, expressive, and transformative tools for shaping their social worlds, their thoughts, and their identities. I show how these youth used literacy practices to be part of the story or to claim a space, construct an identity, and take a social position in their worlds. I also argue that researchers and teachers can learn valuable lessons for extending literacy theory, practice, and research from the sophisticated albeit marginalized and vilified practices of these youth. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES: LITERACY, RESISTANCE, AND YOUTH CULTURE Over the last two decades, literacy theory has expanded from a cognitive focus on reading and writing processes to an understanding of reading and writing as tools used for specific purposes in specific contexts ~Gee, 1996; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984!. Sociocultural theories argue that language and literacy are socially, culturally, and historically situated tools for exploring, claiming, or transforming thought and experience ~Vygotsky, 1978!. A number of theorists have also suggested that language and literacy are ideological in nature ~Graff, 1987; Street, 1994; Volosinov, 1973! and that uses of literacy have implications for identity construction and representation. Who people are, and who they are allowed to be, is shaped in part by the ways they use literacy ~Gee, 1996; Luke, ; Street, 1994!. Although these developments in literacy theory have prompted studies of students social literacy practices in relation to school ~e.g., Finders, 1996; Myers, 1992!, as well as students literacy lives outside of school ~e.g., Heath, 1983; Heath & McLaughlin, 1993; Moll & Greenberg, 1990!, we know little about how adolescents use literacy in unsanctioned peer groups and how they weave their unsanctioned or alternative literacies together with academic literacies. We have only a few studies of how marginalized adolescents those who are considered by school personnel to be at risk of failure, problem students, or low achievers use literacy to make sense of their social and school lives ~cf. Camitta, 1993; Knobel, 1999; Shuman, 1993!.
4 654 Teachers College Record Moreover, despite an emphasis on conceptualizing literacy as a tool for changing thought and experience, when people whether the popular media, school personnel, or educational scholars speak of the literacy practices of marginalized adolescents, they rarely talk about such literacies as tools. Instead, the literacy practices of marginalized adolescents are often referred to in terms of deviance or resistance. Indeed, one group of marginalized adolescents members of street gangs is viewed as using literacy ~e.g., tagging and graffiti! primarily to resist authority. They are usually seen as deviants or menaces who engage in meaningless and destructive acts ~cf. Cabranes & Candelaria, 1995; Yablonsky, 1962!. Alternatively, theories of resistance suggest that marginalized adolescents such as gangstas engage in acts of resistance that reproduce the material circumstances of their lives ~e.g., Everhart, 1983; Ogbu, 1982; Willis, 1977!. Applying resistance theory to the literacy practices of adolescent gang members would suggest that these young people use gang literacies in reactive ways to resist mainstream school literacies and the social practices and ideologies that accompany those literacies. If we want to claim that literacy is a tool for transforming thought and experience, however, then literacy theorists and researchers need to extend that theoretical claim to all literacy practices by asking what unsanctioned literacy practices in this case, those of gang-connected kids do for adolescents. Are these simply acts of resistance? Or do adolescent gang members, who are often placed outside the possibility of school success on the basis of physical characteristics and social affiliations, also use literacy as a way of exploring possible worlds, claiming space, and making their voices heard? In this work I use cultural theory ~Fiske, 1989, 1994; Grossberg, 1995! and literacy theory to argue that marginalized, gang-connected adolescents use literacy not only to resist, but also to make meaning about the events in their everyday lives ~cf. Kress, 1996, 1997!. Cultural theories have problematized the notion that people simply respond to the conditions around them by resisting or accommodating experiences. According to cultural theory, people use popular cultural texts and experiences in unpredictable ways to make sense of and take power in their worlds ~cf. Radway, 1984!. Camitta ~1993!, for example, has illustrated how urban adolescents use vernacular literacies in and out of school to take hold of their lives, to write themselves into the world. Similarly, Radway s ~1984! analysis of how housewives used romance novels in empowering ways questioned the assumptions one might make about what seem like disempowering practices. My work attempts to raise the same kinds of questions: Although gangsta ~and other unsanctioned, adolescent! practices may be reproductive of marginalized positions for the youth who engage in them, what aspects of these practices are empowering, productive, and potentially transformative for
