Book excerpt: This rhetoric with readings invites students to explore the conversations and literacy practices of the various communities they participate in and to apply the understandings they gain to writing, reading, and research in academic settings. Exploring Literacy presents a model of literacy situated in communities and the experiences of readers and writers within them. Students are invited to explore their own experiences in these communities while adopting the reading and writing practices of the academic communities they are entering. Combining the elements of a reader, a rhetoric, research guide, and handbook, it offers an introduction to the sustained inquiry that underlies most academic work. Each chapter focuses on one primary reading selection and demonstrates a process that builds critical response skills. Students are taught effective ways of engaging with different kinds of texts-memoirs, short fiction, ethnographic writings, academic essays-and offered extensive instruction on how to use writing to enrich their involvement with texts.