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This essay looks into the interactions between an older African American couple as they negotiate literacy together. By considering the entwined writing trajectories of longtime life partners, the author highlights ways that “Chief” and “Shirley” demonstrate their ongoing desire for literacy in this moment of their lives; how the reading and writing practices of the more literate partner impact the less literate partner, and vice versa; and, what that engagement can tell composition researchers about writing development across the lifespan, particularly for an older couple in which one partner has become more literate later in life. Writing, like many life practices that Chief and Shirley share, indicates personal and practical commitment. Their example can help literacy researchers in Age Studies and Lifespan Development of Writing Studies understand the unconventional paths that writing development can take, not just for an individual but for a couple, and to see the value in viewing writing development as always emergent.

Sustainability in community engagement projects depends on careful attention to the ways we navigate complex, often challenging relationships with our partners, our students, agencies, and the institutions in which we occupy multiple, sometimes competing roles. This article considers the difficulty inherent in developing and maintaining relationships with the community members who choose to participate in our research. Based on the experiences of three undergraduate students in a community literacy seminar, the author traces the ways these students confront challenges in their projects, arguing for the value of difficulty in community literacy work.

The following email conversation, much of it done in a coffee shop in Amherst, Massachusetts across a table from each other, contains two strands that quickly merge into one. We’ve reproduced the beginning of each strand. We each sent an initial email (before either of us had read the other’s posting) and responded to them. Strand one starts with Lauren’s first posting and Kirk’s response to it, strand two with Kirk’s first posting and Lauren’s response. Following that, somewhat chaotically, we’ve included postings, which take up various themes. Readers will see where they merge, and where threads get picked up (or dropped).

This project investigates how a group of adult learners who are acquiring new literacies articulate their relationships to dominant ideologies of literacy. My goal is to look beyond typically expressed motivations for becoming more literate to understand how people see the roles of writing and reading in their lives. I argue that adult learners can teach scholars and teachers something about dominant ideologies from their unique point of critique. Another goal is to examine how learners use alternative literacy narratives to define a place of agency. By examining interview transcripts and written texts, I investigate the ways that one adult learner uses alternative narratives as a means to alter his subject position and disrupt dominant literacy narratives.

This article is part of a project that involves case studies of four adults who attend an informal literacy center. I examine people’s motivations to write when their main purpose is not to gain a degree or other credentials. Here I focus on one study member and how she uses writing to gain textual agency. By composing narratives that investigate her social positioning, this woman rewrites her own story. I demonstrate how her texts and interview comments reveal a strong desire to connect with public audiences so that other people might follow her model of speaking out to change culture.