Community Literacy Journal

From the Arizona Daily Star: 110 Degrees: Tucson’s Youth Tell Tucson’s Stories is an annual magazine produced by youths between 14 and 21 years old. It uncovers untold stories of people of all ages, backgrounds, colors and experiences. To tell these stories, youth are mentored in research, interviewing, writing and photography by professional writers and photographers. 110 Degrees is a project of Voices: Community Stories Past and Present Inc., a Tucson-based nonprofit organization that works to document community stories and inspire individuals to explore their own stories and their connections to their communities.

The newest title from the Neighborhood Story Project is available from Soft Skull Press: The Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club. From the book’s description: Beginning with their own childhoods in the Desire Housing Project, Nine Times take the reader on a journey through their world: Motown Sound at Carver games, DJ’s in the courts, and sandlot football.

It continues as the Housing Authority of New Orleans begins to demolish the Desire, and Nine Times begins to parade in the Ninth Ward. Written by the members duing the year after Katrina, Nine Times writes about their lives, their parades, the storm and the rebuilding process. Through interviews, photographs, and writing, Nine Times brings readers into their world of second lines, brass bands, Magee’s Lounge, and the ties that bind.

Articles:

Kim Lenters
Programming Family Literacy: Tensions and Directions

This paper explores the following questions related to family literacy programs: How is family literacy linked with family literacy programs? What are the theoretical frameworks supporting the various models educators and researchers are using in their pedagogical approaches to family literacy programs? As these questions are explored several tensions and directions in programming family literacy become apparent. By examining the various models in this way, family literacy providers and others interested in family and community literacy may be better equipped to evaluate the underlying principles of the programs they use and thereby make informed choices with regard to programming.

Eli Goldblatt, with Manuel Portillo and Mark Lyons
Story to Action: A Conversation about Literacy and Organizing

This is the first in a series of talks with community activists and educators I work with in Philadelphia. In each case, I hope to discover from my interlocutors how they think literacy figures in their work with people in under-resourced or marginalized neighborhoods. I’m also interested in what they think about their personal literacy histories and how their experiences may have affected their own life choices or modes of working. I have chosen to act largely as an interested interviewer in these conversations, prompting responses and asking further questions when I wanted to hear more. At the same time, I do have a point of view that may help academic readers understand more about the context for the following remarks. Although I have misgivings about adding my own voice to the voices of those I interview, I have appended some thoughts of my own to the interview in a way that seems the least intrusive.

Elizabeth A. Flynn and Rudiger Escobar Wolf
Rhetorical Witnessing: Recognizing Genocide in Guatemala

The article explores the rhetorical dimensions of witnessing. We concentrate, in particular, on two groups: university students at the University of San Carlos, Quetzaltenango, whose murals are dramatic reminders of the massacres that resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 indigenous people in the 1980s and early 90s and of the corrupt governmental leaders responsible for them; and U.S. accompaniers sponsored by an organization within my own community, the Copper Country Guatemala Accompaniment Project (CCGAP).

The Community Literacy Journal invites articles for its Fall 2007 special issue on Appalachian Literacies. Special issue editors Katie Vande Brake and Kim Holloway, of King College in Bristol, Tennessee, welcome manuscripts that address and explore historical and contemporary community literacy contexts in Appalachia.

The The National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) held its first National Community Literacy Summit on March 19th in Washington, D.C., “bringing together more than 80 community leaders, scholars, and literacy experts to begin a national dialogue on improving and expanding literacy efforts at the community level.”

The Community Literacy Journal was represented by co-editor Michael Moore as an invited speaker, who also used the opportunity to meet and discuss possible projects and publications with a range of community literacy program administrators, providers, and researchers.

According to Sandra Baxter, Director of the Institute, “The Summit, the Institute’s first, will provide an opportunity for community leaders to learn more about improving instruction in community-wide initiatives and how to evaluate them to document and improve outcomes for learners. While the field of community literacy is emerging, practitioners and experts say that defining the work that they do outside of the mainstream school setting or workplace to promote lifelong learning, is not easily or universally defined.”