Patricia Reider
English 11000-L39127
Literacy Narrative Draft
February 12, 2019
The Value of Books
I was four years old when I started my formal education. It was a Kindergarten class and my teacher was Mrs. Weston. Because my family had moved to Canada from Germany and although I was born in Canada, no one in my family spoke English and neither did I. I was very frustrated that I was unable to communicate with anyone or understand what was going on in the classroom. Mrs. Weston always assured me that everything was “good” or “ok” and those tiny words of encouragement quelled my anxieties and helped me feel at ease. My ignorance in reading, writing, speaking or even understanding English was the product of the hardships of my parent’s upbringing and their inability to teach me the basics of the language as they were struggling to learn it themselves.
When my parents were children they were focused on surviving whiles growing up during World War II in Germany. They had very little education. They were taught to read and write at home. There was little money or access to books that could take their knowledge, from the basic survival skills acquired through their political circumstances forward to a place in life where they could dream about their futures and work toward one if they did dare to dream. They had absolutely nothing. They didn’t have the aspirations of professional lives. They barely had any opportunity that could bring them something that might make life a little better.
After the war, my parents both worked for years before they had enough to purchase a ticket for my father to journey to Canada by boat. He left his wife and children and sought a job with a decent salary and saved enough money to bring his family out of Europe. My (late) father would not speak of those times, but I have had some conversations with my mother and my paternal grandmother about how they moved from nothing in Germany to their more abundant lives in Canada. One thing that sticks in my mind is that they said, that when they could, they would pool any small amount of money and buy second-hand reference books. Their prized publication was a huge two-volume set of Webster’s dictionary. Volume I covered words starting from A to M, and volume II covered the rest.
As my parents went through their days they would jot down the words they’d heard but didn’t fully understand on any slip of paper and then come home and looked for them in the dictionary. Then they would write the words and the definitions in a notebook to aid in learning exactly what the words meant and to learn to spell them properly. When they listened to the radio or watched our tiny black and white television, they would write down the words they didn’t understand. They each had one volume of the dictionary to look up the words and they would switch volumes every other day to practice finding any word. Although they were diligent in this practice, their main conduit of learning to speak and write English would not fully develop for many years. Like many families who migrated to places where they did not or do not know the language, my parents would insist on their (four) children speaking to them in English while they spoke to us in German and in this way their language would not be lost.
As my schooling progressed, I was not allowed to use those books. I had my own schoolbooks and those were the resources mom and dad insisted I follow. They didn’t want me to flounder the way they felt they had. They insisted that having the school instruct me in the “proper ways” to read and write and to speak and communicate, had to be the better way to learn and the teachers were considered to be the experts. This was also a way for my parents to piggy-back their literary learning experience. My books were also their books.
My parents were very strict about my education. But I loved school and was a quick learner and I always did well. I was allowed to use the library, but my parents would not sign the permission slip for me to have a library card. They found it frightening to give a child the responsibility of caring for a borrowed book. I can only imagine that the thought of four children borrowing books and perhaps damaging or losing books or a shameful fine for late returns was leftover anxiety from growing up without any. One might think that this is odd or that not being able to take a book home made my life difficult. It was actually better for me to go to the library without the distractions of home. In the time I spent in what always seemed to be a glorious old building, I was surrounded by hundreds of books. I didn’t have to pick just one and work with that, I had the luxury of looking further, seeking different facets to my scholastic endeavors and there was always someone I could ask for help. I just had to look around, all the answers were there.
Webster’s Dictionary still has a prominent place in my parent’s house. There are a number of other books on which my mother places great value even though time has made them obsolete. Old atlases and encyclopedias offer outdated information. Since the acquisition of these books was so important and often difficult, one can assume that letting them go would be very difficult.
At the age of 80, my mother purchased a computer and uses “the Google” to search for things she wants to clarify. It really makes her happy that she is able to find answers to things that she wanted answers to years ago. I am thrilled when she asks me to show her new things. For example, what she can do with the Amazon gift card she got as a Christmas gift. It’s so beautiful to see her so excited about being able to find new knowledge. It always reminds me of when I was unable to ask for what I needed that first day of school. I was told not to worry, things are good, things will be ok, and they always have been. I just had to ask. And now Mom asks me.
As a family, we all learned in tandem, parallel in our learning experiences and sharing a language. My grandmother never really did speak English fluently but I know she could read because I saw her read novels. She had no problem understanding what was being said in the movies or on the television. At the same time, she always got someone to write what she needed because she did not want to make any error in her written communications. My parents both came to speak, read and write in English and both continued to master French as well. In Canada, there are two official languages and they were determined to speak be able to communicate fluently in each.
