Seduced by Images: Identity and Schooling in the Lives of Puerto Rican Girls

Abstract

Based on a two‐year ethnographic study at an urban middle school, this article describes the power that images created by and about Puerto Rican girls hold in shaping their schooling experiences. Using a black, critical, feminist framework, I show how dichotomizing the sexuality of Puerto Rican females against their intellectual development obscures the complex ways that identities are co‐constructed and then affirmed, appropriated, or resisted within their school site. I conclude that to resist the reproduction of educational inequality in the lives of Puerto Rican females, we must explore and seek to transform the influential ways that identities are mediated and educational outcomes are produced within the school contexts where Puerto Rican females are educated . [Puerto Rican, urban, educational equity, ethnicity, gender]