ABSTRACT
While reading contemporary discussions about orality and literacy in various disciplinary communities-education, linguistics, classical (Homeric studies), and rhetoric-I was constantly reminded of work that I have read by women of color-Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, Trinh Minh Ha, Barbara Christian, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, or Zora Neale Hurston-whose voices continue to be marginalized in relation to academic mainstream discussions about schooling and literacy. Yet views expressed by these women help teachers to identify and unlearn the Western processes of schooling, reading, and writing, that dominate intellectual inquiry, silence students, and perpetuate twentiethcentury problems of teaching literacy into the twenty-first century.
