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Building Worlds and Identities 491

�CARMEN M. MARTÍNEZ-ROLDÁN

Arizona State University

Building Worlds and Identities:A Case Study of the Role of Narratives

in Bilingual Literature Discussions

RESEARCH IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH • VOLUME 37 • MAY 2003 491

This article investigates the use of oral narratives by a 7-year-old Mexican born girl (Isabela)participating in small group literature discussions in a bilingual 2nd-grade classroom in theU.S. over a year. The study is grounded in sociocultural and critical perspectives and usesnarrative and transactional theories to understand literacy events. Qualitative case studydesign and critical discourse analysis provided the methodological tools to examine both therole of narratives in Isabela’s discussions of texts and the role of context in shaping her talk.Data include transcripts from 15 small group literature discussions conducted in English,Spanish, or both and an interview with parents. In-depth analysis of one of her narrativesindicates the ways in which the representational and interactional roles of narratives cametogether to support Isabela’s construction of identity. Access to narratives and to her firstlanguage enabled this English language learner to develop situated identities in two arenas:an academic identity as a skillful student who participated effectively in the literature discus-sions and an ethnic and cultural identity rooted in her country of origin and Spanish lan-guage. The ways in which she used narratives of personal experiences in bilingual literaturediscussions and self-regulated her discourse according to the linguistic composition of thegroups suggest a notion of achievement that departs from that of policymakers who interpretachievement only in terms of standardized test scores.

TEACHER: So, what if Ms. Smith [theprincipal] comes in and says to us:“You cannot speak any more Span-ish” and she takes away all the Span-ish books y se lleva todo en español ydice ella: [and she takes away every-thing that is in Spanish and she says:]“From now on it’s English only.”How would that make you feel?

MARIO: Sad.TEACHER: Why? Why would it make

you feel sad? No more speaking inSpanish, no more Spanish books, nomore songs, nothing. Just English allday. Como, ¿qué tú crees, no más español,Mario, nada más inglés? [Like, what doyou think, Mario, no more Spanish,only English?]

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SElson

Copyright © 2003 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

492 RESEARCH IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH • VOLUME 37 • MAY 2003

MARIO: Triste. [Sad].DAYANARA: I’d feel sad because my nana

when she talks to me in Spanish,when she talks to me in Spanish, Ihave to talk in English to her be-cause I can’t talk Spanish.

(From literature discussion In My Family/En mi familia, 3/18/98)

The above excerpt was part of thediscussion of Lomas-Garza’s (1996)picturebook In My Family/En mi familiain a 2nd-grade bilingual classroom. Thechildren were engaged in the construc-tion of narratives about personal expe-riences as part of their responses to thetext. (All of the participants’ namesexcept the teacher’s are pseudonyms.)In this excerpt 7-year-old Dayanarabrought into the discussion her experi-ence of language loss which affectedher communication with her Spanish-speaking grandmother. When teacher-researcher Julia López-Robertson posedthe opening hypothetical question toher students, Julia and I could notanticipate that it was close to the daywhen limiting the access to bilingualeducation and even prohibiting the useof Spanish for instruction would be-come a reality in Arizona because of theapproval of the English-only Proposi-tion (Proposition 203, called “Englishfor the Children” legislation).

Scholars studying classroom in-struction after the approval of a similarEnglish-only legislation in California(Proposition 227) point to the pressureplaced on teachers to move Spanishspeakers toward English as soon aspossible. This pressure has led someteachers, and even entire schools, to

eliminate the use of Spanish texts andtalk for supporting English languagelearners as readers and to privilege oralproficiency over meaning making(Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Asato,2000). Such instruction rarely considersdifferent ways of knowing and makingmeaning, such as the use of oral narra-tives, or the use of quality children’sliterature as important aspects of class-room instruction, which may have impli-cations for Latino/a students’ access tolearning and participation in schools.

Scholars whose work addresses theeducation of Latino/a students (e.g.,Darder, 1995; García, 2001; Nieto, 2002;Soto, 1997) highlight the importance ofcreating learning contexts that valuechildren’s language, lives, and identities.As Nieto (2002) argues, acknowledg-ing, respecting, or dismissing children’slanguage and identities can indeed benoteworthy factors in promoting orhindering students’ learning. More spe-cifically, Latino/a scholars have raisedthe issues that “too often, in the pri-mary grades, Latino/a children’s cogni-tive development is put on hold untilthey can learn English” (Jiménez, Moll,Rodríguez-Brown, & Barrera, 1999, p.225; cf. Reyes & Halcón, 2001) and thatthe reading instruction many of themreceive does not draw and extend theresources they bring to school (Moll,Díaz, Estrada, & Lopes, 1992).

My concern about these issues ledme to complete a one-year qualitativestudy of Julia’s bilingual 2nd-gradeclassroom prior to Proposition 203 inArizona. The study shifts the focus ofthe discussion on English languagelearners’ (ELLs) education from mov-

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ing them toward English as soon aspossible to a focus on what is possiblewhen ELL students have access to theirhome language and to different media-tional means such as narratives as theyengage in literature discussions. I exam-ined the potential of children’s litera-ture to encourage thoughtful discussionsin English and Spanish among youngELLs and the nature of the talk ofbilingual students discussing children’sliterature in small groups (Martínez-Roldán, 2000).

Framed by sociocultural theoryand a critical approach to discourses,this study draws on and extends oneaspect of that larger study through acase study in which I analyze the narra-tives of a beginner reader, Isabela, a 7-year-old Mexican-born student, withinthe context of small group literaturediscussions. I examine the ways inwhich her narratives of personal expe-riences and storytelling functioned ascultural tools that mediated her partici-pation in literature discussions and therole of the context in mediating herproduction of narratives. The followingquestions guided the analysis:

1. What roles did narratives play inIsabela’s participation in small groupliterature discussions?

2. In what ways did the linguisticcomposition of the small groups(being in a Spanish-dominant groupor in an English-dominant group)shape Isabela’s use of narratives?

3. In what ways did a context thatallowed access to multiple media-tional means enable Isabela’sdiscussions of texts?

Theoretical FrameworkLiterature DiscussionsIn this section I locate my study withinthe landscape of research on classroomtalk about a particular type of text:children’s literature. The benefits ofreading and discussing literature formainstream students have been ad-dressed extensively in the professionalliterature from a variety of perspectives(e.g., Beach, 1993; Lewis, 2001; Peterson& Eeds, 1990; Rosenblatt, 1978, 1995;Short & Pierce, 1998; Sipe, 1996). Someof the benefits for students includebecoming skillful and competent read-ers, becoming thoughtful and criticalreaders, and developing a clearer senseof what it means to be better citizens ina democratic society.

Only a handful of studies, however,have focused their analysis on literaturediscussions with second language learn-ers in mainstream classrooms (e.g.,Klassen, 1993; Raphael, Brock, &Wallace, 1997; Samway & Whang, 1996),and even fewer studies have focused onliterature discussions in elementary bi-lingual classrooms either in whole orsmall groups (Battle, 1995; Cox &Boyd-Batstone, 1997; Martínez-Roldán,2000). Indeed, no research on literaturediscussions in bilingual classrooms canbe found in recent reviews about re-search on response to literature (e.g.,Galda & Beach, 2001; Grossman, 2001;Marshall, 2000), a situation thatGrossman acknowledges to be an omis-sion in the research on literary response,which she describes as follows:

Another lacuna in research on literary re-sponse has to do with the issue of the read-ers included, and not included, in studies of

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reader response. Many of the studies of readerresponse have been conducted with middle-class Caucasian students. To what extent canthis research help us understand how racialor ethnic identities shape readings of text?How do second-language learners respond toliterary texts in both their native language andin a second language? Understanding the“funds of knowledge” that second-languagelearners and other non-mainstream studentsbring to literature . . . can help teachers re-consider classroom practices that can enablemore students to join the conversation. (p.428)

Following Marshall’s (2000) de-scription of the research on response toliterature, this case study works withinthe empirical tradition of research fo-cusing on both readers’ responses totexts and on the context in which thoseresponses take shape. I focus on use ofpersonal narratives, a very recurrentresponse in the second-grade bilingualchildren’s responses to literature in thelarger study, paying special attention toan English language learner who stoodout as a storyteller in the small groupliterature discussions over a year. Smallgroup literature discussions or literaturecircles are small groups of students whoread or are read the same book (orseveral books related to a single themeor broad issue) and then meet to discusstheir understandings with one another(Short, 1995, 1997).

Since the work of Eeds & Wells(1989) on children’s responses to litera-ture, researchers have investigated howpersonal experiences related (and some-times not so related) to the texts havebeen a part of children’s process ofmaking meaning from the texts and animportant part of their literary under-standing. For example, in Sipe’s (1996)

study of the construction of literaryunderstanding by first and second grad-ers in response to picture storybookreadalouds, he found that personal re-sponses to literature—when the chil-dren connected the texts to their ownpersonal lives or used knowledge fromthe texts to inform their lives—was animportant aspect of children’s con-struction of literary understanding, rep-resenting 10% of all the children’sresponses to the literature. For somestudents in his study, as in Cox andBoyd-Batstone’s (1997) research, per-sonal responses to literature providedthem with an opportunity to becomestorytellers and to be active participantsin the discussions.

Although narratives of personalexperience are very common in youngchildren’s responses to literature, someeducators tend to worry about children’sengagement in this type of discourse aspart of their discussions of texts. Rollerand Beed (1994) openly share theirinitial concern over children’s makingchains of personal stories as part of theirresponses to literature. The studentsengaged in accounts of personal expe-riences that began with ideas related tothe discussion of the text, but afterseveral stories the connection to thetext often seemed to get lost. Theteacher was nervously thinking aboutwhether and how to bring them backto what she considered the task ofinterpreting the text. With observationand reflection, Roller and Beed over-came their concern and came to valuethe students’ responses as serving animportant purpose in the children’s pro-cess of making meaning. The authors

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argue that when children’s oral culturesjoin with the adult’s culture, “there is aplace for a variety of styles and forms oflanguage that in collaboration maycontribute to literate and personalizedinterpretations of texts” (p. 515).

