How Literacy Practices And Literacy Underlife Are Shaped...

Adolescence is a trying time when one struggles to gain independence while still under authority, understand one’s roles in an unforgiving hierarchy, and still find a way to form an identity. With all of this it’s no wonder that one later looks back on the adolescent years with bittersweet nostalgia. However, it also brings to mind the influences that shape us at this critical point in time. While reading the case studies in Margaret Finders’ Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High, I was struck with the realization that in my middle school and early high school years I was what Finders referred to as a tough cookie. Which lead to an important question, did my own literacy practices shape my identity or did my identity shape my literary practices? In this paper I will explore how literacy practices and literacy underlife are shaped by the processes in which adolescents build their identities. Beginning with Just Girls, Finders first explores sociocultural perspectives, more specifically gender roles and the hierarchy found in schools. Finders cites that there is a shift and change occurring when one enters junior high, â€Å"[†¦] a critical juncture of necessary unlearning and relearning. Adults and adolescents must all renegotiate their roles and relationships- roles and relationships informed not simply by entry into adolescence, but also by how adolescence is situated within multiple cultural, historical, and institutional settings† (13). In support of a shift in