Broken Silences: Writing and the Construction of 'Cultural Texts' by Urban, Pre Adolescent Girls

Abstract

In the fifth grade urban classroom in which I have been doing ethnographic research over the last two and one half years, the Latina and African American preadolescent girls talk about stories of expectations and conflicting roles that they must perform in their schools and communities. These young women often feel afraid to speak, afraid to break the silences they know they are expected to keep. In this article, I argue that one of the best ways for young women to begin to break these silences, at a "critical moment" (Gilligan, 1990) in their psychological development, is to talk about their particular experiences through writing, developing cultural texts to be used for further examination and discussion as part of the literature of the classroom.