“Every City Has Soldiers”: The Role of Intergenerational Relationships in Participatory Literacy Communities

This article examines the role of intergenerational relationships in the lives of experienced poets and writers (“soldiers”) and emerging poets and writers in what the author terms Participatory Literacy Communities (PLCs). Drawing from Wenger’s (1998) concept of communities of practice, the author uses data from two examples of PLCs—Black bookstore author events and spoken-word poetry “open mics”—to complicate notions of reciprocity and mentoring in the out-ofschool literacy practices of people of African descent. Three soldiering traditions are discussed: soldiers as literacy activists and advocates, soldiers as practitioners of the craft, and soldiers as historians of the word.