Editors' Introduction

Abstract

Editors' Introduction Paul Feigenbaum and Veronica House As we look toward the third Conference on Community Writing, taking place in Philadelphia in October, we can't help but marvel at all the extraordinary work happening across the United States and beyond. Community literacy, in all its variety, takes us on a journey through different communities in order that we learn from them about the complexity and beauty of human existence. In this issue, we move between a prison cell, a physical therapy retreat, a kitchen table, an archive, a writing center, and a classroom in order to explore the many ways in which writing encourages healing, self-revelation, and transformation. Our first peer-reviewed essay, "Typing Corrections: An Exploration & Performance of Prison (Type)Writing" by Alexander Rahe and Daniel Wuebben, is a rather atypical looking journal article. For reasons that will become clear as you read, the piece's co-authors wrote their respective sections on Swintec 2410cc typewriters while simultaneously employing an astonishing array of typing-related metaphors in order to compose an original and (literally) impressionable reading experience. In turn, the editors—in consultation with the authors and the journal's publisher—decided to publish the essay in its original typeface and with minimal copyediting. For one reason, a traditional copyediting process would have posed considerable material challenges. But perhaps more importantly, we decided that to "correct" the handful of mechanical errors sprinkled throughout the manuscript would in many respects undermine both the integrity and the spirit of the essay itself. After all, among the many insights articulated in Rahe and Wuebben's compelling and provocative piece is that errors are part of the human condition. Their article also asks us to recognize that for a number of material, social, and political reasons, some errors are much more easily corrected than others; indeed, the process of correcting an error can be quite complex and uncertain, and many errors can never be entirely corrected. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes leaving an error uncorrected might make the most sense. Beyond reflecting on the "chain of corrections" in prisons, the manuscript offers an illuminating firsthand account of the constraints faced by writers on the inside as they pursue various writing-related goals, from personal expression to connectedness to advocacy. Kate Vieira's article, "Writing's Potential to Heal: Women Writing from Their Bodies," explores how writing can be used as a healing tool in community-based group settings. Vieira delves into writing produced by women seeking therapy for physical ailments. Through participant interviews, observation, and powerful examples of the participants' writing, she studies writing as an embodied and social practice that aids in the experience of physical healing. Ultimately, Vieira understands the curative potential of writing as a tool that can amplify the way people experience the healing effects of body-based therapies. [End Page 1] In "Writing From 'The Wrong Class': Archiving Labor in the Context of Precarity," Jessica Pauszek analyzes an ambitious, transnational effort to establish print and digital archives of working-class community publications associated with the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP) in England. Having participated as one of the leaders of this project over several years, Pauszek reflects on the joyful discoveries, the intimate acquaintances, the physical and emotional labors, and the logistical and material challenges she and numerous collaborators experienced as they negotiated a rather daunting task—namely, to collect, sort, and curate the massive array of materials composed over several decades by FWWCP members. As Pauszek details, many of these materials were previously un-archived and scattered through much of England. Through these reflections, Pauszek conceptualizes a theory of archival precarity, and she considers the implications of this theory for community-literacy practitioners who partner with, and seek to archive the work of, marginalized populations. Nancy Reddy's "'The Spirit of our Rural Countryside': Toward an Extracurricular Pedagogy of Place" studies a wide array of archival documents from the Wisconsin Rural Writers' Association (WRWA), founded in 1948, to examine how rural people across the state have used creative writing to record and preserve the history, culture, and folklore of a rural way of life. Reddy's study of these "extracurricular literacies" examines...