The next discussion places thestudy of personal narratives in children’sresponses to literature within a largerdiscussion of the roles of narratives inpeople’s lives. The discussion is in-formed by multiple theoretical lensesbut keeps at the center a socioculturaland critical perspective to the study ofnarratives of personal experiences.

Narratives as Cultural ToolsA sociocultural theory of learning anddevelopment stresses the great impor-tance of cultural resources (signs, sym-bols, interpersonal relations, andactivities) in the formation and devel-opment of thinking (Moll, 1990, 2001;Vygotsky, 1978, 1987). At the core ofthis theoretical perspective is the claimthat higher mental processes in theindividual have their origin in socialprocesses (Wertsch, 1985). Narrative isone of the cultural tools that mediatepeople’s thinking. Wertsch (1998) stud-ied its role as a mediational mean forrepresenting the past. On assigningnarrative the character of cultural me-diational tool, Wertsch (1998) explains:

Borrowing from Mink (1978, p. 144), mycentral point has been that “the cognitivefunction of narrative form . . . is not to relatea succession of events but to body forth anensemble of interrelationships of many dif-ferent kinds as a single whole.” It is this ten-dency of narrative to “grasp together” (Mink,1972, p. 736) diverse elements such as “agents,goals, means, interactions, circumstances, un-

expected results, etc.” that is at the core of mytreatment of narratives as cultural tools. (p.106)

Wertsch (1998) argues that this“grasp[ing] together” is usually reachedthrough the coherence created by thedifferent elements of narratives. Rel-evant to this study is also Wertsch’sdiscussion of the irreducible tensionbetween agent, which he defines as“individual-operating-with-media-tional-means” (p. 26), and the media-tional means, in this case narrative as atool. Although Wertsch studies narra-tives as they appear in historical textsand narratives constructed by collegestudents to represent American history,his characterization of narratives ascultural tools and his discussion of thetension between agent and mediationalmeans provides a strong basis for study-ing the role of other forms of narratives,such as oral narratives of personal experi-ences, which is the focus of this article.

Scholars drawing from differentperspectives (e.g., psychology, literarystudies, linguistic anthropology, socio-linguistics) have examined the roles ofpersonal narratives in people’s lives. Inwhat follows I briefly discuss the natureof oral narratives and two roles welldocumented in the scholarship on narra-tives: the representational and interac-tional roles of narratives (Miller, 1994;Ochs & Capps, 2001; Worthman, 2001).The discussion concludes by addressingthe relationship between narrative andidentity (Gee, 1990, 1999a).

Narratives of Personal ExperiencesOchs and Capps (2001), in studyingpersonal narrative as people use it in

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their daily lives, propose that personalnarrative has properties characteristicof other genres. They identify, as doesWertsch (1998), the sense of coherenceas an important element in a definitionof personal narrative:

Personal narrative is a way of using languageor another symbolic system to imbue lifeevents with a temporal and logical order, todemystify them and establish coherenceacross past, present, and as yet unrealized ex-perience. (Ochs & Capps, 2001, p. 2; cf.Kermode, 1967)

Ochs and Capps (2001) add thatthe characteristic of coherence is basedon cultural ways of telling (Heath,1983). They stress that this aspect ofchildren’s narratives of everyday expe-riences, a coherence that responds tocultural ways of telling, has not beenextensively addressed in developmentalstudies of children’s narratives and thatmost of what has been done is limitedin at least three ways:

1. Most studies examine how children(re)tell or comprehend “once upon atime” or picture-book narrativesrather than their ability to narratepersonal experience;

2. Most studies are culturally skewed,based primarily on White, middleclass, English speaking populations;and

3. Most studies rely upon only oneconception of narrative.

As Och and Capps argue:

Narrative competence is generally viewed asthe ability to recount a narrative by oneself(one active teller), in a rhetorically effectivemanner (high tellability), which is relatively

self-contained (detached from surroundingdiscourse), with a coherent and progressivebeginning, middle, and end (linear organiza-tion), and a constant moral stance. (p. 61)

Ochs and Capps acknowledge thebenefits of studying this type of narra-tive but point out that such studiesneglect to consider the various shapesand functions that narratives take ineveryday life when the purpose iscollaborative sense-making rather thanperforming. The following studies ad-dress two of those functions.

Representational Role of NarrativesThere is a significant body of profes-sional literature on personal narrativesthat describes narratives as serving pri-marily a representational function intwo ways: a means by which thenarrator can reach a better understand-ing of the world and a more sociallyoriented way by which the individualself is defined or recreated. Narrativeshave been described as ways of makingmeaning from people’s lives (Bruner &Lucariello, 1989; Miller, 1994; Rosen,1986) and as the imposition of formalcoherence on a virtual chaos of humanevents that when shared with othersmay help people to reach a collectiveunderstanding of important themessuch as fear, courage, and loss (Rosen,1986).

Along the same lines, Ochs andCapps (2001) state that most narrativesof personal experiences function as “asense-making process rather than asfinished product in which loose endsare knit together into a single storyline”(p. 15; emphasis in original). It isprecisely because of the openness and

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complexities of narratives of personalexperiences that Ochs and Capps viewthem not as a homogeneous genrehaving a set of distinctive fixed featuresbut rather as varying in relation to thefive dimensions they ennumerate intheir definition, which I cited above.

People’s narratives about personalexperiences also provide an importantsite for the social construction of self. Inher study on language socialization,specifically on storytelling, Miller (1994)argues that personal storytelling is animportant means by which young chil-dren, together with family members,experience and reexperience self inrelation to others. She infers that storiesof the children’s experience in whichthey were co-narrators particularly de-fined and redefined self in relation toothers in both the past events and theactual social circumstances of the tell-ing. By examining co-narrations to seewhat they reveal about self in relation-ship to others, Miller points to a socialaspect of narratives that goes beyondthe representational function, placingthe emphasis on the interactions amongtellers and audiences.

Interactional Roles of NarrativesWortham’s (2001) study contributesfurther to an understanding of thesocial aspect of narratives by examiningtheir function within the unfoldingrelationships among the people in-volved in the narrative event, which hecalls the interactional function of narra-tives. Drawing on Bakhtin’s work, heproposes a dialogic approach to thestudy of narrative that examines hownarratives define not only the narrator

but the relationship between the narra-tor and the audience. After examiningdifferent types of discourse (an auto-biographical narrative by an adult, aclassroom discussion, and a televisionnewscast), Wortham proposes that “anempirically adequate account of self-construction in personal narrative mustacknowledge that narrative discourseboth represents the narrator’s self andpositions the narrator interactionally”(p. 13).

Wortham (2001) acknowledges thatthe opportunity to tell stories abouttheir lives can help personal narratorsestablish a coherent sense of who theyare. However, he argues, narrators domore than understand themselves dif-ferently by representing their lives, for“they also learn how to act in charac-teristic ways with respect to others byenacting characteristic positions as theynarrate their lives” (p. 157). The repre-sentational and interactional functionsof narratives of personal experiencescan thus interrelate so as partly toconstruct the self.

Narratives and Identity: A CriticalPerspectiveScholars in and outside the U.S. havedocumented how some pedagogicalpractices in mainstream classrooms cre-ate academic identities for minoritystudents associated with failure at school(e.g. Gutiérrez & Larson, 1994; Toohey,2000). Gutiérrez and Larson used so-ciocultural/sociohistorical theory com-bined with critical theory to provide amore comprehensive account of therelationship among culture, develop-ment, and ways of knowing. The au-

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thors acknowledge that though theiremphases differ, both theories convergeon the social construction of knowl-edge and the importance of context.Their study shows how certain patternsof discourse in classrooms restrict accessto certain forms of knowledge, learn-ing, and legitimate participation forLatino/a children.

Integrating a critical perspective inmy theoretical framework allows me toconnect the study of Isabela’s narrativeswith larger issues of equity and access.The body of work on critical discourseanalysis (CDA) offers a variety of toolsthat can support such a perspective.Scholars engaged in critical discourseanalysis (e.g. Fairclough, 1989; Gee,1999a; van Dijk, 2001) have developedspecific methodological tools from verydifferent theoretical frameworks to de-scribe and explain “the ways discoursestructures enact, confirm, legitimate,reproduce, or challenge relations ofpower and dominance in society” (vanDijk, 2001, p. 353).

Gee’s (1990) sociocultural approachto language and literacy, although dif-ferent from the sociocultural/historicaltheory of human development fromwhich I draw, converges with it inimportant ways. Both stress a view ofliteracy as embedded in socioculturalpractices, as “composed of diverse, butclosely interrelated ‘tools’ (mediatingdevices, Wertsch, 1998) for learning,development, and activity within con-crete social practices at specific,socioculturally diverse sites” (Gee, 1999b,p. 358). Such perspective on literacy,along with Gee’s interest in educationalissues and his application of CDA to

examine children’s narratives, led me touse his work for my analysis of Isabela’snarratives.

When people speak or write, Gee(1999a) maintains, they craft what theyhave to say to fit the situation or contextin which they are communicating. Atthe same time, the ways in whichpeople speak create the very situationor context. As other scholars do, Geedescribes narratives as important sense-making devices. For him, “people oftenencode into narratives the problemsthat concern them and their attemptsto make sense or resolve these prob-lems” (p. 134). According to Gee,through language—and through narra-tive as a form of language—peopleconstruct or build the following sixareas of reality: 1) meanings and value ofaspects of the material world, 2) activi-ties, 3) politics (the distribution of socialgoods), 4) connections, 5) semiotics,and 6) identities and relationships. Ishall return to these building tasks inthe methods section.

Gee (1999a) developed several toolsof inquiry that help to study how thebuilding tasks are carried out and withwhat social and political consequences.The most relevant of these tools for mystudy are his constructs of situatedidentities, situated meanings, and Dis-courses. Situated identities are differentidentities or social positions that peopleenact and recognize in different set-tings. Situated meanings are local mean-ings assigned to language and wordswithin specific situations, grounded inactual practices and experiences. Dis-courses are “ways of being in the world,or forms of life which integrate words,

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acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, social iden-tities” (p. 142). They are ways of display-ing membership in a particular socialgroup, and in this sense, a Discourse is asort of “identity kit” (Gee, 1990, p. 142).These constructs will inform my analy-sis of the roles of narratives for Isabelawithin the context of the small groupliterature discussions.

