In this essay, we review and comment on three books that focus on language, literacy, and visual and cultural communication: "English as a Local Language: Post-Colonial Identities and Multilingual Practices" by Christina Higgins; "Literacy and Power" by Hilary Janks; and "South African Visual Culture," edited by Jeanne van Eeden and Amanda du Preez. Each of these books takes a critical stance toward language, literacy, and culture and each is focused on particular contexts in Africa. Taken as a whole, these books reveal the complexity of social practices that surround literacy in particular contexts through the careful examination of historical contexts, power relationships, and social interactions. While focused on African contexts, the arguments related to language diversity, multimodal literacy practices, and cultural representations of meaning in these books have global relevance.