This article invites a conversation about how critical participatory research transforms the production of knowledge, enables a complex chronicling of counter stories, and nurtures the contestation of dominant narratives with the very people who have been misrepresented as Others. Through a series of research stories fomented in prison, courtrooms, and social movements, I hope to incite a provocative imagination for critical research "to be of use" in a moment of neoliberal gentrification of educational studies.