Literacy History

It is hard to imagine living without something that you use every minute of every day. Literacy is that thing for me. Literacy is how we use speaking, writing, and reading to interpret the world, like our own personal language.

Something that seems so innate is difficult to trace back to its roots. I obviously must have learned to read at some moment in my life. I cannot remember ever not reading or not writing. At age five or six I started to write small books. Looking back I am sure most were complete plagiarizations of others, but I understood that I could copy a model and be successful. My mom used to write poems so I started that at a young age too, mostly for birthday cards and presents.

I devoured chapter books, loving the children's series books like The Boxcar Children, The Babysitter's Club, Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew, Choose Your Own Adventure, and The Wrinkle in Time series. As I analyze now, there must have been something in character development that attracted me. I enjoyed being part of a character growing and being changed by the journey of life. I always felt part of the story, immersing myself in his/her adventure. I would continue the stories in my head, daydreaming about what might come next and what the character would look and act like in 10 or 20 years.

Reading and writing was a very personal activity for me. I did not talk about it or share it and part of me was afraid to, as if mentioning it would take away the intimacy I felt with the characters. If I talked about them it might give them away to someone else and they were actually my friends. Books and later journaling took the place of friendships for me in my childhood and early teenage years. They were safe and nonjudgmental and accepted me for who I was.

I don't feel like I actually had to write anything until my senior year English class. I remember it as a scary experience. Someone was going to judge my writing. How was I going to put something out there, something that I kept inside for me, for someone else to put their evaluation on? I'm still not completely over that. It makes writing tough at times but I never want to become so detached to a creation that I can't feel it anymore.

I remember writing a poem for a college entry essay. I loved it – the process and the finished work. It expressed exactly what I wanted to say as clearly as I could ever want to say it. Somehow I lost it along the way. I've lost many other things along the way as I began to write songs. It took me a while to find my own voice, again looking to the models that others provide. Now I find myself frustrated if I am not creating something. I could be writing a song or knitting a sweater. There is something in the creating that draws me in.

The question of literacy related to being educated or intelligent is a complicated one. Literacy includes much more than if someone can read or write a scholarly journal article. I look to my father. He probably read at a sixth grade level. Now I can see that he had some major learning disabilities that affected his traditional literacy skills. He would not spell my name in the same way twice, but he could fix a car. He knew the language of a vehicle. He knew how to read and listen to the problem and with his hands he could write and speak the answer. Not literally of course, but it resulted in a running automobile. Was he literate? Not by a traditional definition. Was he educated? No. Was he intelligent? Definitely. And in ways that other people can't comprehend.