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…

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…

This article analyzes one prison literacy program in Texas that trains inmate participants to teach other men and women, likewise incarcerated and often dyslexic, to read and write in English. Noting the regular recurrence of the words "repair" and "hope" in participants' descriptions of HOPE and associated activities, the…