“For me, literacy is … like attempting to open a locked door with the incorrect key … I don’t continuously see the which means firstly and customarily i must have a person … permit me in with their key. I are likely to imagine that being in collage is sufficient, however it nonetheless isn’t going to assure larger literacy for me. it truly is whatever i'm attempting to grab, yet i'm going approximately it slowly, just because i'm really not so certain of ways very important it truly is to me.” — Rachel

According to key literacy learn, working-class scholars are a long way much less more likely to pursue larger literacy than their middle-class opposite numbers, but there are numerous examples of these who've defied the percentages. during this considerate examine why a few determinedly pursue greater literacy opposed to all expectancies and predictions, Donna Dunbar-Odom explores the advanced relationships humans have with literacy, paying specific consciousness to the connection among literacy and sophistication. She stocks the private and sometimes poignant literacy narratives of writers, teachers, and her personal scholars to bare greatly approximately what motivates wish for greater literacy, in addition to what will get within the means. Bringing jointly those reflections with present literacy, composition, and sophistication theories, Dunbar-Odom presents a greater knowing of the way to faucet that wish in writing study rooms. eventually, the writer argues that academics have to concentration much less awareness on how scholars should still learn and extra on why they may wish to.

“Dunbar-Odom’s total message is a vital one, encouraging educators to method the paintings of scholars from working-class backgrounds with out shaming them or making the sphere appear to any extent further opposed that they might already think it to be. transparent drawback for the wishes of such scholars permeates this paintings and makes it a worthwhile contribution to the field.” — South crucial Review

“Because of a gradually expanding enrollment of working-class scholars in greater schooling, Dunbar-Odom’s paintings is necessary to educators by way of realizing the $64000 and complicated cultural differences that shape the space among the working-class majority and the middle-class academy. For these people within the writing lecture room, this booklet … is well timed and necessary.” — Composition Studies

“Defying the percentages … will supply desire to students in rhetoric and composition who've been laboring for many years attempting to increase social type at the disciplinary radar screen.” — JAC

“Defying the percentages bargains an insightful examine the struggles of lower-class scholars and encourages its readers to discover how one can conquer the obstacles that hinder too lots of those scholars from attaining greater literacy.” — The CEA Forum

“The subject of teaching working-class scholars is expensive to my middle, and this publication gave me a lot to consider. Dunbar-Odom deals a few sobering insights in regards to the difficulties of convincing working-class scholars of the intrinsic price of the arts other than activity skills. She additionally demanding situations a few of the outdated chestnuts equivalent to the ‘writing neighborhood’ and the ‘classroom group’ in thought-provoking ways.” — Patrick J. Finn, writer of Literacy with an perspective: instructing Working-Class childrens of their personal Self-Interest

Donna Dunbar-Odom is affiliate Professor of English at Texas A&M college at trade and writer of operating with principles: examining, Writing, and learning Experience.