Review of Portraits of Literacy Across Families, Communities, and Schools: Intersections and Tensions, Edited by Jim Anderson, Maureen Kendrick, Theresa Rogers, and Suzanne Smythe. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005

Personal narrative embeds the expertise of subordinated groups in stories that seldom translate into public debate. The authors describe a community writing project in which welfare recipients used personal narratives to enter into the public record their tacit and frequently discounted knowledge. The research illustrates the difficulties and possibilities “rhetorical, emotional, and material” of constructing narratives that “cross publics.”