5 To Be Part of the Story 655 the youth? Because cultural theory also analyzes how everyday practices are tied to and reproductive of broader social structures and discourses, I consider an additional question: How do these literacy practices while transformative in a particular social space shape the larger life possibilities of these young people? A NOTE ABOUT LITERACY AND LITERACY PRACTICES By referring to literacy practices rather than simply to literacies, I include in my analyses the socially situated beliefs, values, and purposes that shape how and why people use literacy ~Barton, 1991; Street, 1984!. I also include a wide range of symbolic forms that support the text reading and writing acts of gang-connected adolescents. When I refer to literacy, I refer to the reading and writing of written texts, with the acknowledgment that reading and writing are always acts situated in social practices, purposes, and contexts ~cf. Scribner & Cole, 1981! and that texts can encompass many forms. My decision to limit the term literacy to the reading and writing of written text stems from my concern and the concern of others ~Heath, personal communication, July 22, 1998; Thompson, personal communication, August 1997! that conflating literacy with all forms of representation not only makes it difficult to talk about what literacy is and what can or should be done with it, but also privileges print literacy as the primary form of representation to which all others must be articulated. It is ironic that many who have asserted that the term literacy includes speaking, listening, dancing, drawing, and all other forms of representation have done so in the name of breaking the hold that print literacy has in social systems and institutions. While well intentioned, such a move seems actually to strengthen the privileged position of reading and writing print because it is so difficult to dislodge the term literacy from its etymological roots in the concept of letter or alphabetic print. What is more, because these perspectives collapse everything into the category of literacy, they do not emphasize enough the ways that symbol systems other than print shape and extend meanings made about print. Not wishing to discount the importance of multiple forms of representation such as orality, performance, or artistic representations, however, I seek to broaden the sense of what it means to be literate and use reading and writing by examining the many symbol systems and signs that are used to make and represent meaning in addition to and in conjunction with written language ~cf. Eisner, 1994; New London Group, 1996!. I include these multiple forms as part of young people s literacy practices. Without each of these forms of representation, reading and writing would be limited tools, virtually incapable of producing the layered understandings and shifts in thinking that have been attributed to them ~cf. Kress, 1997!. Specific to
6 656 Teachers College Record my research, for example, are the works of art, music, dress codes, makeup, tatoos, body movements, gestures, and hand signs that gang-connected adolescents use to identify themselves and to claim power and space in and out of their gangs. Each of these symbol systems and signs deepens and extends the meanings represented and communicated in the written texts of gangsta adolescents. In fact, some acts of reading and writing would have very different meanings were it not for the other representational forms that accompany those acts. For example, a notebook covered with writing is read very differently if the notebook is carried by an adolescent wearing baggies, an oversized windbreaker, and gangsta Nikes ~ G-Nikes! than it is if carried by an adolescent dressed in a polo shirt, khaki pants, and sandals. Alternatively, reading and writing also deepen and extend meanings made in other forms of representation. A notebook that reads, 187 all members of Murder One Family# could be read as gangconnected regardless of the owner s clothing ~provided that the reader is literate in gang language or code!. That said, I must acknowledge that I have carried just such a notebook around ~I had written the phrase on my notebook to illustrate gang codes to a group of students! and that no one has ever assumed me to be a gangsta, a point that suggests the power of other semiotic and representational forms over the power of print. My dress, my bearing, my age, and my social positioning are at least as powerful discursive forms as the print I carry with me. Thus literacy, even when defined as the reading and writing of print, cannot be well understood unless one attends to people s literacy practices the values, beliefs, and actions that people bring to reading and writing and to the multiple symbol systems and signs to which reading and writing of print are articulated. Finally, as argued by a number of theorists ~e.g, Gee, 1996; Heath, 1983; Kress, 1996; Street, 1995!, literacy practices have important implications for knowledge and identity construction and representation. Definitions of identity are, of course, highly contested, and become especially complicated when one attempts to examine how particular cultural relationships such as being in a gang intersect with ethnic, gender, and class relationships, and how all of those relations shape uses of literacy and one s identity. The perspective on identity that I offer suggests that identity is not a stable, unitary construct; instead, any one person can construct many different identities as s0he moves throughout many different contexts. Because an individual can construct any number of identities, identities can conflict with one another, but are articulated to the subject positions that people construct or that are constructed for them ~cf. Kress, 1996; New London Group, 1996!. Identities are also articulated at the intersection of class, race, gender, culture, and age ~among other possibilities! and are constructed within such relations, so that it is unwise to talk about members of particular groups in ways that suggest that the members automatically take
