This book highlights the socio-political nature of literacy and illuminates the potential in literacy for the empowerment of individuals and communities subordinated by race/ethnicity, culture, language, gender, and class. It addresses the specific reality of literacy for both child and adult language minority populations; it argues that traditional discourses and approaches to literacy justify and maintain literacy deficits and poor school achievement and supports a divergent positioning of minorities and women within the social structure. The book proposes alternative discourses and approaches that draw from both whole language and critical pedagogy. Three major themes organize the volume: literacy, culture, and schooling; the development of language, reading, and writing; and pedagogy, empowerment, and social change. Through examples of child and adult learner-generated text, dialogues, and narratives, the chapters make clear the connection among literacy, knowledge, and power, the potentiality of agency and the transformative possibilities of pedagogy.