Voicing Ourselves: Whose Words We Use When We Talk about Books

Using Bakhtinian theory, this study reveals how and why readers routinely refer to the words and ideas of others to interpret the meanings and implications of the books they read.

In a public high school classroom in the San Francisco Bay area, a group of twelfth graders have decided themselves to enroll for Advanced-Placement English. Faced with unprecedented diversity for such a class in terms of academic and ethnic backgrounds, veteran teacher Joan Cone dared to trust her students to lead their own discussions of a variety of provocative authors including Baldwin, Didion, Malcolm X, and Woolf. Voicing Ourselves examines a year's worth of such sessions, revealing how a teacher's role is transformed, and, moreover, offering an important component in any teacher's repertoire of instructional strategies: student-led discussion. Above all, the book shows the startling success of students licensed to engage one another directly in talk about books, revealing the richly social tapestry of such conversations.