When talking leaves...

One way ᏍᏏᏉᏯ /Sequoyah/ went about convincing Cherokees to adopt the syllabary was to write letters to friends who had removed to the Arkansas territory in the mid 1820's. When his friends replied to him using the syllabary, all doubts about its usefulness were laid to rest. Cherokees, without mass education and print, became fluent in reading and writing using the 86-character syllabary within three years. Sequoyah's invention provided an immediate and lasting decolonial alternative to the imperialist imperative of alphabetic writing — the more Cherokee writing traveled across distances, the more value it accrued, and the more it secured a lasting legacy of Cherokee story, history, and language.

Traveling, translanguaging, migrating, organically growing and restoring— these longstanding and ongoing movements of language and literacy and the circulations of value that accrue (or do not accrue) from these movements reveal the global forces still shaping languages and literacies in people’s lives and communities. The outstanding articles in this, the inaugural issue of Mary Juzwik's and my editorship of Research in the Teaching of English, collectively testify to readers’ and writers’ ongoing struggles to achieve, make meaning, rewrite histories, and realize hope in everyday acts of linguistic perseverance.

Click here to read more from the introduction to this issue.

Click here to receive a complimentary copy of Vicki Purcell Gates's article.

Many thanks to the tremendous authors, reviewers, the RTE team, and the NCTE team for all you've done to make this first issue possible.

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