Writing to Survive: How Teachers and Teens Negotiate the Effects of Abuse, Violence, and Disaster

Grounded in qualitative methods dominated by ethnography, case study, and poststructuralist interpretive styles, Alvarez (Univ. of Delaware) shares her research on five traumatized adolescents and their compensatory literacy strategies in their English language high school classes. Alvarez states the thesis of the book is that "the private violences and public disasters [Katrina] affect adolescents' ability to learn, and the trauma and stresses alter the ways in which adolescents construct literacy--called compensatory strategies." After a detailed description of literacy, writing, compensatory strategies, adolescent crises, social constructivism, modern brain theory, trauma, and her research design, Alvarez presents five case studies on the power of writing for adolescents traumatized by personal violence or a natural disaster. In the final chapter, Alvarez proposes a writing pedagogy, neo-expressivist, for all adolescents. The appendixes present additional details from the case studies, a class schedule, writing from three of the adolescents, a persuasive speech assessment, a hurricane information survey, and an English IV literacy portfolio project. The extensive bibliography clarifies works cited in the book.

In her compelling book, Writing to Survive, Deborah Alvarez demonstrates that high school students not only can but do use writing to navigate the confusing, dangerous, and emotionally and physically challenging experiences that many adolescents endure. Professor Alvarez understands that affective responses that are connected to thinking through language cannot be ignored in the educational process if we want that process to be successful. As she demonstrates with the voices of the young people she researched, the more desperate the situation, the more students need to empower themselves through creative uses of language. Every high school teacher should read this book.