Connecting, resisting, and searching for safer places: Students respond toMildred Taylor's The Friendship

We analyze the discussion that developed when four fifth-grade girls, three African American and one Hispanic, and Karla Moller, a European American, transacted with Mildred Taylor's The Friendship (1987). Framing our analysi s within the intersection of reader-response theory and sociocultural and c ritical theories of literacy learning, we show how participants' responses to Taylor's text and adult and peer guidance helped to create a response de velopment zone that allowed for a dialectic of connecting with and resistin g the evocation. The girls all struggling readers, used reading, writing, a nd discussion to address comprehension difficulties and construct multiple levels of meaning. They became increasingly aware of historical racism and connected that knowledge to events from their own experience, including enc ounters with the Klan and memories of a relative's murder. We present the g roup's discussion as a metaphorical play and the girls as spectators who be come actors as they engaged in this "theater of discourse" (Boal, 1985).