Many students of color who are also identified as "struggling" readers are likely to have negative experiences in school. In this article, I discuss the findings of a case study examining how reader identities emerged in and through language for such students. The discourse data analyzed here concern an interactional pattern in which the focal students and their teacher collaborated in disrupting identities of deficiency, and instead constructed literate identities within whole-group discussions of text. These findings highlight moments of agency from students marginalized in schools and point toward ways that teachers and students can collaboratively create space for students' literate voices to be heard.