MethodI combined qualitative research meth-ods from ethnography and case studydesign (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994;Merriam, 1998) to examine Isabela’suse of narratives over a year, and criticaldiscourse analysis methods (Gee, 1990,1999a) to examine in depth one of thenarratives constructed by Isabela as sheparticipated in literature discussions.

Qualitative Case Study DesignThe study described in this articledraws on and extends a one-year studyin which I examined bilingual youngstudents’ responses to literature. It iscrucial to situate the study of Isabela’snarratives within the larger study of thechildren’s responses to literature. Meth-ods for the larger study included fieldnotes from participant observation, au-diotapes, and transcripts of 75 smallgroup literature discussions or literaturecircles; videotape of literature circles;informal interviews with nine casestudy students and some of their par-ents; and samples of students’ writtenresponses to literature. The discussionstook place each week or every otherweek. I participated in the classroomfrom one to three times weekly, when-ever literature discussions were held,

organizing and facilitating the discus-sions together with Julia, the teacher. Ialso audiotaped and analyzed all of thedifferent types of reading events in theclassroom for one week and attendedseveral classroom activities and eventsrelated to reading over the year.

As part of the original study, tran-scripts of 11 literature circles wentthrough two layers of analysis: a the-matic analysis of the students’ discus-sions and an analysis of their literaryresponses. From the analysis of theirliterary responses, I found that thestudents had a variety of literary re-sponses to texts, including analyticaltalk (comments addressing the stories asa cultural product, focusing on thelanguage of the texts, analyzing the artof the illustrations, and making narra-tive meaning); intertextual connections(to other texts, to movies, and to soapoperas); and personal responses or con-nections to life experiences. Personalresponses comprised 36% of the stu-dents’ literary responses. (For a detailedexplanation of how the percentages percategory were determined, seeMartínez-Roldán, 2000.) The categoryof connections to life experiences usu-ally involved both narratives of personalexperiences and storytelling of scarystories.

The study reported in this articlerepresents a third layer of analysis inwhich I used a qualitative case studydesign (Merriam, 1998) and criticaldiscourse analysis (Gee, 1999a) to de-velop a better understanding of the useof narratives of personal experiencesand storytelling among young Englishlanguage learners (ELLs) in literature

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discussions. A case study student wasselected by purposive sampling, whichas Merriam (1998) indicates “is basedon the assumption that one wants todiscover, understand and gain insight;therefore one needs to select a samplefrom which one can learn the most” (p.48).

Isabela stood out from the begin-ning in the literature discussions as astoryteller. The narrative of personalexperiences was a form of languageused by all children as they respondedto literature, particularly by the Span-ish-dominant students whose narra-tives were longer and more complexthan the narratives of their Englishcounterparts. In that sense Isabela isrepresentative of the Spanish-dominantstudents. However, her recurrent use ofnarratives of personal stories andstorytelling and the length of her storiesmade her a unique case from whom Icould gain more understanding aboutthe possible roles of narratives of per-sonal experiences in ELLs’ discussionsof texts.

In the study reported in this article,I used audiotapes and transcripts of allthe small group literature discussions inwhich Isabela participated over a schoolyear, 15 in total. I revisited the tran-scripts, searching for instances of narra-tives of personal experiences andstorytelling, and examined the typesand content of the narratives. I foundtwo broad categories of personal re-sponse that will be discussed as part ofthe results: comments and/or narrativesin which Isabela connected parts of thebooks to lived experiences and narra-tives of scary stories. To examine the

role of the context I identified theliterary genre of the texts discussed byIsabela as well as the linguistic compo-sition of the groups: “Spanish” being agroup composed only of Spanish-domi-nant students, and “Bilingual” being agroup having both Spanish- and En-glish-dominant students.

Discourse Analysis MethodsI then chose one narrative from Isabelafor a detailed discourse analysis. It wasone of her longest narratives, so I coulduse it to gather much information onthe roles of narratives in Isabela’s par-ticipation in literature discussions. Itwas also one of the narratives in whichissues of language and identity cametogether in her discourse, which struckme as important for gaining insightsinto the use of narratives by childrenfrom diverse (non-mainstream) ethnicbackground.

After my initial analysis of thecontent of Isabela’s narrative, I usedGee’s (1999a) notions of semiotic build-ing, world building, and socioculturally-situated identities as tools for my analysis.Gee defines semiotic building as asearch for clues used and given by thespeaker to assemble situated meaningsabout what semiotic or communicativesystems of knowledge and ways ofknowing are relevant and activated inthe discourse. World building examinesthe situated meanings of some of thewords that seem important in thesituation described by the speaker andthe situated meanings and values thatseem to be attached to places, times, andso forth. Identity building examines,among other things, the relationships

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and identities (roles, positions) thatseem to be relevant to the situationdescribed by the speaker.

Because Isabela’s narrative took placewithin the context of a small groupliterature discussion, it was important topreserve as well as possible the dynam-ics of interactions by attending to theconversational turns of different speak-ers as Isabela told her story. Therefore,the narrative is organized first in con-versational turns, sequentially num-bered. Second, I organized the narrativeinto stanzas and lines using Gee’s (1999a)definitions. Briefly defined, lines orspurts as he has also called them, aresmall chunks in speech that usuallycontain only one salient piece of newinformation serving as the focus of anintonational contour. Stanzas are “setsof lines about a single minimal topic,organized rhythmically and syntacti-cally to hang together in a particularlytight way” (p. 106).

Following Gee (1999a), I identi-fied the stanzas in Isabela’s narrative bylooking for occasions when character,place, time, event, or function of a pieceof information changes. For easy refer-ence I numbered the stanzas and lines.Some conversational turns were longerthan others and had more than one line.Some stanzas were co-constructed be-tween Isabela and other members andso have more than one conversationalturn, such as stanza 5 of the narrative“The Story of the Park” discussed inthe Results section.

These organizational and analyti-cal tools facilitated a closer examinationof Isabela’s narrative by focusing onsmall pieces of information (stanzas and

lines) that revealed details that may havebeen overlooked if I had looked only atconversational turn. They also enabled,along with the building tasks (Gee,1999a), an examination of the structureof the narrative, its coherence, and itsroles. Notational devices used in thetranscripts to name some features ofspeech are listed in the Appendix. Insummary, the combination of bothqualitative case study and critical dis-course analysis methods promised tooffer a rich picture of the roles ofnarratives in Isabela’s discussions oftexts.

ContextThe setting for the study was a bilingualelementary school in a community inArizona that was primarily MexicanAmerican. At the time of the study, thestate of California had just approved theEnglish Only Legislation (Proposition227). Concerns about the possibilitiessimilar legislation taking hold in Ari-zona had begun to be the subject ofdiscussions in academic environmentsand among some parents of the chil-dren in this study. The school had aTwo-Way Developmental BilingualEducation Program where Spanish andEnglish were the languages of instruc-tion. Twenty-one seven- and eight-year-olds participated in this study in asecond-grade classroom. Most of themhad been together since first grade withJulia as their teacher as part of a loopingstrand. The students were all of Mexi-can descent, three of them being also ofNative American descent from theYaqui and Pima nations. Ten wereEnglish dominant and eleven were

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Spanish dominant as determined by theschool’s classification of language profi-ciency.

Isabela, the case study student forthis study, was a seven-year-old Mexi-can born girl, the third of five childrenin her family. She was a first-generationimmigrant whose family had movedfrom Mexico to Tucson 4 years beforethe study. She grew up on differentranches in Mexico as her parents movedto find jobs. At the time of the study herfather was working in construction andher mother was a homemaker. Bothparents were Spanish speakers. Fromobservations of Isabela’s interactionsand her mother’s report, Isabela spokemostly in Spanish and occasionallycodeswitched to English, usually withEnglish speaking peers. Isabela wasconsidered a beginner reader and writerof Spanish.

Julia López-Robertson had been abilingual teacher for 5 years. The daugh-ter of a Cuban father and a Colombianmother, she was born and raised inBoston. As a young student she waspunished at school for speaking Span-ish. This experience seemed to play arole in her thinking. She strongly sup-ports Latino children’s academic devel-opment through their first languagewhile they learn English. Having expe-rienced low expectations and discrimi-nation, Julia held high expectations forher students and valued students’ firstlanguage, not only as a resource but as aright (Ruiz, 1984).

Julia created a learning environ-ment where the children were invitedto think, especially about the books

they read and the themes they studied;to share their thoughts with others inwhatever language they wanted; and topose questions to each other invitingtheir peers to extend their commentson a regular basis. Everyone was ex-pected to engage in that kind ofdiscourse; it was part of the culturalpractices of the classroom.

Social Organization of the ClassroomJulia’s classroom resembled the bilin-gual classroom described by Moll andWhitmore (1993). The students in Julia’sclassroom were encouraged to ask oth-ers for help when they needed it, sothey had access to others’ expertise.They usually sat four students per tableand participated from different types ofgrouping throughout the day. Askingfor and bringing support and help aswell as sharing materials were part ofthe classroom culture. The studentssoon introduced newcomers to theclassroom routines and practices.

Although reading and writing in-struction were offered in the student’sfirst language, English and Spanish wereused throughout the day. Often Englishdominant students and Spanish domi-nant students provided words to eachother when they were trying to usetheir second language. The students hadaccess to a variety of texts. Differenttypes of books and print materials inboth languages filled the classroom andthe students continually moved be-tween Spanish and English texts andamong different text genres. The richliterate environment in both languageswas intended to extend students’ op-

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portunities to interact with diversetexts and diverse readers throughoutthe day.

