Andean peoples joined the world of alphabetic literacy nearly 500 years ago, yet the history of their literacy has remained hidden until now. In The Lettered Mountain, Frank Salomon and Mercedes Nino-Murcia expand notions of literacy and challenge stereotypes of Andean "orality" by analyzing the writings of mountain villagers from Inka times to the Internet era. Their historical ethnography is based on extensive research in the village of Tupicocha, in the central Peruvian province of Huarochiri. The region has a special place in the history of Latin American letters as the home of the unique early-seventeenth-century Quechua-language book explaining Peru's ancient gods and priesthoods. Granted access to Tupicocha's surprisingly rich internal archives, Salomon and Nino-Murcia found that legacy reflected in a distinctive version of lettered life developed prior to the arrival of state schools. In their detailed ethnography, writing emerges as a vital practice underlying specifically Andean sacred culture and self-governance. At the same time, the authors find that Andean relations with the nation-state have been disadvantaged by state writing standards developed in dialogue with European academies but not with the rural literate tradition.

Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures.

"Invitations to Love" provides a close examination of the dramatic shift away from arranged marriage and capture marriage toward elopement in the village of Junigau, Nepal. Laura M. Ahearn shows that young Nepalese people are applying their newly acquired literacy skills to love-letter writing, fostering a transition that involves not only a shift in marriage rituals, but also a change in how villagers conceive of their own ability to act and attribute responsibility for events. These developments have potential ramifications that extend far beyond the realm of marriage and well past the Himalayas. The love-letter correspondences examined by Ahearn also provide a deeper understanding of the social effects of literacy. While the acquisition of literary skills may open up new opportunities for some individuals, such skills can also impose new constraints, expectations, and disappointments. The increase in female literacy rates in Junigau in the 1990s made possible the emergence of new courtship practices and facilitated self-initiated marriages, but it also reinforced certain gender ideologies and undercut some avenues to social power, especially for women. Scholars, and students in such fields as anthropology, women's studies, linguistics, development studies, and South Asian studies will find this book ethnographically rich and theoretically insightful. Laura M. Ahearn is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University.

Informal Learning and Literacy among Maasai Women highlights the importance and role of informal education in the emancipation and development of Maasai village women in Kenya. At present, knowledge and research on the impact of informal learning and literacy on community development is limited, and there is a gap between policy level discussions and women’s lived experiences. Using a postcolonial feminist framework, this book sets out to examine linkages between informal learning and literacy, human development and gender inequality.
Despite improvements in recent years, access to traditional education remains restricted for many women in rural communities across Kenya. Takayangi’s book is the first to introduce how Maasai village women utilise informal learning and literacy for collective empowerment as well as to sustain their own well-being and that of their families. It presents the perspectives of both local women and institutions and argues that women’s learning is most effective when located within their own socio-cultural and political discourses, and when their voices are listened to and heard.
This ethnographic research study is a valuable resource that will contribute to the knowledge of literacy from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It is an essential read for those studying or researching information education, development studies and gender, or education, as well as for teachers, community leaders and aid workers.

Writing from These Roots documents the historical development of literacy in a Midwestern American community of Laotian Hmong, a people who came to the United States as refugees from the Vietnam War and whose language had no widely accepted written form until one created by missionary-linguists was adopted in the late twentieth century by Hmong in Laos and, later, the U.S. and other Western nations. As such, the Hmong have often been described as "preliterates," "nonliterates," or members of an "oral culture." Although such terms are problematic, it is nevertheless true that the majority of Hmong did not read or write in any language when they arrived in the U.S. For this reason, the Hmong provide a unique opportunity to study the forces that influence the development of reading and writing abilities in cultures in which writing is not widespread and to do so within the context of the political, economic, religious, military, and migratory upheavals classified broadly as "globalization."

What are the intrinsic differences between the literate and the illiterate mind? Beginning perhaps with Plato, there is a long history of speculation about the power of the written word to amplify human mental capacities. In The Psychology of Literacy, Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole go beyond speculation by exploring a unique natural experiment.
The Vai, a small West African group, developed their own system of writing early in the nineteenth century. Although the script flourishes today in everyday use, no body of written literature exists and about half of those literate in Vai have never had formal schooling. Given this situation, Scribner and Cole were able to test more than 1,000 subjects over a four-year period to measure the mental leverage of literates over non-literates. Some of their results are startling. For example, literates showed little or no superiority over non-literates in tests of memory, conceptual agility, and deductive reasoning; superiority was shown within a circumference of skills closely related to successful reading and writing. Scribner and Cole conclude that the mental derivatives of literacy are not automatic. Much depends upon how the act of writing is embedded in the culture and the purposes for which it is used.
The Psychology of Literacy promises to stand for a long time as a model for cross-cultural research and as a mile stone in the study of literacy and its effects.