Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement.

• Author: Reid-Brinkley, Shanara
• Position: Book review

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement. By Linda Flower. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008; pp. 304. US $35.00 paper.

In Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement, Linda Flower brings together qualitative research technique with critical theories of rhetoric and power to trace a university partnership with a community non-profit organization. The study takes place at the Community Literacy Center on the Northside of Pittsburgh. The program is housed by the Community House Presbyterian Church & Learning Center, a one hundred and seventy eight year old organization, which services Pittsburgh communities through various projects. In particular, the Community House engages in urban outreach efforts targeted at urban, inner-city school children in community-school projects designed to foster learning practices within intercultural environments. The Community Literacy Center is a collaborative project between the Community House and the Center for the Study of Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. The Center brings together student mentors from Carnegie Mellon with urban teens and adults to practice the use of writing and public dialogue designed to respond to the community issues faced by the participants. Flower's project delves into the relations of power between universities, non-profit organizations, community members and leaders, and institutional power-brokers and decision makers. Flower's goal is to develop a theoretical account of the "rhetoric of engagement" between multiply situated actors. To pursue that goal, Flower interrogates the rhetorical agency of those identified as the powerless and the marginalized. It moves beyond a simple focus on the agency of the privileged and the manner in which the powerless are dominated to a focus on the agency produced by the powerless through rhetoric and the creation of counterpublics designed to affect public discourse about the powerless (p. 5). Such a stance challenges the over-determination of theorists that belittle localized resistance as non-responsive to the broad structures of power that dominate them. It shifts the focus from resistance and agency as a challenge to macrolevel assemblages of power, to localized microlevel engagement with institutions situated in close proximity to the people and their community.

The book is organized into three parts. Part One, "A Community/University Collaboration," defines the practical and theoretical parameters of the community literacy project. This section begins by sharpening the project's critical terminology, with the guiding term "community literacy" defined as "an intercultural dialogue with others on issues that they identify as sites of struggle" (p. 19). This novel and rich treatment frames literacy as a multivoiced relationship designed to identify problems and possible solutions through inquiry by multiple actors. Flower is interested in a particularly rhetorical...