This article explores how assemblage and affect theories can enable research into the formation of a collective working-class identity, inclusive of written, print, publication, and organizational literacies through the origins of the Federation of Worker Writer and Community Publishers, an organization that expanded its collectivity as new…

We argue that the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, with its dual emphasis on literacy and occupational skills, can serve as a new model for writing classrooms and writing program administrators. We further contend that the "contact zone" classroom should be replaced with community-based "federations."…

A feminist reading of four prominent literacy narratives--Mike Rose's "Lives on the Boundary," Richard Rodriguez's "Hunger of Memory," Victor Villanueva's "Bootstraps," and Keith Gilyard's "Voices of the Self"--shows that conflicts and anxieties about the consequences of schooling on working-class masculinity animate these texts. Each of these…