7 To Be Part of the Story 657 up culturally particular or essential identities ~cf. Bhabha, 1994; Heath, 1998!. METHODOLOGY, METHOD, AND PARTICIPANTS Methodology The methodology and interpretation in this study are guided by aspects of symbolic interactionist theory ~Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934! and by work done in the field of cultural studies ~cf. Fiske, 1994, 1989; Grossberg, 1995!. Symbolic interactionism suggests that individuals define situations and negotiate meanings based on their interpretation of symbols ~i.e., language, dress, body movements! while engaged in interactions with other human beings. The methodological imperative of symbolic interactionism implies that a representation or understanding of how individuals define situations and negotiate meanings can be obtained from direct interaction with the empirical world, that is, the world of people and objects. Symbolic interactionism as traditionally conceived, however, explains human interaction and meaning making in terms of patterns and categories of action in ways that can risk the reification of people s practices and the reduction of complexity in people s lives. Consequently, I turned to cultural studies perspectives, which draw on aspects of critical and poststructural theories to argue that people s practices and the meanings they make of them are shaped in various and sometimes contradictory ways as people interact with both the material and discursive world. Cultural studies does not claim to present the truth or even stable patterns of people s lives, but rather to understand the meanings that people make and to examine everyday lives in their complexity and contradiction. The combination of these two theoretical perspectives ~cf. Denzin, 1992! supported my study of the complex and often contradictory meanings these adolescents made through their interactions with various symbols or, more to the point, of the meanings that they made about literacy, gang practices, and their lives. Methods Participants and sites. The data used in this paper were collected over the course of three years ~I continue to interact with these participants, although I am no longer officially collecting data!. Initially, I spent one year in two English classrooms at a school located in an urban area of Salt Lake City, Utah. I collected classroom data by spending two days each week in the two classrooms for the entire school year and, on several occasions,
8 658 Teachers College Record spending lunch periods with the students either in the cafeteria, in the hallways, outside, or at special school activities. In year 2 of the study, I interviewed various students outside of school in their homes and at local restaurants. In year 3, I continued to hang out with three focus students, becoming more and more a part of their social and family practices ~attending church, going shopping, seeing films, browsing bookstores!. Five adolescents Anthony, Chile, Jeffrey, Khek, and Mike ~all pseudonyms chosen by the students! of four different ethnic groups ~Vietnamese, Latina, Latino, Laotian, and Samoan, respectively! agreed to participate on a regular basis during years 2 and 3 of the study ~I interviewed other students of different ethnic groups sporadically!. The core of my work in year 3 revolves around Chile, Jeffrey, and Khek, because Mike moved away a few months into year 3, and Anthony lost interest in the research. Although I lost Mike and Anthony as core participants, Chile, Khek, and Jeffrey often brought other youth with them on our outings, so I was able to hear several different youth perspectives. Other young people who were involved in interviews or in hanging out with me include Yolanda, Denise, Tamar, Gina, Rachel, Alex, Oscar, and Johnny. Names used are pseudonyms that were, in most cases, chosen by the young people. Data sources. Data sources from all phases of data collection included daily field notes in and out of school; daily audiotape ~and some videotape! recordings of classroom interactions; informal and formal interviews with the students, teacher, parents, and school administrators; electronic mail communications with the teacher; artifacts and documents; photographs; and a researcher s journal of impressions and notes that could not be recorded at the time of observation or interaction. The nature of the last two years of the study, in which I participated more in the lives of the young people and their families, made the researcher s journal a vital data source because it was difficult impolite in most cases to take notes or audiotape all interactions. Data analysis. During the first year of the study, I used the constant comparative method of data analysis ~Strauss, 1987! to generate a core category that focused on the literacy practices of students who were involved with gangs. I continued to collect data around this category, while also generating selective and axial codes around what the practices accomplished for the youth, how the youth learned the practices, and how the literacy practices were different from and intersected with school, family, and community practices. I also used methods of inductive analysis ~Patton, 1990! and critical discourse analysis ~Fairclough, 1989; Kress, 1989; Luke, ! to analyze the adolescents classroom interactions and talk,
9 To Be Part of the Story 659 interview conversations, and writings and to spur the refinement of selective codes and analytic categories. Representational concerns. The mention of analytic tools raises several complexities regarding the representation of these young people and of my relationship with them. As a white woman in her mid-30s, I was an outsider in multiple ways to the cultural practices of these young people. My social class and non-street-gang position kept me from being a full participant in their lives. I developed a different kind of relationship with each of the youth in the study, so that some were more open with me and represented their identities much as they would with a fellow adolescent, whereas others interacted with me as a trusted adult, but not as a fellow adolescent or gangsta. In short, I do not claim to have the kind of understanding of their worlds and practices that another poor or working-class, ethnicminority, gang-connected adolescent would have. What s more, at times the stories they told me during interviews were stories of the practices of other youth, an aspect of data collection that can be easily problematized: Were these youth implicating others while maintaining their own innocence in gang practices? Did they tell me stories of older youth or siblings to impress me, to make themselves seem more a