Dockter, JessicaBlack Storytellers Alliance2018-05-042018-05-042008https://hdl.handle.net/11299/196315This paper reports on a three-month study of bi-weekly storytelling sessions with African American 3rd graders in an urban school, and seeks to develop an understanding of how the cultural storytelling promoted particular identities and ways of being as well as how students took up or resisted those identities. Elements of performance theory, with its focus on the decontextualization and recontextualization of texts, and critical discourse analysis as it relates to identities and social power, frame the analysis of how three students 'story' themselves through retellings of and responses to the tales they hear. These cases demonstrate how social identities were in constant negotiation in the storytelling space in ways that were awarded varying degrees of what Bauman and Briggs refer to as access, legitimacy, competence, and value.enMinneapolisNorth MinneapolisNorthside Seed Grant (NSG) ProgramReport