The Language Arts ProgramJulia expressed that her main goal as areading teacher was for her students notonly to learn to read but also to leaveher classroom with a love of readingand themselves as readers and thinkers.The curriculum offered the studentsnumerous opportunities throughout theday for using language—specificallyreading—in meaningful situations, forlearning about reading, and for learningabout other content, life outside ofschool, and themselves (Halliday, 1975,1979; Short, 1997). There was, however,a language arts block where specificreading engagements were emphasized.Depending on the day, during thatblock the class engaged in such activi-ties as guided reading groups accordingto language dominance and proficiency,DEAR (Drop Everything and Read)time, literature discussions, shared read-ing, and writing workshop.

The students had a daily story timein which they were read a variety ofbooks in English and Spanish. Some-times the books read aloud led the classto discuss them, pose questions, makeconnections to other readings and simi-lar events, and make extensive com-ments. Those discussions during storytime served as a kind of apprenticeshipfor the students on how to talk aboutbooks, and that kind of talk carried oninto their small group literature discus-sions in which they not only talkedabout the literary elements of the textsbut also posed questions to each other

and made connections to other textsand to life experiences. Although manyteachers in mainstream classrooms haveeither guided reading groups or litera-ture discussion groups in their curricu-lum, at least at upper levels, the trendhas been to choose one of them, oftensubstituting literature discussion groupsfor guided reading groups (Short, 1999).Julia integrated both reading engage-ments in her 1st- and 2nd-grade cur-ricula, understanding that the twoengagements differed from each othernot only in their organization (textselection, grouping) but also in theirpurposes.

Guided reading in Julia’s classroomwas intended to support students’ learn-ing about the reading process, to in-crease the students’ repertoire of readingstrategies, and to increase the students’confidence as readers. Small groupliterature discussions, on the other hand,were designed to provide students withan aesthetic experience with literature(Rosenblatt, 1995), to give them achance to make connections and posequestions, and to help them developtheir own taste in books. Students hadthe opportunity to pay attention totheir personal responses to the bookswhile simultaneously learning to evalu-ate literature. The small group discus-sions also encouraged thoughtfuldiscussions among all the children re-gardless of their reading proficiency orlanguage dominance. In those discus-sions students had the opportunity todevelop an opinion about social issuesand to stand up for their ideas whilelistening to others and consideringdifferent perspectives (Martínez-Roldán

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& López-Robertson, 1999). Finally, thesmall group discussions offered a par-ticular space where Spanish language(oral and written) was valued, sup-ported, and fostered and where every-one was encouraged to be bilingual.

Almost a week before each discus-sion, the children were presented withfour books available in both languagesto choose from. We chose the books tobe offered taking into account theirliterary quality (Freeman, 1998; Schon& Corona-Berkin, 1996), the charac-teristics of quality multiculturalchildren’s literature (Yokota, 1993), theiravailability in both Spanish and English(with few exceptions), and a focus onsocial issues.

When Julia and I organized theliterature circles, we encouraged stu-dents as individual readers and as agroup to have a variety of responses toliterature. We believe, with Rosenblatt(1978, 1995), that rather than ap-proaching a piece of literature for thefirst time by focusing and examining itsliterary elements, students should beallowed to respond to the text inwhatever fashion they choose. There-fore, we did not assign roles for thestudents to perform in the literaturecircles. We believed that assigning rolesto the students, although well inten-tioned, controls students’ interactionwith texts and ultimately constrictstheir responses and their discourse.Although the students were young andwere from working-class, minority fami-lies and were consequently describedby many as students at risk, we trustedthem as readers and thinkers who couldtalk about texts without the scaffolding

of roles or handouts. The followingexcerpt, which is the beginning of theirfirst literature discussion in secondgrade, shows our expectations for thediscussions:

1 TEACHER: Whoever wants to, can start.I mean, if you’re ready. You don’thave to raise your hands. Just re-member that if one of us is talking,the rest of us listen. So go ahead.

2 DAYANARA: Let’s go like this you guys(pointing to the members of thecircle in the order she is suggestingthey talk).

3 TEACHER: Go ahead.4 JOSÉ: What do I talk about, my favor-

ite part?5 TEACHER: Anything that you want. You

can tell us your favorite part, some-thing it made you think [of]

6 JOSÉ: [It] made me think of The LittleRed Hen.

7 TEACHER: OK. And it’s our job to lis-ten to what he says, and if we havequestions, we ask him questions. Ifyou have a comment about what hesaid, we can make comments. Well,I have a question. Why did it makeyou think of The Little Red Hen?

(From the discussion of Green CornTamales/Tamales de elote, 8/26/98.)

In summary, the following sched-ule established the organization of thediscussions. The week before the dis-cussion, Julia gave a brief talk on eachbook and read it aloud, if possible, inboth languages. On Monday the stu-dents chose two titles, writing why theychose their first option. That same day,Julia organized the small groups and

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they took the book home for two tothree days with a letter from theteacher. Whether the child could readthe book independently or not, Juliaasked that a relative read the book withthe child one or two times before theday of the discussion just to share theirresponses about the stories. We askedthe students to select three parts of thestory to share in the small groups. Theywere invited to use post-it notes tomark the page(s) or section(s) theywould like to share. Once we met, theylooked at the pages marked with thepost-it notes and began talking aboutwhy they had selected those pages.Some students wrote questions on thepost-it notes.

The groups met with Julia or mefor about 20-40 minutes while the restof the class responded to the booksthrough writing, sketch to stretch, graf-fiti, letter writing, poems, and so on(Short & Harste, 1996). That same dayor the next, each group had an informalsharing of their book with the class. Oc-casionally, the students had a moreformal sharing of their discussions, where-in as a group they took time to thinkhow to share the book with the class.

ResultsThis section has three parts. It beginswith an overview of Isabela’s use ofpersonal responses and narratives inwhich I characterize Isabela’s storytellingas part of her home’s funds of knowl-edge (Moll & Greenberg, 1990). Sec-ondly, I offer an overview of Isabela’suse of narratives over a year, examiningthe interplay between her use of narra-tive (agent) and the role of the linguistic

composition of the groups (context) inshaping, facilitating, or constraining heruse of narratives. Finally, I use criticaldiscourse analysis to describe and ex-amine in detail one of her narratives,focusing on the roles of the narrative inher participation in the small group andthe role of multiple mediational meansin her construction of the narrative.

Narratives as Funds of KnowledgeAs found in literature discussions withmainstream students (Sipe, 1996), Isabelawas also involved in a wide range oftypes of literary talk in response to thetexts, such as analytical talk, intertextualconnections, and personal responses.The category of personal responses,which represented 40% of Isabela’sliterary responses in four small groupsstudied initially in the larger study(Martínez-Roldán, 2000), included allof the comments and/or narratives inwhich Isabela connected to life experi-ences, both to events that had happenedto her and to others. The contentanalysis of the transcripts showed thatmost of Isabela’s narratives of personalexperiences related to the past. Figure 1provides an example from the discus-sion of Hoffman’s (1996) La asombrosaGraciela [Amazing Grace]. The originallanguage used by the participants hasbeen kept in the excerpts throughoutthe article, which will be displayed indouble columns as needed. To the left isthe transcription using italics for theSpanish text, to the right is the transla-tion to English.

During an interview with Isabela’smother, she informed me that Isabelaliked book stories that made her recall

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past lived experiences or family eventssuch as when her mother made Mexi-can tamales. (See Figure 2.)

Isabela’s mother confirmed herdaughter’s preference for telling stories:“De cualquier cosa hace un cuento ella”[She makes a story out of anything].Storytelling was a pattern of discourseIsabela engaged often with her cousins,especially the telling of scary stories.Isabela’s mother said that when theyvisited their relatives, Isabela and hercousin usually ended up arguing andfighting over who knew more scarystories. A scary story was a narrativethat had sensational elements intendedto scare (e.g., dead people, bloody people,

the devil, or mummies). Isabela’s par-ticipation all along in literature discus-sions confirmed her mother’s obser-vation. The content analysis of Isabela’sresponses to the texts in small groupliterature discussions over a year showsthat she engaged in the telling ofnarratives of scary stories, narrativesabout family experiences, visits to herhome town, and her experiences atschool.

Narratives, particularly storytelling,seemed to be part of Isabela’s ways ofknowing (Heath, 1983; Leland & Harste,1994) and part of her home’s funds ofknowledge. From my interactions withIsabela’s mother, I realized that Isabela’s

Me acordé de algo de lo que estabadiciendo la Diana. Que cuando yoestaba en mi pueblito, los otros días,allá iba a salir en lo que llegaba mihermana y le pedí mucho dinero ami mamá. Me compré cincojamoncillos, una soda y cincoporritas de las que me gustan.( . . .) Y comprábamos muchas cosasy luego me las comía, y luego medolía la panza.

I remembered something relatedto what Diana was saying. Thatwhen I was in my little town,some days ago, I was going outsideuntil my sister came home and Iasked my mom for a lot of money.I bought five “jellies,” one soda,and five porritas of the ones that Ilike. (. . .) And we bought a lot ofthings, and then I ate them, andthen my belly hurt.

Figure 1. An example of a narrative of a past experience

A Isabela le gustan más, por decir, uncuento que ella haya vivido algo atrás.Por decir, cuando los libros de lostamales, ella, como que le hacenrecordar atrás cuando uno hace lascosas, cuando la navidad; cuentos quea ella le queden. Los quiere juntarcomo con su vida, así. (Interview,Nov 5, 1998)

Figure 2. Isabela’s mother on Isabela’s story preferences

Isabela likes more, let’s say, a story thatshe may have lived somewhat[something similar] before. Let’s say,like with the stories of tamales, theymade her remember the past, likethings that one has done, like Christ-mas; stories that remain with her. Shewants to make them part of her life,like that. (Interview, Nov 5, 1998)

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and her mother’s ways of speaking werevery similar. Isabela’s mother told nofewer than nine short stories or anec-dotes full of humor, lessons, and familyhistory in one single semi-structuredinterview. In this household, as Isabelaand her mother confirmed, stories andstorytelling were shared among mem-bers of the extended family.

