Narratives or Discourses influence how identity is read to such a degree that they serve to equate certain identities or groups of people -- African Americans, Latin s, American Indians, immigrants and women to name a few --

with intellectual and academic inferiority despite remarkable performances or significant accomplishments. This is especially true for mathematics since narratives also position math as the ultimate sign of intelligence and academic superiority. This narrative inquiry implicates such socio-historical, cultural, political narratives and their associated binaries in the (re)production of inequities in mathematics and with Walkerdine (1990) contends that "the issue was never about `real' performances, but the stories we tell about them, the discourses in which they are inscribed and the positions these make available to the learner" (p. 135). To this end, this project explored the stories 44 high school students told about mathematics, the narratives their stories were situated in and the positions these made available to the students as learners.

Through competing & contradictory narratives, the homes students built were tied to complex multiple identities, including race, ethnicity, nation, gender, sexuality, class, athlete, and often included tensions, constraints & oppositions. Students negotiated their relationships to mathematics through two particular competing meta-narratives --

the Intellectual Development Discourse and the Schooling Discourse. Some students negotiated relationships with mathematics that were central (Central Street homes), some students negotiated relationships with mathematics via an Alpha phenomenon (Alpha Way homes) and some students negotiated relationships that were peripheral to mathematics (Peripheral Circle homes). Students whose identities were aligned with the higher status side of narrative binaries worked within the associated Discourses had the least tensions and were more likely to develop a relationship with mathematics where they could locate themselves as "good at math." This is because their experiences and lived realities worked to produce the pattern of binaries and their performance as "natural.".