"I didn't know they made more cinderella stories, and change the color" : counterstories from an after school book club"

In this study, I examine how three African American girls who participated in a multi-cultural after school book club make sense of race and gender as they read versions of the Cinderella story in which the Cinderella character is Black . Analysis of data from interviews and book club discussions suggests that adolescent African American females expand their repertoire of female gender roles when exposed to Pan-African Cinderella's by taking up the texts in ways that both challenge and reinforce family-based female gender roles. I explore the implications of these findings for our understanding of the reading experiences of urban African-American female adolescents.