I argue that telling stories is asmuch part of Isabela’s household’s fundsof knowledge as is her father’s knowl-edge of building roofs. The concept offunds of knowledge usually “entails abroader set of activities which requirespecific knowledge of strategic impor-tance to households” (Moll & Green-berg, 1990, p. 323). Usually those fundsare essential to households’ subsistence(economical or social) and includematerial and intellectual resources thatfamilies obtain and distribute throughstrategic social ties or networks. Al-though the art of storytelling does nothave a direct link to the economy ofIsabela’s family, storytelling does have asocial impact in the family insofar as itkeeps the family traditions, history, andvalues alive, thereby helping to con-struct a sense of belonging and identitythat may support the ability of thefamily to participate in society.

Overview of Isabela’s Narratives:The Interplay between theIndividual and the ContextTable 1 presents an overview of theliterature circles in which Isabela par-ticipated over the year. It includes someof the mediational means that were partof the context of the literature circles:the text discussed in each discussion,

the genre of the book, and the linguisticcomposition of the group. It also in-cludes two broad categories of narra-tives in which Isabela engaged: storiesof life experiences and scary stories. AsTable 1 illustrates, Isabela engaged instorytelling of scary narratives only inSpanish groups throughout the year.Indeed, her longer narratives of per-sonal experiences also took place in thecontext of small groups made up eitherentirely of Spanish speakers or in Span-ish-dominant groups. It is not possibleto offer an in-depth discussion of thedifferences in Isabela’s use of storytellingaccording to the linguistic compositionof the groups within the scope of thisarticle. However, a glance at some of thebilingual discussions points to the in-terplay and tension between the indi-vidual—Isabela’s self-regulating herdiscourse—and the context—the lin-guistic composition of the groups—that constrained or shaped her telling ofnarratives. I am appropriating Wertsch’s(1998) definition of agent or individualas “individual-operating-with-media-tional-means” (p. 26), which overcomesthe tendency to set a dichotomy be-tween individual and context.

Examples from two different bilin-gual groups and one monolingual groupprovide insights into how the composi-tion of the groups shaped Isabela’ use ofnarratives. An excerpt from the discus-sion of García’s (1987) My Aunt Otilia’sSpirit/Los espíritus de mi tía Otilia showsthe complexity of the interplay be-tween individual(s) and context. Onemight have expected that this text (theonly scary storybook we offered fordiscussion), chosen by Isabela among

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other options, would have elicited scarystories from her. Instead, she took onthe role of facilitator of Spanish lan-guage for the only English-dominantboy in the group. He was working hardto recover his Spanish because, as hesaid, he wanted to be able to talk to hisgrandmother. Isabela and other Spanish-dominant students assumed the role offacilitators of language for him.

The context of this small groupalso led Isabela to engage with the

TABLE 1Overview of Literature Circles in which Isabela Participated over a Year

DATE BOOK TITLE AND GENRE TWO BROAD CATEGORIES LINGUISTIC OF NARRATIVES COMPOSITION

8/26/98 Green Corn Tamales/Tamales de elote- Modern variant of traditional story

9/2/98 (Qué montón de tamales! (Too Many Tamales)– Realistic fiction

9/16/98 Guillermo Jorge Manuel José. (Wilfrid GordonMcDonald Partridge) - Realistic fiction

9/23/98 El tapiz de abuela (Abuela’s Weave)- Realistic fiction

9/25/98 El tapiz de abuela (Abuela’s Weave)

10/7/98 Uncle Nacho’s Hat/El sombrero del tío Nacho- Legend

10/21/98 La cama de Isabella. (Isabella’s Bed) - Fantasy

10/23/98 La cama de Isabella. (Isabella’s Bed)

10/28/98 My Aunt Otilia’s Spirits/Los espíritus…- Fantasy, scary story

2/4/99 La mariposa - Realistic fiction

2/18/99 La mariposa

3/4/99 El libro de los cerdos (Piggy Book) - Fantasy

3/11/99 La asombrosa Graciela (Amazing Grace)- Realistic fiction

3/18/99 Pepita Talks Twice/Pepita habla dos veces- Realistic fiction

3/25/99 La niña invisible [The Invisible Girl]- Fantasy

Connections to lifeScary stories

Connections to life


Connections to life

Connections to life


Connections to life

Connections to life

Connections to life

Connections to life

Connections to life

Connections to life

Connections to life

Connections to life


Spanish

Spanish

Spanish

Bilingual

Bilingual

Spanish

Bilingual

Bilingual

Bilingual

Bilingual

Spanish

Bilingual

Bilingual

Bilingual

Spanish

students in the oral reading of someparts of the text that they liked in sucha way that the most experienced read-ers in the group supported Isabela asthey read collaboratively: “La cabezaestaba donde deberían estar los pies y los piesdonde debía estar (pausa, leyendo lentamente)y viceversa” [The head was where herfeet should be and her arms where(stopped and read slowly) and vice versa].After that sentence Isabela looked for apage in the book and read a favorite

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long scary story in which some of thestudents participated as co-tellers. Atthe same time, other students in thesame group, a boy and a girl, questionedthe veracity of her story, to which sheresponded: “Porque yo, cuando a mí medicen esas cosas, me asusto, y las cuento yo pa’que, pa’ que me digan si es cierto o no, porqueasí también dicen que si tienes miedo que teencajan unas uñas por atrás” [Because,when someone tells me these things, Iget scared, and I tell them (the stories)so you can tell me if they are real or not,because someone has also told me thatif you are scared, someone will scratchyour back]. After discussing if scarystories are real or not, Isabela closed thediscussion with the short story inFigure 3, in which she volunteered anexplanation to justify her use ofstorytelling before being asked.

It is interesting to observe at theend of this short scary story and at theend of the literature discussion, Isabela’seffort to place her stories within anacceptable type of literary response.That last comment suggests that shewas monitoring or self-regulating herdiscourse (and the audience’s discourse)to accommodate it to the nature andexpectations of the small groups, whichwere organized around a discussion of atext. Indeed, her response to literaturethrough the use of stories, resembleswhat happened in Solsken, Willett, andWilson-Keenan’s (2000) study on thehybridity of texts created by a student.In their study, a Latina girl interwovehome, school, and peer language prac-tices to serve a variety of social andpersonal agendas. Isabela stretched thenotion of connections to books a great

part independently, receiving the sup-port of others only occasionally: “Misdientes (inaudible) y mis pelos se pusieronparados y mis pies dijeron: échense a correr”[My teeth were (inaudible), my hairstood up, and my feet said: get ready torun]. Then Isabela commented: “Eso megustó” [That I liked].

In the discussion of Lester’s (1992)Isabella’s Bed in another bilingual group(two English-dominant boys, one Span-ish-dominant boy, Isabela, and Julia),Isabela did not engage in long narra-tives or storytelling although the storywas about a grandmother’s telling sto-ries of adventures to their children. Theboys did not provide an avid audiencefor storytelling. Isabela instead engagedin translating some of her and others’responses into English or Spanish andin playfully reading and dramatizing thepart of the book she liked the most, thelast page when the grandmother says: “Ihave so many stories to tell you.” Shedid not engage in storytelling butvoiced her responses to the text withinthe literature circle.

Although Isabela engaged instorytelling only when she had a Span-ish-dominant audience, monolingualgroups (groups having only Spanish-dominant students) also presentedIsabela with challenges. Both linguisticcontexts shaped and were shaped byIsabela’s participation. In the literaturecircle discussing Uncle Nacho’s Hat/Elsombrero del tío Nacho by Rohmer andZubizarreta (1989), the students showedgreat interest in listening to Isabela’sstories as soon as she expressed that thebook reminded her of a story. Isabelathen engaged in the storytelling of a

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deal. Isabela described her use ofstorytelling of scary stories as a way totalk about texts “porque me recuerda de loslibros” [because they remind me of thebooks], suggesting how Isabela cre-atively and actively appropriated andcontributed cultural resources into theliterature discussions and how the con-text shaped and was shaped by herresponses. This glimpse of the qualita-tive analysis of Isabela’s use of narrativesover the year points to one of the rolesof narratives and storytelling in herdiscussion of texts: to enable her todraw on funds of knowledge thatallowed her participation in literacyevents at school.

The Narrative of a Recent ImmigrantThe narrative presented in Figure 4,which I titled “The Story of the Park,”was told by Isabela during the literaturediscussion on Pepita Talks Twice/Pepitahabla dos veces by Lachtman Dumas(1995). In that picture book the authortells the story of a bilingual girl namedPepita. Tired of translating for bothEnglish and Spanish speakers, Pepitadecides not to speak Spanish anymore

but changes her mind. This literaturediscussion was 20 minutes long and hadthree Spanish-dominant students andonly one English-dominant student, agirl who described herself as beingbilingual, although her production ofSpanish was limited.

In this discussion the students’ talkfocused strongly on the tensions thatthe main character of the story, Pepita,experiences for being bilingual, specifi-cally, tensions associated with her role asa language broker for the community.The students also shared their opinionsabout being Spanish-English bilingualspeakers, saying that it is better to bebilingual because they can communi-cate with their grandmothers in Span-ish and because, as Isabela said, “Bilingüesestá más bien, porque podemos hablarle aamigos en inglés” [To be bilingual isbetter because we can talk in English tofriends]. The students also shared theirown experiences as bilingual speakers.Within this context Isabela told a longnarrative about an experience she hadwhen she came from Mexico to theUnited States, which I examine throughcritical discourse analysis (CDA). .

Aquí estamos contando lashistorias y ahí sale la momia.Sale la momia y le decimos(cambiando el tono de voz):“Aquí estamos,” y pedimosayuda. Y venimos con la cruz enla mano y venimos con un padre,y así (gesticulando con las manos)le echa agua bendita, ¿ve? Y poreso yo cuento esas historiasporque me recuerda de los libros.

Figure 3. A story to justify telling stories

There we are telling stories, and thenthe mummy comes. The mummycomes and we say: “Here we are,”and we ask for help, and we comewith a cross in our hands, and wecome with a priest, and in this way(gesticulating with her hands) hespreads holy water on it, do you see?And that’s why I tell these storiesbecause they remind me of thebooks.

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The story was completed or revis-ited at four different moments withinthe Pepita literature discussion, which Igrouped as follows: first moment (Stan-zas 1-3), second moment (Stanzas 4-7),and third and fourth moment (Stanzas8-10). The moments worked togetherto create a coherent narrative. Since itwas told in four different moments,there are gaps in the sequence ofnumbered turns in the narrative. Thegaps identify how much talk occurredbetween moments. The talk not in-cluded as part of the excerpts involvedthe sharing of different experiencesamong the different members of thegroups and comments about the text.Those comments addressed differenttopics and for reasons of space, they arenot included in the following analysis.For reasons of space and clarity, I alsokept the pseudonyms of the participantsand the numbers of conversational turnsin the Spanish text leaving only thenumber of stanzas and lines in theEnglish translation.

Organization of the Story:Coherence through Non-linearityAlthough Isabela’s story was completedat four different moments within theliterature discussion, the momentsworked together to create a coherentnarrative, a feature that Wertsch (1998)places at the center of his characteriza-tion of narrative as a cultural tool. Thecognitive function of narratives, heasserts, is the way in which the narratorintegrates a set of interrelationships andevents of different kinds into a singlewhole. One dimension of narrativesthat leads to coherence is the linearity

of a story (its temporal and causalorganization). Isabela’s story had thetypical elements associated with a com-plete and coherent story, such as intro-duction, climax, resolution, and so on,but she reached the coherence of herstory in a non-linear way. The process ofcreating her story can be better de-scribed as having a sort of circularmotion, as evidenced in the ways sheadvanced her story by revisiting aspectsof what she had previously told, makingchanges, and adding new information.

I entertain two interpretations forthe non-linearity of Isabela’s story. Thefirst is the representational role ofnarratives that allows the narrator torepresent and make sense of past anddifficult experiences. If one accepts abroadened concept of narrative com-petence that includes both linear andnon-linear formats, non-linearity in astory may reflect the narrator’s processof making sense of difficult experiencesgradually and tentatively.

Isabela moved back and forth onher description of the discriminatoryexperience she was telling as one inwhich others laughed or not at her: “ytodos se reían de mí” [and everyonelaughed at me] (line 4); “No se reían demí ” [They didn’t laugh at me] (line 7);“porque aquí se ríen mucho” [because herethey laugh a lot] (line 21). She alsomoved back and forth to explain herdilemma and the tensions betweenwhat she wanted to do and whatseemed to be a more appropriate be-havior: “me dio ganas de pegarle, pero no lepegué” [I wanted to hit them, but I didn’thit them] (lines 43-44); “Me daba ganasde pegarle, pero no les pegué” [I wanted to

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Stanza 1

1a. When I came,1b. Just when I came here,2. I didn’t know anything about English3. and I spoke only Spanish4. and everyone laughed at me.

Stanza 2

5. Where?

6. Like when I was,7. They didn’t laugh at me,8. it was that they said things to me,9. that, that I didn’t study English where I lived before.

Stanza 310.Some girls11. because we were there in the small park12. and some girls came13. and I said: “We are playing here before you”14. and they laughed at me.

15. And how did it make you feel that they weremaking fun of you?16. Bad.

Stanza 1100 Isabela:1a Cuando yo llegué,1b. recién yo llegué aquí,2. yo no sabía nada de inglés3. y hablaba puro español4. y todos se reían de mí.

Stanza 2101 Teacher:5. ¿Dónde?102 Isabela:6. Como cuando estaba,7. No se reían de mí,8. fue que me decían cosas9. que, que yo no estudiaba inglés ‘onde (donde) vivía antes.

Stanza 310. Unas niñas,11. porque estábamos allá en el parquesito12. y fueron unas niñas13. y dije: “estamos nosotros jugando más primero aquí”14. y ellas se reían de mí.103 Teacher:15. ¿Y cómo te hizo sentir eso que se burlaran de ti?104 Isabela:16. Mal.

(From 105-116 the students shared some of their experiences as bilingual speakers and language brokersfor their families. Isabela then continued her story.)

Stanza 4117 Isabela:17. Yo, me gusta más allá ‘onde (donde) yo vivía18. porque aquí,19. allá no se reían de mí porque yo no podía hablaren inglés20. y me gusta más allá21. porque aquí se ríen mucho.22. Se reían de mí cuando yo no podía hablar eninglés.

Stanza 5118 Luis:23. ¿Y por [qué se ríen?]119 Nadine:24. [A mí]120 Teacher:25. [Wait], Luis te hizo una pregunta.121 Isabela:26. ¿Mande?122 Luis:27. ¿Por qué se ríen?123 Isabela:28. Ah, porque yo no podía hablar en inglés.

Stanza 6124 Teacher:29. ¿Pero eso pasa todavía?

Stanza 4

17. I, I liked to be more there where I lived before18. because here,19. there they didn’t laugh at me because Icouldn’t speak English20. and I like more there21. because here they laugh a lot.22. They laughed at me when I couldn’t speakEnglish.

Stanza 5

23. And why do [they laugh?]

24. [I]

25. [Wait], Luis asked you a question.

26. Pardon?

27. Why do they laugh?

28. Ah, because I couldn’t speak English.

Stanza 6

29. But does that still happen?

Figure 4. The Story of the Park

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125 Isabela:30. No,31. pero me gusta más allá.126 Nadine:32. A mí me gusta [hablar]127 Luis:33. [¡Ah!], porque donde tú vivías no sereían de ti.128 Isabela:34. Allá en Caborcas35. porque allá hablaba puro español yo.

Stanza 7129 Sandy:36. Where did you come from?130 Isabela:37. En (pause)131 Sandy:38. You can tell me in Spanish.132 Isabela:39. OK. En Caborcas.40. Somos “caborquellejos”41. y somos atilenos.

30. No,31. but I like to be more there.

32. I like to [speak]

33. [Ah!], because where you lived theydidn’t laugh at you.

34. There in Caborcas,35. because there I spoke only Spanish.

Stanza 7

36. Where did you come from?

37. In (pause)

38. You can tell me in Spanish.

39. OK. In Caborcas.40. We are “caborquellejos”41. and we are atilenos.

(In the next turns all of the members of the group engaged in the telling of stories about traveling to theirhome towns and about their roles as language brokers. They also talked about the characters in the book.)

Stanza 8Resolution 1147 Isabela:42. Allá, cuando se rieron de mí,43. me dio ganas de pegarle44. pero no le pegué45. porque mi hermana me dijo: “You are going to bein BI:G trouble.”

(From 148-152 there is talk about fights.)

Stanza 9153 Isabela:46. Cuando se rieron47. me daba ganas de pegarle48. pero no les pegué49. porque yo quería ser amable con los demás niños quehabía allá.

Stanza 10Resolution 2154 Luis:50. Yo tengo que pegarle a mi primo para que se calle.155 Isabela:51. Yo quiero ser amable con los demás que viven aquí52. porque yo me enojé un MONTON53. y mi hermana me dijo: “yo le pego,”54. y le dije: “No,”55. y fui,56. y le pegué una cachetada57. porque me dolió mucho que me dijeron eso.156 Teacher:58. ¿Te dolió mucho?

Stanza 8Resolution 1

42. There, when they laughed at me,43. I wanted to hit them,44. but I didn’t hit them45. because my sister told me: “You are going to bein BI:G trouble.” (From 148-152 there is talk aboutfights.)

Stanza 9

46. When they laughed47. I wanted to hit them,48. but I didn’t hit them49. because I wanted to be nice to the otherchildren who were there.

Stanza 10Resolution 2

50. I have to hit my cousin so he gets quiet.

51. I want to be nice to the others who live here52. because I got VERY mad53. and my sister said: “I will hit them,”54. and I told her: “No,”55. and I went,56. and I slapped her57. because it hurt me a lot that they said that tome.58. Did it hurt you a lot?

Figure 4. continued

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hit them, but I didn’t hit them] (lines 47and 48), and finally, “y fui, y le pegué unacachetada” [and I went, and I slappedher] (lines 55 and 56).

The process of gradually and tenta-tively making sense is also reflected inthe moral stance of Isabela’s story, inwhich she considered different moralstances about what was appropriate todo in a situation like the one she wasdescribing. Isabela said: “pero no le pegué,porque mi hermana me dijo: ” [but I didn’thit them because my sister told me:]‘You are going to be in BI:G trouble’](lines 44 and 45); “pero no les pegué porqueyo quería ser amable con los demás niños quehabía allá” [but I didn’t hit them becauseI wanted to be nice to the otherchildren who were there] (lines 48 and49); and finally, “y le pegué una cachetadaporque me dolío mucho que me dijeron eso”[and I slapped her because it hurt me alot that they said that to me] (lines 56and 57).

A second complementary inter-pretation for the non-linearity ofIsabela’s story and its constructedthrough four different moments is thather process of construction may reflecther knowledge of the expectationswithin the literature group (that othermembers can ask questions, and othermembers should have an opportunityto talk). She was therefore sensitive tothese expectations and to her audience’sneeds and interests, as she demonstratedin other discussions, particularly withinbilingual groups. Moreover, her audi-ence participated in the co-construc-tion of the narrative, an aspect that Iaddress later, and so the non-linearity

speaks to the social aspect of hernarrative.

Isabela reconciled her two roles,one more personal (her role as astoryteller to make sense of the experi-ence and finish the story) and the othermore socially oriented (her role as amember of the literature group discus-sion). Isabela had other conversationalturns in the literature discussion amongthese four moments. In those conversa-tional turns she followed the discussion,posed questions to other membersabout their responses, and had othertypes of responses to literature relatedto the book under discussion. She wasable to follow the line of discussion thatthe other participants suggested butalso to intertwine effectively and com-plete her narrative, sometimes clearlyembedded in the context of the discus-sion of other students. After Luis’scomment on how he hit his cousinsometimes (line 50), Isabela introduceda different solution to the dilemmapresented in her narrative (Stanza 10) inwhich she finally slapped the girl,which illustrates not only how themembers of the group mediated hernarrative but the process of co-con-struction of meaning.

