ABSTRACT
June Treader is one of the strongest women I know. June is raising a healthy, safe, and literate family in a community faced with poverty, murders, AIDS, drugs, and gang-related violence. She handles virtually all of the literate demands of her household, from paying bills to making sure her children’s homework is done. June negotiates all family communications, written and otherwise, with the school and other institutions. She even initiated and obtained signatures on a petition to change local traffic conditions. Yet, when I first met June in her adult basic education classroom, at the end of a reading lesson she asked timidly, “Did I read this good?” When she talked about her progress, tears ran down her face. There is a profound tension between June’s personal and public literate lives.
