For this week’s posting, I will be considering Flower’s Chapter 1, Peck’s (et. al) Community Literacy, and Gere’s Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms (not required for this class). (I will complete Flower’s Chapter 2 and and Higgins’ (et. al) Community Literacy: A Rhetorical Model for Personal and Public Inquiry later today, but it will be too late to include it in this discussion.)

I guess I will start by offering several definitions of community literacy that I found useful. One early definition (dating back to 1989, I believe), offered by the Community Literacy Center (CLC) in Pittsburgh seems simple: “action and reflection—as literate acts that could yoke community action with intercultural education, strategic thinking and problem solving, and with observation-based research and theory building” ( Peck 200). However, later in the article, a more developed definition is offered: “Community literacy, as we define it, is a search for an alternative discourse [and] embraces four key aims…social change…genuine, intercultural conversation…a strategic approach to [the] conversation…[and] inquiry” (Peck 205). The introduction of “intercultural conversation” makes me wonder whether community literacy, by this definition, could exist in a homogenous community. Or, if a homogenous community even needs community literacy. Seems to me that it would, but only, perhaps, if we consider a broader definition of community literacy (like that of Gere’s).

Flower offers this definition of community literacy: “Community literacy is a rhetorical practice for inquiry and social change” (16). From here it only got more confusing as I tried to work my way through to a clear understanding of what community literacy is (if that is possible…).

To start with, I’m not sure how critical literacy and community literacy are different, especially if we use Flower’s definition of critical literacy: “critical literacy sees literacy as a way to resist power, challenge injustice, and insist on alternative images of social and self-development” (17). Perhaps critical literacy is, as Flower quotes Finn, “literacy with an attitude” (17). But if critical literacy “questions the way things are and imagines alternatives,” I still don’t see how that is different from community literacy, unless we are talking about action…

After immersing myself in the reading for this week, and absorbing a lot of information, it seems I was left with more questions than anything. The major question that has been fretting at the corners of my mind for several days now is this: is community literacy a theory, a methodology, or a something else? I’m not even sure that question makes sense, but it won’t go away, and it seems important to my understanding of this whole concept somehow. I haven’t been able to answer it for myself, so I’m really hoping someone can help me figure this out.

Here is another small but persistent thought: It seems that the readings for this week use the oppression/empowerment metaphor to talk about literacy. I guess that makes sense if “the premise of community literacy is that such a rhetoric calls us to speak out about and for silenced voices” (Flower 9-10). I’d be interested in seeing what the deprivation/welfare metaphor would look like—or at least identifying it. Has that metaphor gone out of vogue? Is it an outdated metaphor that has been replaced with the oppression/empowerment metaphor? What other metaphors are still commonly used?

Also, I know that ideally those involved in community literacy (or, at least, those whom we read for this week) are invested in social change, but I wonder about a quote from Peck on page 203:”This vision centers on building productive intercultural relationships in which equity is established through mutual learning and the transactional practices of writing and dialogue” (203). (Emphasis mine) Something about this statement bothers me. Perhaps the equation of literacy with equality? I’m just not sure, but something seems off. Can you help me figure this out?