Messages, Meaning, And Symbols Book

Love, love, love this book! Flower so carefully and thoroughly examines theoretical and pedagogical implications and the "messiness" of community literacy work that complicates (in a good way) what it means to engage in this work. Throughout the text, she weaves a theoretical framework on the work of scholars such as Gloria Anzaldua, Cornel West, John Dewey, Jacqueline Jones Royster and others. Her insight and stories provided from her own work help those familiar and unfamiliar with community literacy work begin to examine how we might begin to enact a rhetoric of speaking with community members as opposed to at or for them. I definitely recommend this book to anyone thinking about doing service learning or community literacy work.