Our mission is to provide opportunities for local communities to represent themselves by telling their stories in their own words. We document stories of local communities because we believe their voices matter in addressing issues of national and global significance. We value these stories as a way for communities to reflect upon and analyze their own experience through literacy and oral performance. We are committed to working with communities, writers, editors and translators to develop strategies that assure these stories will be heard in the larger world. —New City Community Press, circa 2000

The author discusses his experience in a university project that led to the creation of a first-year writing text based on interviews with members of a local neighborhood. In particular, he analyzes the negative reaction that many of the community’s residents expressed toward the text’s portrayals of them. From the tensions that developed, the author concludes that English studies must go beyond mere expansion of the canon and reflect upon the very nature of value, including the importance of “use-value” with respect to the production and circulation of community-generated texts.