Literacy As Moral Obligation among African Americans in the Rural Southeast

Literacy as Moral Obligation among African Americans in the Rural Southeast provides detailed descriptions of contemporary African American experiences with literacy and education in the rural South. In doing so, this book extends current understandings of sociocultural perspectives on literacy by illustrating how literacy practice is morally valenced, embodied, and narrative in quality. Johnson Lachuk argues that meaningful and ethical literacy instruction engages with perspectives that are embedded within a social and cultural community--that is, since literacy is linked to greater social mobility through institutional access for many persons, it is educators' ethical responsibility to ensure that learners have the literacy knowledge required to do so. Recommended for scholars of literacy, education, and sociology. This book uses life history narratives of African Americans to address how individuals experience literacy in response to their self, others, and their temporal context within one community in the rural southeastern United States. Lachuk argues how literacy is understood as a moral obligation, a means for mobility, and a way of creating a communion of advocacy