part of the story? I cannot dismiss these concerns regarding the trustworthiness of the data I collected. And yet I see the interviews as another form of literacy practice, a way that each of these youth represented particular subject positions and identities for themselves in the context of my relationship with them. Thus these data, as all data, can be interrogated in regard to whether the events they relate actually happened, but the data nonetheless represent some aspect of the identities of each youth. An additional representational concern revolves around the issues of race, ethnicity, and social class represented in this study. The youth represented here are all people of color and they all come from low-income homes, not because gangs do not include white and middle-class members ~although they were fewer in number in this context than were representatives of other groups!, but because these are the youth who elected to work with me in this study. That is not to say, however, that color and class are not relevant to this analysis: The context of Salt Lake City, as described in a later section, does assume a particular worldview. Specifically, to be part of the story in Salt Lake City typically meant taking up a white and middleclass ethic, something these youth were not willing or not able to do. Throughout the research process, I came to see myself as an advocate for these youth, and I committed myself to providing a space in which their voices could be heard and their practices understood. As a researcher, however, I found myself using tools such as critical discourse analysis
10 660 Teachers College Record that seemed at times to appropriate the voices of the youth even as the tools made evident the sophistication of their practices. After struggling with this tension for some time, I resolved that I would present these critical analyses in conjunction with the voices of the youth, as a way of speaking with them rather than for them ~cf. Cameron, Frazer, Harvey, Rampton, & Richardson, 1993!. I have also reviewed my analyses with the participants and asked for their analysis of the data as well. The analyses presented here are a compilation of their insights and my analyses. Finally, these findings represent my analyses of the practices of only five youth ~with several others shaping the research!. The findings, then, cannot be generalized to all gang-connected adolescents, although some practices have been documented in large gang-connected populations throughout the United States ~cf. Conquergood, 1994; Hunt, 1996!. What is most important, however, is that readers recognize that while these findings are not intended to represent all kids who are connected to gangs, the findings can be used to challenge educators and researchers to think differently about literacy theory, classroom teaching, and school policy. The Community Context The unique demographic and cultural context of Salt Lake City makes the study of marginalized adolescents there especially critical. Salt Lake City is the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon Church. The LDS Church recruits members of all ethnicities from all over the world, and while the church maintains a stance of color blindness ~cf. Kelly, 1998!, leaders in the LDS Church are generally white, and those who are recruited to join the Church are expected to adopt its predominantly white, middle-class ethic. This ethic exerts a tremendous influence in the Salt Lake Valley, dramatically shaping the type of schooling available and the perspectives of teachers in the public schools ~Deyhle, 1991; Kelly, 1998!. The focus students who volunteered to participate in this study are not Mormon, not white, and not middle class ~although I did interview and work with several students who were white and Mormon!. What s more, the focus students are either members of gangs or are affiliated with gangs. They are, in effect, marginalized four times over. The young people in this study lived primarily on the cusp of full gang participation. In the hierarchy of gang membership identified by various gang task forces ~e.g., Salt Lake Gang Project, 1996!, only two of the youth identified themselves as associate gang members 1 and acknowledged that they would be likely to increase their participation in gang activities as they grew older. The rest of the youth called themselves fringe members, a distinct step above wannabes, but not jumped in to actual gang mem-
11 To Be Part of the Story 661 bership. As a result, these youth did not participate actively in extremely violent gang practices ~drive-by shootings, for example!, although they lived in contexts in which such practices were common. For these young people, their gang practices at the time of the study 2 were generally confined to representing their gang identities through tagging or graffiti writing, dress, body movements, and hand-to-hand physical fights that did not rely on the use of guns or automatic weapons. TO BE PART OF STORY WHAT UNSANCTIONED LITERACIES ACCOMPLISH In the first portion of this section, I present findings that address questions regarding what constitutes alternative or unsanctioned literacy practices and what these practices accomplish for adolescents. In short, these practices made it possible for students to be, in Khek s words, part of the story that was being written on a daily basis at their junior high school, in their families, and in their communities. As I outline each of these practices, I examine how the practice supported identity construction, representation, and self-positioning. What Constitutes Alternative, Unsanctioned Literacies for These Students? I found that alternative or unsanctioned literacies used by these students included not only what one might think of as gang literacies ~tagging, graffiti writing, hand signs, and dress and color codes!, but also a wide range of poetry, narrative, journal writing, letter writing, and novel reading. At times the young people wrote to communicate