Abstract

hat does literacy mean, and why does it matter? Lauren Rosenberg posits that literacy, a term that remains contested, is not merely a set of skills but "a means of knowing and interacting in the world that can be shared" (154). Rosenberg's book is the result of a qualitative study about adult literacy learners' writing practices and their reasons for seeking literacy skills. Referring to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's subaltern class, "that sector of the population whose experience counters the dominant and who are, therefore, shut out from dominant ideological concerns" (3), Rosenberg raises the question of whether those who have been positioned by dominant literate discourses as voiceless and without knowledge can gain the tools not only to be heard and to exercise their voices, but also to challenge the scripts that have been ascribed to them. Observing students at Read/Write/Now Adult Learning Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, Rosenberg focuses her study on four older adults, George, Violeta, Chief, and Lee Ann (pseudonyms), who are no longer in the workforce and who have voluntarily chosen to become literacy learners. She invites us to ask the important question: What are the motivations of these individuals, who have been rendered mute by societal values that equate literacy with intelligence, to become more literate?