The author argues that Black female figures disrupt the normative constructions of genre and gender in narrative-based costumed pretend play and turns body spectatorship into new narratives of speculation. For Black women at play, she asserts, cosplay (i.e., comic book and pop culture costume play) and masquerade (i.e., as during Caribbean…

This study explores a psychosocial concept coined by the author referred to as "Urban Critical Literacy" (UCL). UCL is an emergent four-step strategy employed by five African American young men as they navigated their cultural worlds of home and school in an urban setting. Critical literacy is the theoretical conceptual framework that…