Eli Goldblatt and David A. Jolliffe's 2020 Literacy as Conversation: Learning Networks in Urban and Rural Communities is to be interpreted as a "book of essays" and, more importantly, as vivid and lived conversations that aim to showcase nearly three decades of friendship between two colleagues concerned about meaningful community participation and literacy. This collection captures their reflections on their participation in community-based projects within the urban neighborhoods of Philadelphia and rural and semirural towns of Arkansas, but also offers an expanded and active understanding of literacy as social practice with complex relationships between sponsors, learning networks, power, and taking place in non-school environments having an access point through conversation and written symbols. Goldblatt and Jolliffe's endeavor to highlight the social connections and complexity of literacy aligns with their intent to include not just scholars in higher education, but also "everyday folk" or ordinary people including educators, government officials and policy makers, and people from all walks of life. As a scholar of color and teacher of a Hispanic-serving institution and as a community member of a predominantly Hispanic city in Texas, I was immediately intrigued and captured by the authors' commitment to highlight the stories of people who persevere and design interventions to construct hope and shape themselves and the world into a better place.