"Lankshear and McLaren have put together a volume that includes some of the best work presently being done in the area of literacy studies. It is a book that confronts the challenge of literacy in ways that take into account some of the most demanding and urgent debates of our time. It essentially redefines the project of literacy by bringing to light new possibilities for liberation struggles both in and outside of schools. It is a project that undermines the deceit of democracy as many people in Latin America and the West have known it, and charts out the beginnings of a new, radical form of democratic social life." — Paulo Freire"Lankshear and McLaren ask the readers of this book to engage with the text in a way that launches them into questioning, into judgement, and into a kind of collective interpretation. The encounter that lies ahead is not intended to be precious, purely private, or hermetically 'intellectual.' It can be —it ought to be— the kind of encounter that makes readers curious, uneasy, and in some manner hopeful." — Maxine Greene, Columbia University"This volume offers a challenge that cuts to the very core of our present social system, uncovering ways in which literacy serves to either silence or liberate. It brings to the forefront ideas and analyses from a new wave of literacy theorists and practitioners whose work signals a rupture in the way literacy is presently understood and defined." — Donaldo Macedo, University of Massachusetts, Boston