Isabela was taking on the identityof a skillful student (without excludingother possible identities) who knewhow to participate in the discussion oftexts as a literate member of the group(listening, responding to other’s com-ments, and bringing experiences con-nected to the topic of the books, and soon). This notion of achievement departsfrom views of policymakers who inter-

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pret achievement only in terms ofstandardized test scores (e.g., Kansto-room & Finn, 1999).

Building Worlds and SituatedIdentitiesIsabela’s narrative served not only as acultural tool to represent and makesense of past experiences, but it alsoserved to build worlds and socio-culturally-situated identities (Gee,1999a). These roles and building tasks,however, were shaped, facilitated, andconstrained by other mediational means,such as the Spanish language, her peers,and the teacher. In that sense, Isabela’snarrative was mediated and mediating(Smagorinsky & O’Donnell-Allen,2000). My analysis will concentratenow on two building tasks described byGee (1999a), world building and iden-tity building, to explain Isabela’s dis-course more broadly.

The worlds built by Isabela throughher narrative point to the relationshipsand identities she was negotiating andillustrate how the narrative became atool or mediational means in this pro-cess. Isabela used a variety of linguisticdevices and resources, such as opposites,quoting, and codeswitching, that notonly worked together in the creation ofa narrative that had high tellability andcoherence (Ochs & Capps, 2001) butthat were also tools she used to buildworlds and situated identities. Thoselinguistic resources provide numerouscues, pointing to the ways in which hernarrative positioned her and the mem-bers of the group in certain ways.

Isabela’s use of opposites, dichoto-mies, and parallelisms, for example,

makes evident that there are two worldsjuxtaposed in her discourse as repre-sented in the following words:

Here, in the small park (USA) ↔ There,where I lived before (Mexico)

I didn’t know anything of English ↔ I spokeonly Spanish

Everyone laughed at me ↔ They didn’tlaugh at me

These opposites make reference toplace, language, and attitudes. Isabela’suse of opposites suggests a tension, forshe seems to be trying to find anddefine her sense of place and belongingwithin the tensions and demands oftwo socially and linguistically differentworlds. In this process she was negotiat-ing her identity. This tension producedcontradictory emotions: “Me daba garasde pegarle” [I wanted to hit them] and“Yo quería ser amable” [I wanted to benice], as mentioned before. Having justarrived in the United States, Isabela hadone of those experiences that teachrecent immigrants which languagecounts in the U.S. She received thelesson that here you either speak En-glish or people laugh at you. She alsomay have learned that one needs to beaggressive to fight for one’s rights.

At the essence of socioculturaltheory is the notion that “humanthinking develops through the media-tion of others” (Moll, 2001, p. 113).Next, I address how Isabela mademeaning and gained insights into hertwo opposite worlds with the media-tion of the teacher and her peers.Isabela’s story began as a short anecdotetold in one single conversational turn(lines 1-4), one of the many anecdotes

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the children shared in the discussions.Within the literature circles the stu-dents engaged in storytelling exten-sively only when there was an interestedaudience willing to listen, pose ques-tions, or add comments, and that wasalso true for Isabela, even though shewas an accomplished storyteller. In thisnarrative not only the teacher but alsothe students showed great interest, andfrom line 5 on a process of mediationtook place that extended Isabela’s—andother members’—meanings and un-derstandings.

The teacher’s question about wherethe experience occurred (line 5) andhow it made her feel that others werelaughing at her (line 15) made Isabelaexpand and add details to her story andreflect upon her own feelings. Julia alsomade sure that Isabela listened not onlyto her as the teacher but to her peers’questions. She did so even to the pointof strategically controlling the students’turn taking at some points of thediscussion until the questions wereanswered. Stanzas 5 and 6 provide anexample of that situation when Nadineattempted to take the floor of thediscussion. Nadine had to wait severalturns to talk about her role as alanguage broker for her grandmother.The teacher acted as mediator byfacilitating students’ interactions andcreating opportunities for the membersof the group to participate in Isabela’sprocess of meaning making. The teacheralso mediated the discussions in manydifferent ways that are beyond the scopeof this article (e.g., participating as areader and being an active listener andkidwatcher, which enabled her to know

when to follow up in students’ com-ments or when to conclude the discus-sion).

The students were also mediatorsand co-constructors of the narrative. Asmentioned above, Luis’s comment (line50) about his fights may have precipi-tated Isabela’s revision of the end of herstory. Following are some examplesinvolving Luis and Sandy that illustratehow both Spanish and English-domi-nant students mediated Isabela’s con-struction of narrative, meaning, andidentities while they similarly engagedin a process of making meaning andpositioned themselves within the nar-rative.

Isabela had already mentioned thatthe reason the girls in her story laughedat her was because she did not speakEnglish when in Stanza 5, Luis, aSpanish dominant student, asked, “¿Porqué se ríen?” [Why do they laugh?] (lines23 and 27). It seems that Luis washaving a difficult time making sense ofthe reason why someone would laughat another person for not speakingEnglish. In Stanza 6 he seemed still tobe thinking of Isabela’s experience andlistening to her. At that point he made astatement indicating an understandingof why she preferred where she livedbefore: “¡Ah!, porque donde tú vivías no sereían de ti” [Ah!, because where youlived they didn’t laugh at you] (line 33).As a result of Luis’s comment, Isabelamentioned for the first time the nameof her town: “Allá en Caborcas, porque alláhablaba puro español yo” [There inCaborcas, because there I spoke onlySpanish] (lines 34 and 35). Thus, thisinteraction seemed to support Isabela’s

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understanding of what those two worldslooked like and what it meant to belongto them.

Isabela then positioned herself asbeing atilena (from Atil, Mexico) and aSpanish speaker, which suggests thebeginning of the development of acollective identity (Trueba, 1999). Stanza7, in which Sandy (English dominant)wanted to know more about the placeIsabela came from, illustrates the powerof peer mediation in Isabela’s construc-tion of an ethnic identity in the sensethat Sandy’s question and comment ledIsabela to affirm her sense of belonging.The stanza also shows how the narra-tive positioned the participantsinteractionally (Worthman, 2001).

It seems that Sandy interpretedIsabela’s long pause (line 37) as signal-ing a codeswitching to English, as theSpanish-dominant students usually didwhen responding to English speakers.Sandy knew by experience how hard itwas to speak in a second language(Sandy said in a previous discussion thatis hard to speak both languages) and hadreceived support from the Spanish-dominant students previously when shewanted to participate in the discussionin Spanish. She thus invited Isabela touse Spanish, the language in whichIsabela could fully express her ideaswithout constrictions. This attitude wascontrary to that of the girls in Isabela’sstory who laughed at her for speakingSpanish. In that sense Stanza 7 paral-leled in part the content of Isabela’snarrative. With this invitation Sandypositioned herself as being differentfrom the English dominant girls wholaughed at Isabela, which illustrates the

interactional role of narratives (Worth-man, 2001) through which participants,in this example a Spanish-dominantand an English-dominant girl, recre-ated and negotiated relationships.

Sandy’s invitation led Isabela toconnect language (Spanish) and placeto a sense of belonging and a sense ofself that she articulated as follows:“Somos ‘caborquellejos’ y somos ‘atilenos’”[We are ‘caborquellejos’ (from Caborcas)and we are atilenos (from Atil)]” (lines40 and 41). Isabela’s pause before an-swering Sandy’s questions may also beexplained as Isabela’s difficulty express-ing her identity in English becauselanguage and identity are so stronglyinterconnected for many ethnic groups.Like the Mexican American students inPease-Alvarez’s (1993) study, Isabelaconstructed her identity connecting toboth country of origin and language. Inthat sense Sandy mediated Isabela’sconstruction of identity by validatingwhat seemed to be so deeply a part ofIsabela’s identity: to speak in Spanishand to name herself using the Spanishpatronymics of two little towns fromMexico.

In her review of scholarship onethnicity, Mercado (2001) presents aview of ethnicity as an importantsource of identity and a marker ofsolidarity for children and youth. Shehighlights that ethnicity is also “aboutthe quest for community and belong-ing” (p. 679). Isabela had expressed inother literature discussions a strongsense of belonging to Atil, Mexico: Yocreo que I, yo belong a mi casa del Atil” [Ithink I, I belong to my house in Atil], “Ibelong to my pueblito” [little town] she

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had said in a previous discussion (Lamariposa, 2/4/99). When I asked her whatmade her feel that she belonged there,she responded: “Porque allí yo nací y allíyo tengo que estar” [Because I was bornthere and it is there where I have to be].

McCarty and Zepeda (1999), intheir discussion about Native Americannaming, argue that “self-naming is per-haps the simplest yet most profound actof human autonomy” (p. 200). Isabelaaffirmed her identity in this excerptthrough self-naming as a family of“caborquellejos” and “atilenos.” Mexican,Mexican American, or Latina are namesthat other people assign to childrensuch as Isabela, but she identified herselfand her family as “caborquellejos” and“atilenos.” Her self-identification re-vealed an important axis of her con-struction of identity (McCarty &Zepeda, 1999): an identity where sense-of-belonging is linked to the localcommunity where she was born andraised before her family moved to theU.S. Isabela’s words, as a Mexican girl,reflect what McCarty and Zepeda de-scribe as one of the most salient andresilient factors in the identity forma-tion of indigenous groups in NorthAmerica; that is, the embeddedness with-in indigenous communities of a “sense ofself in sense of place” (p. 198; emphasis inoriginal) and the role of language inconstructing and reconstructing sense-of-place and sense-of-self. In otherwords, for Isabela identity, place, andlanguage were intertwined in narrative.

Conclusion and ImplicationsConsidering that school’s responsibilityis to offer equal educational opportuni-

ties to all students, this case study hasimplications for teaching practices andeducational policies for English Lan-guage Learners in bilingual and main-stream classrooms. Next I address threeaspects of this study that have implica-tions for ensuring and extending En-glish Language Learners’ access tolearning: providing access to narratives,to students’ first language, and to discus-sions of texts that address critical issueswithin heterogeneous groups.

