Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of the importance of community-based literacy programs and how these programs can help bridge gaps in literacy development. It employs a spatiolinguistic framework to examine the language and literacy practices of racialized, emergent bilingual children in a bilingual after-school, community-based writing program found in urban Philadelphia. The book examines a community-based Heritage Language program’s contribution to immigrant descendants’ engagement in cross-cultural and multilingual literacies. It describes how a literacy clinic at an urban research university joined in a partnership with a local high school to conduct an after-school literacy program that promoted the literacy competencies of a primarily Haitian population while providing training for future reading specialists.