| Questions of Empowerment examines writing as social action at a Chicago street newspaper. This study results from three years' work creating a learning Center and writing programs for homeless and formerly homeless vendors of StreetWise newspaper. Questions is an institutional narrative that combines storytelling, theoretical work, and the words of local writers to explore claims of writing as empowerment, writing to intervene in public discourse, and the role of academics working in neighborhood communities.; Chapter One explores “empowerment,” the dominant discourse of this street newspaper, as defined by entrepreneurs, activists and writing scholars. “Empowerment” embodies the competing interests at work in this urban contact zone with which all learning mandates had to contend. Chapter Two connects local experiences of the men and women at StreetWise with the economic and political factors contributing to homelessness in Chicago. This chapter describes individuals within the economic and political systems at work in their lives, in ways that acknowledges the power of the latter without disregarding the agency of the former. Chapter Three describes and evaluates the Center's writing curriculum, in its efforts to respond to institutional demands (as articulated by the Board of Directors) and desires of participants. Chapter Four explores the StreetWise Writers Group, a weekly gathering of writers seeking to respond to the systems and institutions framing their lives. This chapter details various publishing and performance projects that sought to affect public discourse about homelessness. The Conclusion draws out the implications of this study for the composition field, especially regarding recent trends in community literacy and service learning.; Questions introduces critical notions of utopia and tactical action as alternatives to “empowerment” as ways to discuss community-based writing. Rather than “empowering,” community writing is configured as tactical and “radically insufficient,” borrowing from Moylan's claim that utopian thinking acknowledges “the radical insufficiency of the present.” Drawing from Bloch, de Certeau, and Freire, these configurations can help teachers acknowledge the limitations of writing while maintaining notions of possibility and hope. |
