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This paper stems from a study of an eighth-grade writing club in an urban school. The study asked: How would students use a community-based set of texts to create identities for themselves and each other in relation to their communities, their schooling, and writing and to examine issues of personhood? The paper theorizes about what the notions of personhood and intertextuality contribute to educators' conceptions of literacy teaching and learning. It provides a definition of personhood, reviews related research, and presents an analytical framework which includes a rationale for why personhood and literacy are productively investigated through the intertextuality heuristic. To elaborate on the theoretical ideas presented, the paper focuses on two aspects of the writing club: (1) the ways two students took up opportunities presented to them as they participated for shaping and reshaping discourse practices about personhood along the dimensions of history, music, racial and ethnic identity, and womanhood; and (2) the significance of the study's framing in providing opportunities for students to make intertextual links between their research studies and the literacy practices of community members. In addressing how the students took up their literacy practices, the paper elaborates on the discourse practices that framed the writing project, which opened up what is described as an "intertextual field" containing dynamic potential for students to create intertextual links between their inquiry into community issues and the inquiry of community members who were using research and writing to address similar issues. (Contains two tables, five transcripts, eight notes, and 92 references.) (NKA)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert