Reading Justice: Community Literacies as Transformational Practice

• In Event: 52.083 - Youth and Adults Engaging in and Embodying Literacy for Change

Abstract

We explore how the language and literacy practices in one urban community mediate the social justice work being accomplished in a community-wide transformation initiative. Drawing on ethnographic data from a long term participatory action research study of this community’s effort to transform a local urban “corner store” into a community cornerstone, this paper focuses on how participants use language and literacy to accomplish their goals. Our findings indicate that in order for social justice work to be possible, multiple developmental trajectories and transformational pathways need to be encouraged and recognized across contexts. Furthermore, we found that literacies traveled through and across these pathways as community members “read” and “write” their world.

Authors

• Joanne C. Larson, University of Rochester

• Courtney Hanny, University of Rochester & SUNY Buffalo

• Joyce Mahler Duckles, University of Rochester

• George H. Moses, North East Area Development, Inc./NEAD