with their peers, at other times to send messages or complaints to their homies ~homeboys or homegirls!, to rivals, and to family members. ~It is interesting to note that they infrequently used either academic or alternative literacies to communicate to teachers or administrators.! The young people I worked with used each of these alternative, unsanctioned, and nonschooled forms of representation to claim and mark spaces or territories, construct identities, and label and identify or position themselves and others. Specifically, I categorized the participants literacy practices in terms of three types of Discourses, or ways of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting ~Gee, 1996, p. 131!, that people use to identify and position themselves and others as members of social groups: 3 ~a! written discourses such as the writing of raps, poetry, and parodies; the writing of gang names, street names, and0or gang symbols on notebooks, desks, walls, lockers, and their bodies; 4 and letters and notes that contained print and linguistic conventions associated with a particular gang or gang set ; ~b! body discourses that included dress, makeup, and hairstyles as well as particular
12 662 Teachers College Record proxemics and kinesics ~hand signs, body movements, and body relations!; and ~c! oral discourses ~terminology, accents, and dialects were equally important!. I consider each of these discourses as contributing to a set of literacy practices, or ways of reading and writing text. In the following sections, I discuss what each of these literacy practices or discourses does for students. What Do These Literacy Practices Accomplish? Each of the practices that I documented served as a means of identification that could accomplish a variety of purposes. For some, adopting these practices provided entree into the particular space of gang affiliation or membership. Once allowed into that social space, the young people used these different literacy practices to make sense of their everyday lives in and out of school, to maintain their membership in the gangs or other peer groups, and to move to new levels of membership within the groups. Those who could write clever poems, parodies, or raps, for instance, could simultaneously express their feelings and experiences, identify themselves as one type of gangsta or another, demonstrate their commitment to gang membership, show willingness to engage in violence and illicit activity, and win the respect and admiration of their homies and0or the fear of others who were not in gangs. Written discourses: Poetry and parody. The following poem parody illustrates one of the many ways that adolescents, particularly gang-connected adolescents, use these literacy practices to take hold of their lives and to communicate with others. The parody was created by Rachel, Chile s friend: Now I lay me down to rest A red rag across my chest If I die before I wake Shoot a with my.38. In this violent parody of a prayer, the reference to a red rag indicates that Rachel, the writer, aligns herself with Bloods ~a gang!. Her use of the term crab is a derogatory reference to Crips ~a rival gang of the Bloods! and identifies or positions her in opposition to the Crips, thus also marking the space or territory that she claims for herself. The writing parodies a religious form, which is particularly important because of the dominant religious presence of the LDS Church in the Salt Lake Valley and because many of the gang-connected adolescents in the study expressed a strong religious affiliation ~not LDS! and incorporated religious symbols into gang dress, graffiti, and tags. Whether or not consciously intended, the poem serves several purposes via the use of the prayer form: The parody mocks
13 To Be Part of the Story 663 dominant religious groups at the same time that it stands within them; highlights the violence of the poem by evoking the trace of the original, benevolent prayer; and emphasizes the seriousness of the message, as the writer makes a sacred vow to exact revenge upon a rival group. The poem also served to communicate to others and invite responses such as this one from a rival gangsta: Now I lay me down to rest A blue rag across my chest If I die before I rise Shoot a between the eyes. It is significant that Chile, who provided me access to these and a number of other poems written by Rachel, had memorized several of Rachel s poems, and had written them in a notebook that she carried with her. It also is significant that Chile, while not a poetry writer, wrote regularly in a journal ~as did each of the female participants in the study! and in letters to friends and to me. Each of these acts of writing whether unsanctioned or merely private served expressive and communicative purposes. That Chile and Rachel shared poetry and music lyrics, and that Chile, Khek, Yolanda, and Jeffrey wrote notes to one another suggests that these young people saw these writing forms as tools for expressing meanings, identities, and values. The following poem, presented to me by Anthony, also illustrates one of the many ways that adolescents particularly gang-connected adolescents use these literacy practices to express their fears and concerns, to construct identities, and to position themselves in particular ways. Anthony was a 12-year-old boy who described his ethnicity as Viet. 1 Gangsta Prayer 2 Heavenly father please hear me, 3 Tonight I need you so much 4 to live my life right, 5 Sometimes the pressure is so hard to 6 I often wonder if anyone cares 7 How can I wake up and face a new day 8 Knowing I have to live my life this crazy way! 9 Heavenly father please forgive my sins, 10 I want to change, but don t know where to begin. 11 Give me the strength to resist crazy life I desire, 12 and help me stay away from the mighty gunfire 13 Please bless my family whose eyes plead for me 14 As they watch me leave, and God bless my mom 15 who cries every night wondering 16 If I ll be killed in another gang fight!
