Making sense of injustices in a classed world: working-poor girls' discursive practices and critical literacies

Drawing from a larger ethnographic study, this article engages post-structural theories of language and critical feminist theories of social class to examine two fourth-grade, White, working-poor girls' narratives about their urban neighbourhood in the United States. The author argues that young girls should be perceived as social theorists informed by multiple discourses and that their discursive practices can be analysed and used for pedagogical purposes. Working against the typically deficit, pathological or sympathetic readings of poor children's life narratives, this article presents the girls as intellectual workers who are constructing theories that may or may not align with discourses informing critical literacies pedagogies for social change.