Dialogic Literary Gatherings: Opening Up Spaces of Meaning Creation and Social Transformation for Roma People

Abstract

Dialogic Literary Gatherings (DLGs) were created in La Verneda-Sant Martí Adult School, located in one of the poorest working-class neighborhoods in Barcelona (Spain) at the time, in 1978, by a group of non-academic women referred to as the “other women” (Puigvert, 2001). They were created with the aim of tearing down elitist walls which impeded low Socioeconomic Status, migrant, Roma, people with no academic studies or belonging to other excluded groups in society from reading universal classics of literature (Flecha, 2000). None of the participants in the first DLGs had university studies, and yet, they were able to read, understand, enjoy and debate works of authors such as Kafka, Lorca, Dostoyevsky, or Joyce. Moreover, as the scientific research conducted over these years has shown, DLGs have promoted great benefits among these populations, from fostering access to higher education, to increasing their self-esteem, or to becoming transformative agents in front of injustices. DLGs are based on dialogic learning, which is comprised of seven principles. This paper focuses on two of these principles: creation of meaning and transformation. Through reviewing empirical works about DLGs in Spain with adult participants, I argue that the dialogic interactions in which DLGs are grounded and the use of universal classic literature promote participants’ creation of meaning and transformations in their own lives and social contexts.