A study focused on a 2-year collaboration involving teachers and students from one bilingual and one English as a Second Language (ESL) class (grades 7-9) in an inner New York City middle school with a large population of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Most of the children interviewed had adopted their parents' dream of returning to the Dominican Republic at a later time. The research goal was to develop an instructional activity that would call upon the students' strengths, their knowledge of their own culture, literature, and literacy, and would engage them in meaningful productions for which they could claim ownership, and through this gain higher literacy. To achieve this end, the research team developed a book-writing project anchored in a social and activity-based view of learning and understanding. The student-authored book was to be for future limited English proficient students from the Dominican Republic to use, a book that could be placed in classrooms as well as in libraries. The stories contained in it would come from the students' own lives; the students would tape record and eventually write down stories they had heard from home. Results were satisfactory. Second-language students are often unable to engage in extended literacy activities, but in this case, their literacy skills from their native country were used to give them a sense of accomplishment, value, and confidence. (Contains 26 references.) (TB)