The Spy Girls and the Quest for “Forbidden” Literacy: Rural Chinese Girls’ Negotiation of “No Christmas” School Policy Through Subversive Literacy Practices

ABSTRACT

This article is a critical ethnographic study that examines rural Chinese girls’ literacy practices in sanctioned and unsanctioned spaces, and their negotiations with the articulated and delivered literacy program. In particular, this study focuses on a group of 1st-grade girls, who I call the “Spy Girls,” engaged in the celebration of Christmas, and their interactions with unauthorized literacy practices or “forbidden literacy” that challenge the institutional and structural discourse in relation to gender and school policies. Using a feminist lens, I argue that although local governments have deemed celebrating Christmas to be a compromise of tradition and unpatriotic, the girls’ practices exemplified the ways they negotiate gender roles and construct literate identities through appropriating acceptable forms of literacy expression to communicate under the radar.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural socialization
• gender
• literacy practices
• policies
• rural China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All translations from Mandarin to English were done by the author.

2. The Chinese education system is examination-oriented and uses systems of ranking students that determine their opportunities for joining the Young Pioneers, which is the required first procedure for admission into the Communist Party. The red scarf is a piece of the national flag and the symbol of the young vanguard. The scarves are dyed red to symbolize the blood of revolutionary martyrs, representing the sacrifice of the revolution.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Graduate Student Dissertation Award in College of Education at the Pennsylvania State University.