This paper uses a methodology that synthesises an Academic Literacies approach and Critical Discourse Analysis to explore student experiences of feedback on written assessments in two higher education institutions. The qualitative analysis of student interviews is oriented around three topics: (1) the socially situated meaning of feedback; (2) feedback and self-identity; and (3) the power/knowledge relations of learning and teaching. In the purposeful dialogue created by interviewer and interviewee, emergent themes of concern to students are critically analysed to capture something of the complexity of feedback as a genre of academic communication. We conclude that feedback literacy is characterised by diversity and difference; that there are different levels of engagement with feedback; and that there is no universal formula for producing effective feedback.