Literacy of the Other

Book excerpt: Winner of the 2017 American Educational Research Association's Division B Outstanding Book Award Literary of the Other stages a bold psychoanalytic investigation into the existential significance of literacy. Featuring a dazzling array of novel artifacts and events, the book situates literacy in the internal fictive worlds of the self and other. This approach is designed to encourage teachers of language and literature to sustain reflexive thought in their practices of reading and writing as a means to gain insight into the psychical processes of literacy. With lucid and compelling prose, Aparna Mishra Tarc reminds us of the importance of fostering a meaningful practice of literacy in the construction of real and fictive stories by which to live well throughout our lives. Renarrating many versions of a shared humanity might develop in us all a sympathetic regard for the storied lives of others.