14 664 Teachers College Record 17 Heavenly father please answer my prayer 18 Please let me know listening up there 19 When will it end, what s it all for? 20 I m down, hard core. 21 But it doesn t seem to matter not anymore 22 Sometimes I wonder just how I ll die 23 With a knife or a bullet right in my side. 24 Thanks for your and most of all, 25 Thank you for listening to this Gangsta s Prayer tonight 26 A x M x E x N Made for our homie This poem, like many of the poems and raps heard and collected in the study, claims a space a troubled space and makes a plea for help in achieving a new space. Although Anthony was a student in a classroom that used the writer s workshop approach to teaching writing, neither he nor the teacher initiated any attempt to make it a part of the writing activity for the writer s workshop. Anthony brought this poem to me just after lunch one school day and asked, You wanna see what me and my friends just wrote? After I read it, Anthony explained that his friend had been jumped by a bunch of big Tongan guys when they were walking home from a bus stop. When I showed the poem to the classroom teacher, the teacher expressed skepticism about whether Anthony had actually written the poem, and so she did not pursue it as writing material. 5 Whether Anthony actually wrote the poem is secondary to this analysis; here the focus is on how Anthony used the poem to be part of the story at the junior high school and in his neighborhood. For example, although it seems to express fear of the danger of gang activity and a desire to leave the gang, a close analysis of the discourse illustrates that the poem is also an especially effective means of highlighting one s commitment to gang practices. Sentences such as Knowing I have to live my life this crazy way ~line 8! simultaneously position Anthony as both trapped in and committed to a particular life style. Despite the plea for strength to resist in line 11, lines reveal that Anthony ~and anyone else who uses the poem! desires a crazy life fraught with mighty gunfire. Line 16 indicates that the writer has fought in many gang fights and is involved enough in the battle to risk death, and in line 20 the writer pledges that s0he is down, hard core, indicating that she or he is a full-fledged, committed gang member who will risk life and freedom to claim, represent, and defend the gang name. In lines 25 28, the writer identifies explicitly as a gangsta ~ Thank you for listening to this Gangsta s Prayer tonight!, uses conven-
15 To Be Part of the Story 665 tions of gang writing ~e.g., the x marks between each letter in line 26!, and signs off in line 28 with the phrase our homie, indicating allegiance with a homeboy ~or girl!, a term often used to indicate gang membership. The poem is also useful in terms of constructing a subject position and identity for Anthony not only as a loyal gang member but also as one who is intimately acquainted with gang violence and who thus deserves a powerful social position and a wide berth in social interactions. As the writer0 user wonders in lines just how I ll die... With a knife or a bullet right in my side, s0he sets the terms for how others should interact with him or her. The poem, then, can communicate to others that they should not mess with the writer ~or user! of the poem because this is a person who has experience with knives and guns and has accepted death as inevitable. This is a person with whom one should not toy, says the poem, even as it laments the fact. Written discourses: Tagging and graffiti writing. Tagging and graffiti writing also serve as tools of identity construction and representation. Those who were proficient taggers ~individuals who could write or draw tags! could win admiration, demonstrate commitment to the group ~whether a tagging crew or a street gang!, and gain power and respect from those who wished to improve their tagging abilities or from those who desired to use these tagging abilities to advertise the gang ~some gangs pay members of tagging crews to tag up walls with gang names and symbols because these taggers are so proficient!. Although it is risky to engage in tagging practices in school, 6 it is by no means unusual for gang-connected adolescents ~and wannabes! to use schooltime to draw tags. In addition to the tags that taggers might write on highly visible spaces, many serious taggers keep tagging notebooks or sketch books in which they practice their tags in pencil or pen before throwing them up on a wall, sign, or fence. Both Mike and Anthony routinely carried with them oversized sheets of heavy bond paper, calligraphy pens, and charcoal pencils used for practicing their tags. These notebooks and the accompanying writing0drawing equipment served both as practice sites and as emblems of tagger or gangsta identity. Because taggers tag as a way of making themselves known, 7 these notebooks announced the ability to tag, at least on paper. They served, in this sense, as an advertisement. It is particularly important to note that all the youth with whom I talked distinguished between tagging and graffiti at some level, although the distinctions were often contradictory. What makes the distinction important is the fact that gang-connected adolescents carried tagging notebooks and materials with them in school, apparently under the assumption that the nonviolent, artistic nature of tagging
