ABSTRACT
Literacy is always about relationships, but the focus is usually on writer and reader. This chapter focuses on the role relationships and response outside the classroom play in constructing perceptions of agency. It explores how the closest relationships, of family and friends, shape our history, our narratives, and the sense of how we became the people we are today. A family's narrative, for example, of who the "born reader" in the family is—and who it is not—can have a lingering effect. The relationships we develop with friends can also empower or inhibit our literate identities, including the roles of online networks and relationships. The chapter examines relationships with groups and organizations, where social roles and power relationships are often mediated by—and in turn mediate—practices of reading and writing. The function of more formal community organizations in defining and often facilitating literacy practices has been well established in literacy and writing studies research.
