Writing Guide with Handbook

Writing Guide with Handbook bridges the gap between everyday rhetoric and academic discourse by revealing to students that they are already engaged in rhetorical work within the familiar contexts of personal interaction and social media. The text seeks to extend these existing skills by showing students how to construct a variety of compelling compositions within self-defined contexts. Writing Guide with Handbook breaks down barriers in the field of composition by offering an inviting and inclusive approach to students of all intersectional identities. To meet this goal, the text creates a reciprocal relationship between daily conversation and the evolving world of academia, which must allow itself to be shaped by students as much as it seeks to shape them.

Writing Guide with Handbook was conceived in 2020—the year that brought everything into question for students and instructors alike. Would we avert the climate crisis? Would we survive a global pandemic? Would we achieve gender equality? Would we finally acknowledge that Black lives and Black linguistics matter? Would we show acceptance toward refugees and Dreamers? Would we embrace multilingualism? How would we navigate our way through one existential crisis after another? Put simply, the answer for some of us has become that we write . . . we write for our lives. We write calls to action on social media. We write protest signs to carry in the streets. We write proposed legislation to create change. We write our stories . . . and we write the stories of those who cannot write their own.

In a world with so many questions and seemingly so few answers, the writing classroom as supported by Writing Guide with Handbook becomes an essential space for navigating hard conversations about what is right versus what is easy. The text invites students and instructors to practice invitational, rather than confrontational, verbal and written conversations. These classroom communities will learn to communicate about culture in its broadest sense without divisiveness. Instructors will be empowered to emphasize meaning and voice over outdated writing traditions and to teach empathy as a rhetorical strategy. Students will be empowered to negotiate their identities and their cultures through language as they, too, join us in writing for their lives.