This article examines the uses of oral testimony in writing about literacy in historical context, especially about the literacy traditions of populations "hidden from history"--immigrants, refugees, and undocumented persons--who are entering U.S. schools and workplaces, and whose literacy histories may be unknown or lost. Drawing on testimonies…

This article suggests that literacy development in immigrant, refugee, and other historically marginalized communities can be understood as a response to rhetorical struggles in contexts of civic life. To illustrate this "rhetorical conception of literacy," the article examines a collection of anti-immigrant letters published in a Midwestern…

This article delineates a study which examines both the historical basis of Hmong literacy development (in the years before they left Laos) as well as the more recent history (since 1975) of a Hmong group that settled in northern Wisconsin. The article discusses the development and functions of literacy in the United States, particularly as…

Argues that the rhetoric of preliteracy is a 19th-century narrative that offers a subordinate identity and obscures the conditions through which literacy development is promoted. Examines the literacy experience of the Hmong of Laos to demonstrate how their supposed preliteracy is an outcome of a dense and interconnecting network of historical…