Access to NarrativesThis case study illustrates the variousroles of narratives in an English lan-guage learner’s participation in litera-ture discussions. The study shows thathaving access to narratives enabledIsabela to draw on funds of knowledgethat allowed her participation in lit-eracy events at school. Isabela’s narra-tives played a representational and aninteractional role in her discussions.Narratives, as cultural tools, servedIsabela not only to represent the pastbut also to enable her and her audience’sself construction, their construction ofsituated identities. This study thereforeadds a new dimension to the profes-sional literature on sociocultural theorythat examines classroom instruction byillustrating the ways in which narrativesmediate students’ construction of iden-tities.

Isabela’s narrative enabled her todevelop situated identities in two are-nas. On the one hand, she developed anacademic identity as a skillful studentand storyteller who participated effec-tively in small group discussions ofliterature and who self-regulated her

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discourse accordingly to the linguisticcontext of the small groups. On theother hand, she articulated a culturalidentity rooted in her experiences inher country of origin and as a recentimmigrant in the United States. Thiscase study demonstrates how the twoidentities can come together in a schoolsetting and in a literacy event when ateacher creates the context where avariety of cultural tools—such as theuse of narratives of personal experi-ences and students’ first language—areavailable and valued, suggesting a posi-tive relationship between ethnicity andlearning. As Mercado (2001) pointsout: “Teachers need to have a moreexpansive view of the complex role thatethnicity and ethnic identification havein human development, both of whichinfluence and are influenced by theteaching and learning process” (p. 679).

This case study also shows thatstudents’ narratives may not reflect thetype of linearity that is so valued inmainstream discourse and research.Isabela’s narrative reached its coherencethrough a nonlinear process that mightreflect patterns of home-based dis-course but also seemed to reflect herprocess of meaning making of a dis-criminatory experience. As has beenfound in studies with mainstream popu-lations, this case study also shows thatnarratives among bilingual young stu-dents can also be co-constructed, that is,not so much told to others but toldwith others. The co-construction ofnarratives enabled other members ofthe groups to position themselves ascertain kinds of persons, in this case assupportive Spanish and English-domi-

nant students, not a small contributionin an English-only era. The co-con-struction of narratives challenges anindividualistic view of narrative perfor-mance and speaks of the need toprovide opportunities for jointly-creatednarratives in classrooms.

Access to LanguageThe findings of this study suggest theimportance of allowing the use ofstudents’ first language (in this case,Spanish) to facilitate the learning ofEnglish and students’ literacy develop-ment. In this specific bilingual learningcontext the students’ home languagewas regarded as an intellectual resourceand a tool for thinking that the childrenbrought to the educational process.Therefore, Isabela was regarded as abilingual student whose linguistic andcultural resources were acknowledgedand used by the teacher for instruc-tional purposes. Isabela’s linguistic rep-ertoires enabled her to participate as aliterate member of the classroom withindifferent small group literature discus-sions with either Spanish-dominant orEnglish-dominant students.

Having access to two languagesshaped Isabela’s use of narratives. In aSpanish linguistic context, although shehad a range of responses to literature,she drew much on narratives andstorytelling to make sense of texts andlife. In the English-dominant groups,she assumed the role of facilitator ofSpanish for the English-dominant stu-dents who were working on recoveringSpanish and occasionally made transla-tions of her and others’ responses intoEnglish or Spanish. Isabela did not

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engage in storytelling or long narrativesin English-dominant groups, even if thetexts were suitable to engage students instorytelling, which suggests that Isabelamonitored her discourse as she movedfrom Spanish-dominant groups to En-glish-dominant groups.

Having access to different linguis-tic contexts and different audiencesmade available a range of roles forIsabela that allowed her participation asa literate member of different groups,which points to the benefits of provid-ing bilingual and heterogeneous learn-ing contexts to English languagelearners. Mainstream teachers of lin-guistically diverse students face thechallenge of mediating students’ learn-ing by creating opportunities to tapinto students’ first language while theylearn English, even if a teacher does notknow the language of the students. Afirst step in this direction is to acknowl-edge the important and positive role ofthe first language in learning.

This case study also illustrates howempowering and beneficial it is forlinguistic minority students when theirhome language and culture are valuedrather than ignored. For some students,such as Isabela, their ability to use theirnative tongue represents an importantaxis of their construction of identity,specifically their identification with theethnic-cultural group of their parents.Providing students with access to theirnative languages as they negotiate cul-tural identities has implications forstudents’ successful participation atschool, which is relevant to goals ofequity and justice in education (Nieto,2002; Soto, 1997). The argument made

here about the benefits of enablinginstead of restricting students’ access todiverse linguistic and cultural resourceschallenges instruction enacted throughEnglish-only legislation.

Literature DiscussionsThis study also contributes to theprofessional literature on children’s re-sponses to texts by focusing on apopulation that is almost absent fromthat discussion, bilingual (Spanish/English) young children discussing lit-erature in small groups. Literature dis-cussions in this bilingual classroom usedand extended the resources studentsbrought to school by providing accessto multiple mediational means as thestudents talked about texts: students’languages, the mediation of peers inheterogeneous groups, the mediationof adults, and the content of texts thataddressed social issues relevant to thestudents’ lives.

As Isabela’s narrative illustrates, smallgroup literature discussions provided acontext where these 7-year-old stu-dents entered a discourse through whichthey were able to reflect on experiencesof discrimination and even were learn-ing to position themselves as empow-ered students willing to defend theirrights. This case study suggests thatthere is no need for delaying children’sdiscussions of critical issues until theyfirst learn to decode, a practice thatemphasizes skills at the expense ofcontent and thoughtfulness. The ten-sions described by Isabela through hernarrative have been described as char-acteristic of bicultural children (Darder,1991). Reading and talking about those

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experiences can benefit not only bilin-gual/bicultural students but mainstreamstudents as well. It can also benefitteachers. As Valdés (2001) points out,teachers, especially mainstream teach-ers, may have little awareness of howlanguage discrimination operates in thelives of young immigrant students andin the lives of their parents.

Finally, I want to highlight anadditional potential benefit of the lit-erature discussions as organized in thisbilingual classroom, namely, to influ-ence parents’ perceptions of the value ofreading and talking about books atschool and home for the academicsuccess of their children. According toIsabela’s mother, the literature discus-sions impacted Isabela’s motivation and

academic achievement in general: “Puesa mí me gusta. Isabela sí ha adelantadomucho. (. . .) Se me hacía muy atrasada entodo y no le echaba ganas. (. . .) Me gustaporque está saliendo adelante.” [I like it (theactivity of literature discussions). Isabelahas improved a lot. (. . .) I found that shewas so behind in everything and wasnot motivated (. . .) I like it because sheis ‘moving ahead’]. It is not my inten-tion to establish a causal link betweenthe literature discussions and Isabela’smotivation and later performance atschool but to bring the parents’ per-spectives instead. Isabela, indeed, “le echóganas,” and she graduated in June 2002from fifth grade. She still likes to tellstories, both personal and scary ones..

Author’s Note

I want to acknowledge the Spencer Foundation who partially funded the larger study and theUniversity of Iowa who supported further analysis of the data through a postdoctoral fellowship.The writing of this article was also supported by the National Council of Teachers of EnglishResearch Foundation through a Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color fellowship. Iam deeply grateful to the various scholars who mediated my writing by providing thoughtfulcomments to earlier drafts of this article. My special thanks to teacher-researcher Julia López-Robertson for her participation and her contributions to the larger study and to the childrenand families who participated in the study. Contact the author at Arizona State University,College of Education, Division of Curriculum and Instruction, PO Box 870911, Tempe, AZ85287-0911; e-mail [email protected].

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Children’s Literature References

BROWNE, A. (1991). El libro de los cerdos [Piggybook]. México: Fondo de Cultural Económica.

CASTAÑEDA, OMAR S. (1993). El tapiz de abuela [Abuela’s weave]. Ill. Enrique Rodríguez. NewYork: Lee & Low Books.

FOX, M. (1988). Guillermo Jorge Manuel José [Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge]. Ill. Julie Vivas.Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones Ekaré.

GARCÍA, R. (1941/1987). My aunt Otilia’s spirits/Los espíritus de mi tía Otilia. Ill. Rosin Cherin &Roser I. Reyes. San Francisco: Children’s Book Press.

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GARCÍA SÁNCHEZ, J. L., & PACHECO, M.A. (n.d.). La niña invisible [The invisible girl]. Ill. UlisesWensell. Colección Los Derechos del Niño. Miami: Santillana.

HOFFMAN, M. (1996). La asombrosa Graciela [Amazing Grace]. Ill. Caroline Binch. New York: DialBooks for Young Readers.

JIMÉNEZ, F. (1998). La mariposa. Ill. Simón Silva. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

LACHTMAN DUMAS, O. (1995). Pepita talks twice/Pepita habla dos veces. Ill. Alex Pardo DeLange.Houston: Piñata Books.

LESTER, A. (1992). La cama de Isabella [Isabella’s Bed]. Caracas: Ediciones Ekaré.

LOMAS-GARZA, C. (1996). In my family/En mi familia. San Francisco: Children’s Book Press.

MACALUSO RODRÍGUEZ, G. (1994). Green corn tamales/Tamales de elote. Ill. Gary Shepard. Tucson,AZ: Hispanic Books

ROHMER, H., & ZUBIZARRETA, R. (1989). Uncle Nacho’s hat/El sombrero del tío Nacho. Ill. VegReisberg. San Francisco: Children’s Book Press.

SOTO, G. (1996). (Qué montón de tamales! [Too many tamales]. Ill. Ed Martínez. New York: ThePutnam and Grosset Group.

APPENDIX

Notational devices used in transcripts to name some features of speech:Brackets [ ] indicate overlapping speech.Capitalized words are emphatic (said with extra stress).A colon following a vowel indicates elongation of vowel.Codeswitching will be represented by underlining.Parentheses indicate additional information.

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