Literacy from the trenches of social mobilization

This article discusses the representations of the act of reading and writing for rural educators, who graduated from a university in Brazil, which utilizes partnership with rural organizations and landless social movements. The theoretical scope focuses on alphabetization and literacy studies, in light of Freirean perspective. The readings performed via social movement are sometimes similar, but sometimes distance themselves from university reading and writing practices. The semi-structured interviews conducted revealed that their speeches/representations reflect their standpoint as readers in the context of the grassroots social movement, embedded with a position associated with institutionalized discourse. Meaning of literacy associated with social movement and the institutionalization of higher education contributes to (re)constructions of academic identities.