College English - Volume 74, Issue 4, 2012

Forced displacement has often involved the use of rhetoric, both by government institutions and by people who struggle not only to survive displacement, but also to resist it. The author analyzes such discourses through three case studies: Spike Lee’s film When the Levees Broke, Dave Eggers’s novel What Is the What, and a documentaryshe helped produce on families displaced by eminent domain when the Shenandoah National Park was created.

By examining in turn a son’s craft project, a family photograph, and an image of tectonic plates, the authors demonstrate how objects can elicit rhetorical invention.

The author, a college English professor, explains how his military service in Afghanistan left him having to reconsider his identity as a scholarly writer.

Reviewed are Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community by John M. Duffy, and Spiritual Literacy in John Wesley’s Methodism: Reading, Writing, and Speaking to Believe by Vicki Tolar Burton.