Establishing “Selfhood”—A Book Club, Community-Based Theater and Literary Interpretations

This article describes research on the Harbor Us Book Club. Critical analysis of the reading responses from preteen Black youth remains surprisingly rare in literacy studies. Our inquiry asks: How do readers develop literary and lived understandings of selfhood in response to the books? In what follows, we describe the theoretical frameworks and research methods undergirding this project. We then present two themes exemplifying our key findings and conclude with implications for schools and communities.