ABSTRACT

This paper explores how definitions of audience shape and are shaped by the politics of writing, in particular how the use of narrative in collaboratively constructed texts situates the texts politically. The paper describes the writing of a book of “resistance narratives,” jointly co-authored by universitybased writers and parents of children with disabilities. The paper is not about the parents’ struggles per se, but it is about how those struggles shaped the book and about how audience assumptions shape the collaborative production of a text into a political act within a local setting.