16 666 Teachers College Record lowered the risk of censure on the part of school personnel. Graffiti were often scrawled on desks and lockers, and sometimes hidden in notebooks, but the youth engaged in tagging practices more openly. One particularly interesting tagging incident occurred during school, when Mike and Anthony worked with another young man, Scott, on a social-action project about graffiti and gang violence. As part of the project they prepared posters that represented tagging and graffiti. Although Scott was not a tagger or a gangsta, he was included in the project as Mike prepared an elaborate tag of Scott s name. Below the tag, Mike wrote his own name in small letters. When I asked them about this unusual arrangement, Scott replied, Well, I can t tag, so Mike did it for me. But it s his tag, so he should get the credit. That s why he signed his name. The tag, meant to include Scott in the project and grant him position in the group, also served as a means of identification and power for Mike, who was widely recognized as an active gangsta and as a proficient and talented tagger. Tagging practices appeared to be gendered; while I observed numerous instances of males practicing tags, I found only two tags created by female youth. ~Both males and females, however, wrote graffiti.! Young women, by contrast, engaged in much more journal and letter writing than did the young men, which suggests that the forms served as different types of expressive and communicative media. Some feminist theories would suggest that the individualistic and competitive nature of tagging may have appealed more to young men s ways of knowing and being in the world, whereas the more relational acts of journal writing ~even when private, these entries often focus on relationships! and letter writing might appeal more to women s ways of knowing and being ~cf. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986!. 8 It could also be argued that these different ways of expressing oneself were socially mediated; young women, in particular, struggled with gang affiliation and identity both in relation to non-gang authorities and in relation to the young men who were gang identified. These more feminized practices could be viewed as ways of participating in gang practices without identifying explicitly as gangstas or as sex objects of gangs. Thus tagging practices help to illustrate the complexity of gangsta literacy practices. Although they represent the cultural practices of a particular group marginalized, gang-connected adolescents we cannot assume that all members of the cultural group practice in the same ways. These practices are complexly shaped by a myriad of social commitments, positions, and ideologies associated with gender, ethnicity, color, age, and class relations. 9 Written discourses: Letters and notes. Identification and membership could also be signified through letters and notes when particular phrases, sym-
17 To Be Part of the Story 667 bols, and styles were used. A note might not contain any explicit indication of gang affiliation, but if the adolescent wrote about algebra class, for example, certain print conventions in the writing of the word algebra could clearly indicate loyalty or rivalry. The note reproduced in Figure 1 provides an example of the merging of gangsta scripts and symbols with conventional writing. This note, written by Gina to Brat ~one of the study participants! during the oral reading portion of English class, illustrates much of what I saw in the talk, writing, and interactions among the gangconnected youth with whom I worked. For example, in the note Gina explicitly named herself as a home girl, a member of a particular group, in this case, a street gang. Similarly, by addressing the recipient of her note by her street name, Brat, Gina identified Brat as a member of the group and simultaneously kept Brat s identity secret from those who were not familiar with street identities. Less explicitly, Gina s use of language and code in the note named and identified her as an adolescent, a gangsta ~or gang wannabe!, and a female. To kick it among these youth meant to be down with or affiliated with a gang, although it did not necessarily imply gang membership. 10 The x marks on several of the Os signify crossing out and indicate rivalry with a gang whose moniker begins with O, most likely the OLG, or Original Laotian Gangstas ~also known as Original Locced Out Gangstas to members who were not Laotian!. 11 Gina s signifying language suggests that her identity is a group identity, based on allegiance and loyalty ~ your home girl!. As she seized a social space, she pledged allegiance to a group. These fairly complicated codes and discourses or literacy Figure 1: Note from Gina to Brat.
18 668 Teachers College Record practices were learned in part as students engaged in meaningful communication with one another. A second note, reproduced in Figure 2, provides insight into the metalinguistic awareness possessed by a number of gang-connected kids, while also illustrating the ways that gang identities were represented and communicated through a merging of conventional and gang literacies. Some gang literacy practices are immediately evident in this written text, such as the use of the street name, LiL LOC, which means, little crazy man. The tagging up of the note with the letters OLG, serve to represent the Original Laotian Gangsters. Figure 2: Note from Lil Loc to Chile.
