Critical literacy is the practice of evaluating information, insights, and perspectives through an analysis of power, culture, class, and gender. A critical perspective suggests that the meaning within a text cannot be separated from the historical, political, personal, and social contexts in which it was written. Being critically literate, therefore, means that during the reading transaction readers question this contextual frame as a way to position or see themselves and others as enabling or defying the particular situation or belief being posited by the author, the situation, or themselves. The process of preparing critically literate readers provides students and teachers with a forum to analyze their same and differing topical perspectives while promoting increased student engagement and learning. This article describes a lesson sequence that illustrates how the authors supported their students as they developed a critical literacy perspective. The authors' immediate purpose was to support their students' abilities to employ a critical literacy perspective of both text and authorship as a means to identify and position their beliefs about issues of racism, power, and oppression. (Contains 1 figure.)