Community Writing 1999: Connecting Literacy and the Literary

...“the tone of a culture cannot depend only on the occasional genius, or the illusion of one; the prevailing temper of a society and a time is situated in its minor voices, in their variegated chorus.” Cynthia Ozick, "Alfred Chester's Wig," The New Yorker, March 30, 1992. “Literacy is elitist. It's a form of imaginative elitism that is useless if we as adult literacy educators do not recognize and promote it.” Francis E. Kazemek, "Mary's story: Reflections on literacy, "Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy 42:8 literacy and the literary

There is only one letter's difference between the words "literacy" and "literary," but in the settings where most of us work, there is a chasm between the worlds of "adult literacy" and the "literary." So when the organizers of Blue Metropolis, the first International Literary Festival ever to be held in Montreal, contacted The Centre for Literacy last February to ask if the literacy community would like to be involved, it opened a door between what have usually been perceived in the literary world as the first class and steerage class of writing.

Linda Leith, Montreal novelist and co-editor of the literary magazine Matrix, had dreamed for years of organizing a local literary festival. Finally, last year, with cooperation from the English and French writing communities, she and a managing board won government and corporate support to create Blue Metropolis to bring 63 authors and translators together for five days of readings, discussions, launches, and others events for lovers of literature.

When the organizers requested some support from the National Literacy Secretariat, (NLS) the project officer asked how the literacy community was involved, which lead to the call to The Centre. The first conversation was exploratory --the festival offered free admission for adult literacy students to hear well-known writers. The Centre's board requested something more substantial. What about including a strand for community writers, to give a public voice to people who write at the margins of our society -- the community-based groups, literacy programs, support services, where writing is both expression and therapy or release? When Blue Metropolis said yes, "Grassroots: Writing in the Community" was born.

In six weeks, we gathered groups from Montreal, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Alberta, and one group from Chicago. Finances were cobbled together with NLS grant money and matching dollars in each of the four locales. At noon on April 24, we all met for the first time face to face. We had requested the smallest room available. Would anyone want to hear writers from far-flung neighbourhood centres? Perhaps we would be reading to ourselves. Surprisingly, more than seventy people showed up forcing us into a larger space.

For two hours, after a brief introduction of each group, writers read their work, ranging from sophisticated poetry and personal narrative to the fruits of first writings by adult beginners. The audience was mesmerized; listeners recognized truth and accorded every reader respect, no matter what the level of skill. The pieces read that day are shared in these pages along with back-ground on the groups.

But the story has just begun. The ripples continue. In the audience was the organizer of Ottawa's literary festival, who decided that community voices should be heard there as well. He contacted Craig McNaughton, long-time social activist and past Executive Director of the Movement for Canadian Literacy, to arrange a similar session in Ottawa. Craig designed a four-hour session of reading and discussion on September 16 around the topic of literacy, community writing and social inclusion. CPAC, a local cable station videotaped the entire event for broadcast later this fall.

The groups who met last April remain in contact; Helen Woodrow has designed a distance learning writing project for several of them in the Winter of 2000. The Newfoundland, Alberta and Chicago groups have been accepted on the program of College Composition and Communication in Minneapolis to present a workshop on community writing and literacy, and Blue Metropolis has asked The Centre for Literacy to organize another event for April 2000.

What is community writing? People have written stories since marks could be carved in walls; but over centuries, as lit-erature slowly separated itself from its origins, and became professionalized, the only writers recognized have been those officially published or aspiring to publication. Individuals, however, never stopped writing. They still write prolifically in diaries and journals, and increasingly more publicly on the Net which may lead to new forms in the future.

But what is community writing as we have defined it? Community writing happens when ordinary people who may not think of themselves as authors meet in groups to share their writing, listen to, respect, respond to, revise, and sometimes home-publish their work. It happens outside insti-tutions –in libraries, community centres, church basements, housing projects--and is usually unconnected to credentials or other formal rewards. It hap-pens something to say, and because recording it validates their lives or allows them to come to terms with personal demons, and allows others to understand them. It can be facilitated by a responsive outsider or by a member. As our examples demonstrate, there are no rules for starting a community writing group beyond these few common principles.

When Cynthia Ozick suggested that "the prevailing temper of a society and a time is situated in its minor voices," she was making a case for minor literary figures, in memory of a beloved colleague lost to an early death. But her insight can be extended to the unheard "minor voices" who are writing in communities all around us, including the many beginning learners in adult basic education. Stigma dissolves when community writers meet on common ground without the labels; among these writers are voices we should hear if we want to make sense of and change our world.

It has been said of the Danish Folk School that “without ever mentioning the word butter, they trained generations of farmers to make the best butter in Europe.” The same claim might apply to literacy developed through community writing. It supports literacy through the literary, and part of its power comes from community ownership. Bringing it to a wider audience and acknowledging its link to the world of literature is not so different from bringing folk art into major art museums earlier in this century. It offers another way of seeing and being in the world, and an alternative to functional definitions of literacy.

Linda Shohet