19 To Be Part of the Story 669 What is less obvious, however, is Lil Loc s use of gang spelling conventions, as illustrated in the words fucced and picced. While this might appear to be a misspelling produced by sloppiness or by lack of awareness of spelling conventions, it is actually an important way of identifying Lil Loc as a member of the Crips. The use of cc is a deliberate move on Lil Loc s part that stems from his refusal to write c and k together in a word because CK is commonly used as an identifier for Crip Killer. While Lil Loc might write a sentence with no punctuation, or spell the word memories incorrectly ~see Figure 2!, he would never write ck in a word. Not only did Lil Loc refuse to identify as a Crip Killer with this language move, but he also very explicitly if the reader is literate in the code identified as a Crip. Body discourses: Dress and body practices. Insofar as literacy practices include many forms of representation, one important literacy practice includes the dress codes, makeup, and body movements of both gangstas and taggers. Most young people participate in aspects of these dress codes to some extent, whether they are in gangs, down with gangs ~loyal to a gang, but not jumped in or initiated!, trying to show respect for gangs and gangstas, or simply trying not to stand out. However, adolescents who want to indicate their loyalty to or their membership in gangs or tagging crews often wear particular clothing ~Salt Lake Gang Project, 1996!. One of the most noticeable gang dress codes is footwear: Gang-connected kids around Salt Lake often wear black Nike Cortez running shoes with a white swoosh, white leather Nikes with a black swoosh ~both called gangsta Nikes by the youth!, or olive-green corduroy house shoes ~slippers!, sometimes called lokes ~also spelled locs! because they are often worn by drug dealers who are locced out or high. 12 Other popular brands are worn by specific gangs if the acronym of the brand can stand in for a message that gang members want to send ~e.g., British Knights BK Blood Killer! ~cf. Salt Lake Area Gang Project, 1996!. Baggies baggy pants that sag on their bodies in what seem like precarious positions 13 loose-fitting shirts, baseball caps, and head rags ~scarves! worn as bandanas outside of school ~all scarves are prohibited in most schools! are important aspects of gangsta dress. Baseball caps worn in particular positions can signal different identities: the bill worn to the left signals membership in one gang; bill to the right, membership in a different gang ~Conquergood, 1994!. All of these dress codes are embedded in a larger color code. Colors, like other dress codes, represent gang memberships; the clothing, jackets, scarves, and hats one wears must conform with the gang colors. Although constructed as deviant and villainous in the media and in most school settings, in many ways these colors are reminiscent of school colors adopted by teams and other
20 670 Teachers College Record sanctioned social groups. For example, as one young woman, Chile, explained to me, the West Parkque Locas, Suavecitas set ~a predominantly Latina gang in Salt Lake City!, adopted burgundy and gray as their colors. The most important basic, or primary, colors in local Salt Lake City gang discourses, however, include red ~Bloods!, brown ~QVO!, and blue ~Crips!. These dress codes signal not only identification with gang practices for some non-gang-connected adolescents, this identification through dress is critical because compliance with the dress codes shows acceptance of gang practices even though one is not an active gang member but also with particular gang memberships. Thus, while to an outsider all gangsta kids may look the same, to gang members these codes provide critical signs. Dress codes are signs of identity and relationship. These codes tell gang kids how to act in relation to other gang kids whether another adolescent is a homeboy or homegirl and the codes help to keep gangsta kids from entering potentially threatening situations. Just as writers would not violate particular print conventions, committed gang members would not violate color and dress conventions. These conventions are, however, always changing in part to response to fashion and media trends, in part in response to school and society rules regarding gang dress, and in part to create interesting and innovative looks and identities. Despite the importance of dress codes, dress alone does not signify gang commitment. A number of embodied practices or body code, as well as oral language practices, are necessary to indicate gang allegiance. Gangsta kids and gang-connected kids use particular gestures and facial expressions to indicate that they are down with or in a gang. Some of these gestures are also gang signs ~the ASL sign for I love you is a gang sign that indicates loyalty; other ASL signs are also incorporated into gang communication!, but equally important are gestures such as a wave good-bye; the way one holds one s body head down, shoulders hunched; and, among these particular adolescents, body slamming by bumping into each other s shoulders when greeting one another. 14 Among gang-connected girls, cosmetics are also a significant identifier. 15 Because appearance is a key aspect of adolescent performance and identity in junior high and high school, it is important to remember that none of these dress or body codes alone signals gang membership or even gang connections. For many of the kids I worked with in the classroom study these codes allowed them to signify respect for or even loyalty to gangs without claiming membership. Thus, whether gang members or not, adolescents in general use these codes to signify particular relationships, commitments, and identities. Oral language discourses: Words, accents, and plays on language. Oral language practices or discourses, particularly those borrowed from languages
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