The Sociocultural Benefits of Writing for African American Adolescent Males

Historically speaking, reading and writing among African Americans were collaborative acts involving a wide range of texts that held social, economic, political, or spiritual significance. One of the constants of literacy collaboratives was being regularly and purposefully engaged with print within a meaningful social context. During the summer of 2009 we reconstructed a communal approach to engage 12 adolescent males (ages 12-17) with reading and writing texts as we examined the sociocultural benefits of writing for these young males during a 5-week qualitative case study framed by a theory of Black literate lives and communities of practice. We offer that there may be a need to (re)theorize writing for African American adolescent males, particularly those who are underperforming in schools and who are experiencing incidents that produce vulnerability at a disproportionate rate.