A is for ox

by Sanders, Barry

We are so used to platitudes intoning the value of reading and writing that we may have forgotten to ask what literacy really is. In A Is for Ox, Barry Sanders brilliantly shows how the answer to this question takes us to the heart of the twin crises of youth violence and illiteracy. By reminding us to understand reading and writing as cognitive and social acts, Sanders places the issue of literacy squarely where it belongs: at the center of contemporary social and cultural debate. A Is for Ox links reading and writing to the most fundamental aspects of our being: the construction of the self, personal identity, and society's capacity to elicit uncoerced consent to the social contract. A Is for Ox is an important and impassioned work that demonstrates why the failure of increasing numbers of young people to attain even minimum levels of literacy signals a catastrophe at the deepest levels of our culture. Illiteracy and the growing epidemic of youth violence are not finally problems of