THE NINJAS, THE X-MEN, AND THE LADIES - PLAYING THE POWER AND IDENTITY IN AN URBAN PRIMARY-SCHOOL

Children in our diverse society are not only learning to read and writ e texts; they are learning to read and write human possibilities. They read each other's faces and clothes as closely as they do any storybo ok, and they write each other's future in the stories they imagine. Th is article is an analytic narrative about children's use of stories to reveal and transform images of power and of gender in the local cultu re of an urban second-grade classroom. It is based on a qualitative st udy of children's symbolic and social use of superhero stories-popular media stories that vividly reveal societal beliefs about power and ge nder, which are themselves interwoven in complex ways with race, class , and physical demeanor. Through the writing and acting of stories, th e children let each other witness their imaginations at work and then raise issues about who plays whom in whose story. The dialogic process es thus enacted allowed rigid images of gender relations and of glorif ied power to be rendered more complex. There is no simple classroom pr ocedure that will allow children to achieve some sort of critical cons ciousness and a world of greater imagined possibilities for all. But t here are processes, rooted in the social lives and play of childhood, that can help children deal with the contradictory pressures of growin g up in a multicultural society where power (i.e., ability to take act ion and influence that society) is not equitably distributed.