From the Book and New Media Review Editor's Desk

Abstract

From the Book and New Media Review Editor's Desk Jessica Shumake This special issue, which is devoted to environmental and food justice, features a lively interview with author Tomás Mario Kalmar about the second edition of his book Illegal Alphabets. Rebecca Lorimer Leonard assigns selections of Kalmar's book, in her food literacies course, to support students to understand the dual significance of the term 'fieldworker' in the context of literacy education and food justice. The migrants featured in Kalmar's case history are farmworkers who play with language together—make rules and break rules—in an out-of-school learning environment where making things up as one goes along is a form of self-protection and a matter of survival. Stephanie Hilliard's review of Literacy Behinds Bars offers a glimpse into the American prison system and its classrooms. Hilliard's reflections, regarding the inclusion of incarcerated students' voices, serve as a reminder that in order to feel more reciprocity—and to better understand the humanity of writers who are not free—those writers' own words need to be represented on the page. In Erin Cromer Twal's review of John Duffy's book Provocations of Virtue, she asserts why CLJ readers ought to devote sustained attention to the ethical dimensions of public discourse. Twal's review is especially timely given her acknowledgment that teachers of writing and rhetoric are always and already teaching ethical deliberation (honesty, accountability, fairness, generosity, judgment, and courage) in the absence of fixed rules for what it means to be a "good" writer. Finally, Katelyn Lusher's meticulous review of the edited collection Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics offers a detailed preview of the book's contribution to the study of social movement rhetoric and raises important questions about its limitations. I am grateful to all four scholars for their valuable assessment of the books featured in this issue. [End Page 94] Jessica Shumake University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2019 Community Literacy Journal