A generous review of our books by Fei Victor Lim.

The books resist an easy definition as simply an exposition on a grammar of multimodality – for which it is, but more. It is also a rich historical account of meaning and grammar, tracing the lives and ideas of personalities across cultures, some well-known, many less so, and in so doing, often vindicating and validating their contributions to human knowledge. In this sense, their work is a political and scholarly tour de force – an advocacy for the forgotten and marginalised. In this, the erudite tomes are not only interdisciplinary in orientation but are also scrupulously inclusive in nature. They seek to acknowledge and highlight the meaning-making practices and knowledge contributions of those who might be missed out in the western-oriented canon of scholarly work. The first book opens with the inspirational painting ‘Big Yam Dreaming’ by an aboriginal elder, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and the second book closes with an aspirational song, ‘Tribal Voice’ by an aboriginal band, Yothu Yindi. In encapsulating the stories and ideas of the books between the ‘tribal voices’, the authors put forth a powerful argument for the decolonisation of knowledge and scholarship.

The authors, Professors Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, are leading lights in the field of multiliteracies and multimodality and were conveners of the now-famous New London Group. Their latest books are poised to be their pièces de résistance – a sublime collection of their lived experiences, profound reflections, and lives of meaning.

Read the full text at this link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2634979521992025