Although scholars have studied migrant children who translate for their families, less is known about how these experiences matter for life-long literacy experiences. This article argues that child language brokers develop advanced skills in literacy and rhetoric from which they draw throughout their lives, in multiple contexts.

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…