Foreword

Adolescent. Boys. Literate. Identity. Each carefully chosen word of this book's title generates interest: adolescent, because it is a turbulent stage of life; boys, because they are thought to be “left behind”; literate, because it suggests being and doing literacy; and indentites, because studies in self-making are prevalent in almost every discipline in the arts and social sciences. However, Mary Rice does more than merely present these four isolated areas. She masterfully weaves them together in such a way that the reader is able to enter into her teaching world and the lives of five ninth-grade males with whom she works closely. Dialogue about negotiating roles, shifting tensions, exchanging edibles, overcoming irony, reconsidering literate narratives, and reimagining boys' stories in classrooms ensues.