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Winner of the 2023 CCCC Outstanding Book Award and the CCCC
Advancement of Knowledge Award
Named one of the 20 Best New Rhetoric Books to Read in 2021 by
BookAuthority
Winner of the 2021 Vision Award from the Coalition for Community
Writing
Humanities scholar Aja Y. Martinez makes a compelling case for
counterstory as methodology in rhetoric and writing studies through the
well-established framework of critical race theory (CRT), reviewing
first the counterstory work of Richard Delgado, Derrick Bell, and
Patricia J. Williams, whom she terms counterstory exemplars. Delgado,
Bell, and Williams, foundational critical race theorists working in the
respective counterstory genres of narrated dialogue, fantasy/allegory,
and autobiography, have set precedent for others who would research and
compose with this method.
Arguing that counterstory provides opportunities for marginalized voices
to contribute to conversations about dominant ideology, Martinez applies
racial and feminist rhetorical criticism to the rich histories and
theories established through counterstory genres, all the while
demonstrating how CRT theories and methods can inform teaching,
research, and writing/publishing of counterstory.
About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series
In this series, the methods of studies vary from the critical to
historical to linguistic to ethnographic, and their authors draw on work
in various fields that inform composition--including rhetoric,
communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural
studies, and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse--ranging
from individual writers and teachers, to classrooms and communities and
curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts
of writing and its teaching.
