Community Literacy Journal

Book & Media Review Editor: Brian Jackson
Jennifer Heckler
University of Arizona 

We invite reviews of books and/or multimedia, along with book/ multimedia suggestions for review, that address any social, cultural, rhetorical, or institutional aspects of community literacy. We particularly invite media and book-review pieces collaboratively written by community literacy practitioners, graduate students, and faculty.

We invite you to submit reviews that you feel should be included in our budding conversation about literacy work that exists outside mainstream educational and work institutions. It can be found in institutionalized programs devoted to adult education or lifelong learning or work with marginalized populations, but it can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects. One goal of the journal, and of the review section in particular, is to extend and expand beyond conventional book reviews to include more visual and digital representations.

By multimedia, we mean: digital film, DVD, website, or other visual representations of communities where literacy issues may be represented, discussed, displayed (just to name a few examples).

Book titles appropriate for CLJ reviews, and we also invite your suggestions, recommendations, and proposals:

Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy Beyond the College Curriculum.
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Eli Goldblatt.
Hampton Press, 2007
ISBN: 978-1572737693

Writing Community Change: Designing Technologies for Citizen Action.
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Jeffrey Grabill.
Hampton Press, 2007.
ISBN: 1-57273-762-X

Chicana/Latina Education in Everyday Life: Feminista Perspectives on Pedagogy And Epistemology.
Dolores Delgado Bernal, ed.
State University of New York Press, 2006

Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice.
Kate Pahl and Jennifer Rowsell, editors.
Multilingual Matters, 2006

Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language.
Barton, David.
Blackwell, 2006

Senior Citizens Writing: A Workshop and Anthology.
Winterowd, W. Ross.
Parlor Press, 2007

Who Says?: Working-class Rhetoric, Class Consciousness, and Community.
DeGenaro, William (Ed.)
U of Pittsburgh Press, 2007

From the Garden Club: Rural Women Writing Community.
Hogg, Charlotte.
University of Nebraska Press, 2006

The Language Of Experience: Literate Practices And Social Change.
[reviewed 2.2: A. Rounsaville]
Gwen Gorzelsky University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822958740

Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition.
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.1, Fall 2007]
Paula Mathieu Boynton/Cook, 2005
ISBN: 0867095784

Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference.
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.1, Fall 2007]
Nedra Reynolds Southern Illinois University Press, 2004
ISBN: 0809325608

Creating a New Kind of University: Institutionalizing Community-University Engagement.
[reviewed 1.2: C. Warnick]
Stephen L. Percy, Nancy L. Zimpher, Mary Jane Brukardt, Editors
Anker Publishing Company, 2006
ISBN: 1882982886

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope.
[reviewed 1.2: T. Mercadal-Sabbagh]
bell hooks Routledge, 2003
ISBN: 0415968186

Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy.
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Louise W. Knight
University Of Chicago Press, 2005
ISBN: 0226446999

Rhetorical listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness.
[reviewed 1.2: Shelley DeBlasis]
Krista Ratcliffe Southern IL Univ Press, 2006
ISBN: 809326698

Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom.
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Beverly Moss, Melissa Nicolas, and Nels Highberg
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004
ISBN: 805847006

City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices.
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.1, Fall 2007]
Bruce McComiskey and Cynthia Ryan
State Univ of NY Press, 2003
ISBN: 791455505

The Mind At Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker.
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Mike Rose
Viking Books
ISBN: 0670032824

Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts .
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.1, Fall 2007]
Mat Schwarzman & Keith Knight
New Village Press, 2005
ISBN: 0976605430

Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition.
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Paul Collins
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001
ISBN: 0670032824

Whistlin’ And Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literary Practices Since College.
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.1, Fall 2007]
Katherine Kelleher Sohn
Southern Illinois University Press, 2006
ISBN: 0809326817

A Community Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African-American Churches.
Beverly Moss
Hampton Press, 2003
ISBN: 1572733950

Community Literacy Programs and the Politics of Change.
Jeffrey T. Grabill
State University of New York Press, 2001
ISBN: 0791450724

Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.
[reviewed 1.1: J. Arola]
Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Zed Books, 1999
ISBN: 0742518299

Community Action and Organizational Change: Image, Narrative, Identity.
[reviewed 1.1: J. Arola]
Brenton Faber
Southern Illinois University Press, 2002
ISBN: 0809324369

Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought.
[reviewed 1.1: J. Arola]
Sandy Grande
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004
ISBN: 0742518299

Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness And Disability.
Robert McRuer
New York University Press, 2006.
ISBN: 0814757138

Frontiers of Justice : Disability, Nationality, Species Membership.
Martha C. Nussbaum
Belknap Press, 2006
ISBN: 0674019172

Beyond Nostalgia: Aging and Life-Story Writing.
[reviewed 1.2: Suzanne Van Dam]
Ruth Ray
University Press of Virginia, 2000.
ISBN: 0813919398

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.2, Spring 2008]
Kwame Anthony Appiah
W. W. Norton, 2006
ISBN: 0393061558

Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing
[assigned and out for review, issue 3.1, Fall 2008]
Blake Scott
Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.
ISBN: 0809324946

Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Relations.
Brian Loader (Editor)
Routledge, 2001
ISBN: 0415231124

Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World.
[assigned and out for review, issue 2.1, Fall 2007]
Zygmunt Bauman
Polity Press, January 2001
ISBN: 0745626351

Literate Lives in the Information Age.
[reviewed 2.2: S. Vie]
Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004
ISBN: 0805843140

Portraits of Literacy Across Families, Communities, and Schools: Intersections and Tensions.
Jim Anderson (ed.), Maureen Kendrick (ed.), Theresa Rogers (ed.) and Suzanne Smythe (ed.) Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005
ISBN: 0805848606

Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households and Classrooms.
[reviewed 1.2: C. Cannella] Norma E. Gonzalez (Editor), Luis C. Moll (Editor), Cathy Amanti (Editor)
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005
ISBN: 0805849181

Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and the Public Sphere. Christian R. Weisser
[reviewed 2.2: E. Campbell]
Southern Illinois University Press, 2002
ISBN: 0809324164

Community Media : People, Places, and Communication Technologies.
[reviewed 1.2: J. Rivait]
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Kevin Howley
ISBN: 0521796687

CLJ Book Review Guidelines:

Include the title’s publication information: place and date of publication, and ISBN #

Summarize the title’s argument for readers, putting it into some community-literacy context: where is the title situated in community-literacy practice, research, history, or scholarship?

Note the title’s methodology and how that methodology can be understood in analytic, case-study, textual, narrative, linguistic, ethnographic, educational, research, or other representational contexts

Discuss how the title aligns – or not – with historical or contemporary arguments about community literacy; the reviewer should not use this opportunity to engage in taking a position or staking out argumentative positions of her own, but, rather, putting the arguments into productive and generative contexts for readers

Suggest who might benefit from reading the title: graduate students; parents; literacy workers; rhetoric and composition historians; administrators; filmmakers; legislators; writing-center staff; language scholars, etc.

Point out possibilities and new conversations that might emerge from materials, perspectives, and possibilities not addressed in the title

Reviewers should include in their e-mail the following contact information:

• Reviewer’s full name
• Reviewer’s title Institutional address
• Telephone number
• Fax number
• E-mail address
• Book/Multimedia title
• Author’s name
• Publication information, including: date, location, and publisher

Book/Multimedia Review contributions should be 1000-1250 words in length, but longer submissions will be accepted for reviews that incorporate multiple titles.Format: The MLA Style Manual, 2nd ed. (New York: MLA, 1998) supplemented, where necessary, with the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed. (New York: MLA, 2003).To submit reviews, suggestions for reviews, or request further information, send a message to the Book & New Media Review Editor Brian Jackson, Brigham Young University, at brian_jackson@byu.edu.

Please submit all reviews as either a Word document or .rtf file and as the e-mail’s subject put “Community Literacy - Review submission”