Eli Goldblatt

In Literacy as Conversation, the authors tell stories of successful literacy learning outside of schools and inside communities, both within urban neighborhoods of Philadelphia and rural and semi-rural towns of Arkansas. They define literacy not as a basic skill but as a rich, broadly interactive human behavior: the ability to engage in a conversation carried on, framed by, or enriched through written symbols. Eli Goldblatt takes us to after-school literacy programs, community arts centers, and urban farms in the city of Philadelphia, while David Jolliffe explores learning in a Latinx youth theater troupe, a performance based on the words of men on death row, and long-term cooperation with a rural health care provider in Arkansas. As different as urban and rural settings can be—and as beset as they both are with the challenges of historical racism and economic discrimination—the authors see much to encourage both geographical communities to fight for positive change.

This collection of essays by an award winning scholar and poet will appeal to readers from many areas of English, with particular appeal to grad students preparing to teach writing courses. "As an admirer of Eli Goldblatt’s original, groundbreaking, and beautifully crafted written work in composition, I think this focused book of his collected essays will be extremely compelling reading for people in this field." —Russel Durst, Professor, University of Cincinnati "Goldblatt’s perspective, his embeddedness in his place, community, and culture, and his range of topical interests is truly unique. He is a teacher, poet, essayist, activist, literacy scholar, and publisher of great importance. I don’t know anyone else whose work can simultaneously occupy so many vantage points so deeply and well." —Paula Mathieu, Associate Professor, Boston College

This collection of essays by an award winning scholar and poet will appeal to readers from many areas of English, with particular appeal to grad students preparing to teach writing courses. "As an admirer of Eli Goldblatt’s original, groundbreaking, and beautifully crafted written work in composition, I think this focused book of his collected essays will be extremely compelling reading for people in this field." —Russel Durst, Professor, University of Cincinnati "Goldblatt’s perspective, his embeddedness in his place, community, and culture, and his range of topical interests is truly unique. He is a teacher, poet, essayist, activist, literacy scholar, and publisher of great importance. I don’t know anyone else whose work can simultaneously occupy so many vantage points so deeply and well." —Paula Mathieu, Associate Professor, Boston College

In a sentence, the phrase " for instance" follows an assertion or argument, and precedes a series of examples. Eli Goldblatt gives us myriad examples unconnected to a thesis, except insofar as the thesis asserts what is. This is a world composed of bombings, wars, bad history, framed in a private space of family, garden and dreamwork (which often takes us back to all the bad histories). In a larger sense, the book is an elegy-- for his dear friend Gil Ott, and for a world where fascists lose. But " even in Barcelona, Franco won." " War grows" in the poet's mind, erupting in museums and in his son, who " emerges into the sunlight stabbing, punching, blasting his enemies." Words are like tattoos; they scar. The poet craves " a language beyond all this talk, / words erupting beneath words that evict / or seduce, dominate or sell." Goldblatt's book offers a public and private MRI; we do not yet have the results, so we can only hope for the best. Our best consolation may be that we have this map of one poet's decency and care. Susan M. Schultz

In this engrossing memoir, poet and literacy scholar Eli Goldblatt shares the intimate ways reading and writing influenced the first thirty years of his life - in the classroom but mostly outside it. Writing Home: A Literacy Autobiography traces Goldblatt's search for home and his growing recognition that only through his writing life can he fully contextualize the world he inhabits. Goldblatt connects his educational journey as a poet and a teacher to his conception of literacy, and assesses his intellectual, emotional, and political development through undergraduate and postgraduate experiences alongside the social imperatives of the era. He explores his decision to leave medical school after he realized that he could not compartmentalize work and creative life or follow in his surgeon father's footsteps. A brief first marriage rearranged his understanding of gender and sexuality, and a job teaching in an innercity school initiated him into racial politics. Literacy became a dramatic social reality when he witnessed the start of the national literacy campaign in postrevolutionary Nicaragua and spent two months finding his bearings while writing poetry in Mexico City. Goldblatt presents a thoughtful and exquisitely crafted narrative of his life to illustrate that literacy exists at the intersection of individual and social life and is practiced in relationship to others. While the concept of literacy autobiography is a common assignment in undergraduate and graduate writing courses, few books model the exercise. Writing Home helps fill that void and, with Goldblatt's emphasis on 'out of school' literacy, fosters an understanding of literacy as a social practice.