In the summer of 1978, at Church Teachers' College in Mandeville, Jamaica, a class of advanced students participating in the Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL) wrote, cast, rehearsed, and performed a play that satirized several major institutions--the family, the church, and the business sector--as well as class and gender…

This article is an ethnographic case study of a community literacy project that teaches immigrants to the U.S. how to get their driver's licenses. The article shows how perceptions of literacy change when project participants encounter the "rules of the road"--unspoken rules that are highly social, deeply embodied, and usually pitched by…

This paper considers the practical and theoretical methodologies of the community literacy project, "The Recipe of Me," conducted with homeless youth in Orlando, Florida. In this project, youth created personal, mediatized narratives in a storytelling residency aimed at examining the role of digital storytelling in fostering confidence,…

During a sabbatical semester in Fall 2018, "Community Literacy Journal (CLJ)" co-editor Paul Feigenbaum volunteered as a "Scholar-in-Residence" at Youth Enrichment Services (YES), a nonprofit established in 1994 that is based in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Guided by its mission "to create hope out of…

In this article, author Veronica House interviews David Joliffe, who retired from the Brown Chair of English Literacy at the University of Arkansas in 2018. The two discuss how to find funding and support for community-engaged projects.

This article explores the methodological impact of building and curating a transnational archive of working-class literacy practices, spanning themes of vocation, immigration, gender, race, and disability, from the ground up alongside the "Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers." The article focuses particularly on how our…

While current community literacy scholarship foregrounds the importance of listening carefully to communities in the process of establishing, developing, and sustaining equitable and ethical community partnerships, the field does not yet offer explicit methods for practicing community listening, especially in the early, preparatory stages of the…

This article reports from instances of child language brokering among emergent bilingual youths and parents at a New York City after-school community literacy program composed largely of Mexican immigrant families. I argue that youth language brokers negotiated literacies with and for their parents in differing contexts, with different audiences,…

Literacy "sponsorship" in refugee communities is not without its risks and limitations. For potential sponsors, risks include the commodification of refugee voices, while limits include inaccurate generalizations of those being sponsored. This essay draws from a case study of refugee student discourse to discuss how a more explicit…

Sustainability in community engagement projects depends on careful attention to the ways we navigate complex, often challenging relationships with our partners, our students, agencies, and the institutions in which we occupy multiple, sometimes competing roles. This article considers the difficulty inherent in developing and maintaining…

This essay argues that while fostering individual and collaborative literacy can indeed promote self-awareness, confidence, and political awareness, the threat of emotional and material retribution is ever-present in jail, making the development of infrastructure challenging. Such reality compels engaged teacher-researchers to develop tactical…

This case study investigates Carolyn, an effective volunteer ESL and literacy instructor of adult African refugees, in order to understand both what it means to be a qualified instructor, and also how community-based volunteer instructors may become more qualified. The study's findings suggest that Carolyn's qualifications are a combination of…

Considering the situated complexities and competing interest of exploitation and hope inherent in community literacy work, this article examines the ways that the Community Arts Program (CAP) at California State Prison-Sacramento complicates and also reifies archetypal grand literacy narratives and considers the place of such narratives within a…

At a time when accusations of American ignorance and anti-intellectualism are ubiquitous, this article challenges problematic assumptions about intellectualism that overlook the work of adult basic literacy programs and proposes an expanded view of intellectualism. It is important to recognize and to challenge narrow views of intellectualism…

In this article, we share real-world literacy activities that we designed and implemented in two early literacy classes for preschoolers from two inner-city neighbourhoods that were part of an intergenerational family literacy program, Literacy for Life (LFL). The program was informed by research that shows that young children in high literate…