Building Academic Literacy

Audrey Fielding is a consultant with the Strategic Literacy Initiative of WestEd and the Bay Area Writing Program. Ruth Schoenbach is codirector of the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd.

• Introduction. Part 1: Literacy and Identity.Selections describe the different ways people see themselves as readers.1. “Sharon Cho,” from Speaking of Reading (Sharon Cho).2. “Kevin Clarke,” from Speaking of Reading (Kevin Clarke).3. “Inside Out,” from The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (Francisco Jiménez).4. From The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (John Steinbeck).5. “My Back Pages,” from The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading (Greg Sarris).6. “Seis,” from Bless Me, Ultima (Rudolfo A. Anaya).7. “Discovering Books,” from Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth (Richard Wright).8. “The Gift of Reading,” from Better Than Life (Daniel Pennac).9. “Coming into Language,” from Doing Time: Twenty-Five Years of Prison Writing (Jimmy Santiago Baca).10. “Silence,” from Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston).11. “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” from Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (Richard Rodriguez).12. “Reading Has Always Been My Home,” from How Reading Changed My Life (Anna Quindlen).13. “Brownsville Schooldays,” from A Walker in the City (Alfred Kazin).Part II: Literacy and Power.Selections show how reading and writing open doors in our lives.14. “Gary Lee,” from Speaking of Reading (Gary Lee).15. “Two Ways to Be a Warrior,” from Luis Rosriguez: Writer, Community Leader, Political Activist (Michael Schwartz).16. “The Poets in the Kitchen,” from Reena and Other Stories (Paule Marshall).17. “Libraries and the Attack on Illiteracy” (Timothy S. Healy).18. “Learning to Read,” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X, Alex Haley).19. “In Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines” (Adrianne Bee).20. “Learning to Read” (Frances E.W. Harper).21. “Precious Words” (Emily Dickinson).22. “Learning to Read and Write,” from Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Fredrick Douglass).23. “India’s Literacy Miracle”.24. “Interrogation,” from Son of the Revolution (Liang Heng, Judith Shapiro).25. “Reign of the Reader” (M. Freeman).Part III: How We Read.Selections describe the different ways our minds work as we try to understand what we read.26. “Gerald Eisman,” from Speaking of Reading (Gerald Eisman).27. “The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently,” from New and Selected Poems (Thomas Lux).28. “The Birth of an Alchemist,” from Better Than Life (Daniel Pennac).29. “Watch TV—In Your Head!” (Jennifer Liu).30. “Tuning,” from The Winter Room (Gary Paulsen).31. “Superman and Me,” from The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading (Sherman Alexie).32. “How to Mark a Book,” from The Mercury Reader (Mortimer Adler).33. “Learning to Read,” from A History of Reading (Alberto Manguel).34. “Three Wise Guys: Un Cuento de Navidad/A Christmas Story” (Sandra Cisneros).35. “The New Case for Latin” (Mike Eskenazi).36. “No Words,” from Wild Country: Outdoor Poems for Young People (David Harrison).37. “Teaching People to Hate Literature” (Matthew S.).38. “Team Xerox” (Chris Taylor).39. “Private Reading,” from A History of Reading (Alberto Manguel).Part IV: Breaking Codes.Selections reflect our need to navigate unfamiliar types of texts.40. “Susan Schulter,” from Speaking of Reading (Susan Schulter).41. “Important: Read This First” (Frank Cammuso, Hart Seely).42. “The Secret Language of Custom” (Evelyn H.).43. “Language Heads Down the Rabbit Hole” (John Schwartz).44. “Cinematic Gramnmar,” from Reading the Movies: Twelve Great Films on Video and How to Teach Them (William V. Costanzo).45. “Hip-Hop Becoming a Worldwide Language for Youth Resistance”.46. “Double-Talk” (Rick Bass).47. “Technicality,” from Science and Language Links: Classroom Implications (Beverly Derewianka).48. “Comic Books,” from A Book of Puzzlements: Play and Invention with Language (Herbert Kohl).Further Reading.About the Editors.About the Sponsor.Source and Permissions.