As a reader and one who works with adult literacy students on a daily basis, it is difficult not to feel Purcell-Gates’ profound empathy for Jenny and the mutual respect and dignity they evidently expressed for each other in their two-year encounter. Thus, when Jenny “found her way up the hill” to the university’s Literacy Center, one senses the immediate connection between the two women of such different social, cultural, and educational backgrounds in their sharing of a common human and womanly understanding that pervades the text. Notwithstanding the invariable biases, it was this very empathy that provided the author with a profound entry point into many subtle insights into the nature of Jenny and Donny’s learning that may not have been accessible through a more critically distanced stance.

Emergent verses Socio-Cultural Interpretations of Literacy

Purcell-Gates began her research with a “cognitive” and “psycholinguistic” focus in probing into “the relationship between the parents’ nonliteracy and that of their son” (p. 210). As the work progressed, her research expanded into the realm of culture and the exploration of social context in the quest to probe into the multidimensional “layers” which gave shape to the family’s educational situation. Thus, the author’s research gradually shifted outward to examine the impact of this Appalachian family’s “invisible” hillbilly status as embedded in the racially mixed urban context where more “mainstream” values permeated the dominant culture of the city against what was perceived as the family’s rural culture of poverty. The more proximate linkage, a main focus of the book, was the large gulf between the family and the expectations of the child’s school’s faculty and administration over what consisted of right instruction and the competence of Jenny as an informed and inquisitive parent.

Proponents of emergent literacy point to the accessibility of print in the home in the pre-school years as a powerfully contributing factor in the literacy development of children. On this interpretation, literacy “emerge[s] developmentally as children observe and engage in experiences mediated by print in their daily lives,” even if they are not formally reading, a view that contrasts with a more traditional perspective that “children begin [original italics] to learn to read and write only at the onset of formal literacy instruction” (p. 7).

Through such early interaction with print found in the home environment, children “learn about (a) the nature of the relationship between speech and print; (b) the conventions of print…[such as] linearity, directionality, and word boundaries; and (c) print related terms like word and letter” (original italics). (ibid). Interpreting how learning takes place from a cognitive perspective through schema theory, Purcell-Gates was initially perplexed on how Donny could learn to read when literacy played virtually no role in the life of the family. As Donny’s instruction proceeded at the Literacy Center under the author’s meticulous guidance, Purcell-Gates anxiously sought to instill literate behavior in the family’s home, viewing such transference as the key to Donny’s literacy. She was similarly perplexed and frustrated when her efforts failed even though Donny gradually increased his mastery of print literacy during the tutoring sessions, and in principle, could work with print at home if he so chose.