Drawing on a larger ethnographic study, this article documents (a) how and for what purposes literacy is used in 3 culturally diverse families of low socioeconomic status and (b) what various cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental factors shape the families' literacy practices in their home milieus in an urban context. Data analysis revealed that the families use literacy in both 1st and 2nd languages for a variety of purposes--helping with schoolwork, self-improvement, leisure and everyday living, and advocating for improved school practices. These literacy practices, however, are seriously constrained by various out-of-school factors, such as school-home literacy fracturing, declining neighborhood and school culture, different forms of racism, and family and neighborhood social class statuses. Findings suggest that there is a need to broaden existing efforts to improve minority literacy education within classrooms and schools to address the "limit situations" outside of school that affect students' lives and impede their school achievement. Experts must make a concerted endeavor to improve the urban social and physical environment as well as to implement pedagogical practices that connect students' learning inside school with their lived realities outside school.