When I became a mother, I read to my son every day. He had a voracious appetite for stories and was obsessed with alphabets. He had mastered reading by the age of two and had his own library card before the age of three. I’ll never forget the day he went up to the librarian’s desk and asked how he could get his own library card. The woman told him that as soon as he could fill out the form himself he could have one. He asked for the form and sat at a table and worked it out. He did not want my help as he wanted to be his own person in the library. I felt so proud that day. I’ll never forget the experience of seeing someone so young and so determined to take control of his or her education.
One day I will have the responsibility to dispose of those two large volumes of Webster’s Dictionary and the notebooks my parents filled up and stored in the drawers of their desk. I might offer them to my son. He is the first family member to be working toward a doctorate degree linguistics no less. He has almost completed his dissertation and should be finished by the end of this year. After that, Ben is thinking of returning to his passion for mathematics.
My mother is so very proud of his achievements and that he presents his articles around the world and has co-authored a book on language. I doubt he will have much use for the books, but I do believe he can appreciate how much they have meant to his mother and her parents and how valuable those books were in the progression from a family with nothing to his being able to follow his academic career and any other dream.
Sometimes, when I need some literary help, I ask him.
Reflection
While the genre of this paper had been set out for me, this literary narrative has become an exercise, which in its exigence prompted me to the contemplation of how I came to achieve my literacy. I had not considered that my experience was unusual, but in hindsight, I can see that it was a shared journey of an entire family and deserves to be shared. In reading the examples given in class and researching other literacy narratives, I found that most people find their distinct path. At the same time, we all share a common outcome.
My audience, for the most part, is me. Other then those involved in this course I doubt there will be anyone else who would have much interest. I am also a very private person and not likely to share it outside the course. I do think it is a good example of one person’s experience. Should this narrative reach someone outside my cocoon of privacy it would be my wish that it might inspire confidence and a sense of determination in the journey of others trying to find a way to literacy. I like my story, perhaps it should be shared, perhaps in adult literacy classes.
My stance would be that of the importance of having a support structure for those times when one’s efforts become difficult. Most things in life have periods or episodes of difficulties, those hurdles we all have to find a way over. I stand firm in tenacity and the resolution to move forward and not sit and focus on what didn’t work. We can learn from failure and those are usually the best lessons life offers.
This stance helps illustrate my purpose of writing. I thought it would be just a tale of personal experience, but it is also a metaphor for tackling life’s goals. It is a reinforcement of my abilities. This writing experience has a meaningful and purposeful effect on my approach to learning. Reflecting on accomplishment is very positive, self-affirming experience.
The act of typing a personal experience is not a medium that I would have dreamed of in my younger years. Certainly not typing on a laptop computer and uploading homework through the internet and onto City College’s Blackboard website. I had never envisioned this digital experience, now I can’t imagine a day without it.
My experience was a collective of the efforts of my family. I’d always known that, but I wasn’t really conscious or appreciative of how much effort and discipline had taken place through each person’s efforts and contributions to elevating the literary abilities of each family member. I can connect those efforts to our youngest generation.
Although I had not written a formal thesis, I see that the common thread to each person’s journey was the importance of books. Since these journeys to literacy began, and for the most part took place before, the introduction of the internet, the conduits to language and the rules of language were achieved (mostly} through books, although, the mediums of radio and television, as well as everyday conversation, revealed where there was missing information, sticking to the plan brought the desired results.
Considering the fact that I am able to read examples and research specific aspects to literacy narratives are proof that I have successfully come through my family’s plan to put literacy in a prominent position in our lives. Now that our choices in the delivery of information have exploded through Internet access this class can communicate with swift precision and without the use of physical books. This seems to have become the main medium for most education. My mother is a life-learner and, wow, she’s having a great time.
In this first major project, I have satisfied some of the course learning outcomes that comprise the objective of this course. The course learning outcome (or CLO) #1 is to explore and analyze, through writing and reading a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. The genre of a literary narrative, through the exploration of my personal history and my family history. Although no research was required, self-exploration and the reliance on memory were my primary tools.
As far as exigence, at first I had no idea what that meant, I hadn’t heard that term before. In hindsight, I believe it to be, that in this case, I was compelled to write because the experience brought together some very pleasant memories of the experience. The purpose was clearly to fulfill an assignment at the outset, but as I experience what I now believe to be exigence, I was propelled by the pleasant experience of warm memories.
Since this was not a research work, nor an argumentative piece, there were not the academic components of research, proper citation and no special media was required other than everyday computer usage and retrieving pertinent information regarding this assignment through the City College Blackboard system.
