Week 11: Reading Responses

·         Scott Richard Lyons’ “Rhetorical Sovereignty: What do American Indians want from Writing?”

o    Lyons writes, “In order to fulfill these expectations in writing, we should encourage multilingual students to looks at the text/context connection in a different way.  Texts are not simply context-bound or context sensitive.  They are context-transforming.  It is for this reason that students should not treat rules and conventions as given or predefined for specific contexts and texts.  They should think of texts and discourses as changing and changeable” (603).

·         While Lyons aims his focus primarily on American Indian students, I think that his words can be applied to all students in America.  Every time I teach a novel or a short story, I always ask my students to not think of the work separate from everything else they’ve ever read or been exposed to.  Every student comes to the table with prior knowledge; it is my job as a teacher to work with that prior knowledge to build new and meaningful knowledge.  Multilingual students are always challenging/fun to work with because they usually have prior knowledge so unique from others that incorporating that prior knowledge and learning process can be quite an experience.  Working with students of all races, ethnicities, understandings, and knowledge can be difficult, but it also can be a very rewarding experience, for all involved.

·         Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur’s “Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach”

o    The authors write, “The translingual approach encourages reading with patience, respect for perceived differences within and across languages, and an attitude of deliberative inquiry. Likewise, a translingual approach questions language practices more generally, even those that appear to conform to dominant standards” (304).

§  Once again, I think that all teachers and students could benefit from this model.  In my program, we are taught to approach any type of reading with the same respect, but it does make sense that translingual reading would need more attention.  Teachers today get so caught up in texts that they are familiar and comfortable with, but they sometime neglect to take into consideration what the students (as a class and individually) want to read.  Looking deeper into what your students need—multilingual or not—will prove to be beneficial for everyone involved and make for a more successful classroom.

Week 11: Executive Summary

“Toward a Writing Pedagogy of Shuttling between Languages: Learning from Multilingual Writers” by A. Suresh Canagarajah

            Canagarajah is calling for writing teachers to take new approaches in multilingual writing with three models: the inference mode, the correlationist model, and the negotiation model.  With the inference model, “if [the teacher] sees a particular tone, style, organization, or discourse, many teachers instinctively turn to the first language (L1) or ‘native’ culture (C1) of the writer for an explanation” (589).  With the correlationist model, “[the teachers] study the texts in L1 descriptively before they draw on this information to explain the writer’s peculiararities in L2” (589-590).  The negotiation model, “is different from the first two in many respects: rather than studying multilingual writing as static, locating the writer within a language, we would study movement of the writer between languages; rather than studying the product for descriptions of writing competence, we would study the process of composing in multiple languages; rather than studying the writer’s stability in specific forms of linguistic or cultural competence, we would analyze his or her versatility; rather than treating language or culture as the main variable, we would focus more on the changing contexts of communication; rather than treating writers as passive, we would treat them as agentive” (590-591).

Week 10: Reading Responses

·         Cheryl Guisler’s “When Management Becomes Personal: An Activity-Theoretic analysis of Palm

o   Guisler writes, “Activity theory requires us to understand how a tool builds upon the user’s prior tools, responds to her desires and dissatisfactions, and, through its affordances, extends the capacity of the user in unexpected directions” (134).

§  In other words, it is how knowledge is built and manipulated that teachers and users of Activity Theory should take note of.  As we all should know by now, no two students will learn and understand concepts in the exact same way.  Activity Theory speaks directly to this fact.  Teachers should constantly be looking at implementing multiple teaching strategies, as well as different forms of formative and summative assessments and evaluations.  Rather than look at how students learn differently as a hindrance or a burden, teachers should begin using that knowledge as a jumping-off point for future lessons and activities.

·         Bazerman’s “What is Not Institutionally Visible Does Not Count”

o   Bazerman writes, “In practice, schools are rarely so dichotomous that teachers and students are forced totally into one or another extreme position.  Even in the current political enthusiasm for standards, tests, and regulation, while it puts severe pressure on students and teachers to perform well on externally imposed tasks, it cannot stop children from expressing their enthusiasms and interests.  Further, alert teachers cannot stop noticing and responding to students’ expressions of interest, bafflement, and lack of interest” (437-438).

§  1. Amen. 2. This is a constant struggle taking place every day in classrooms across America.  Teachers must “teach to the test”, but what about everything else? What about the subjects and activities the students are actually interested in, but there’s no test for; therefore, it’s not supposed to be taught. (i.e. creative writing).  Sure, a good teacher will find ways to incorporate those types of activities into ones that are tested and, therefore, more time is spent on, but can that happen every time, with every activity or lesson that isn’t “testable”? Walking this fine line is, unfortunately, half of teaching in Alabama public schools now.  Wish me luck, guys!

Week 10: Executive Summary

Paul Prior and Jody Shipka’s “Chronic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity”

            Prior and Shipka being by explaining CHAT (cultural- historical activity theory). They see CHAT as, “a tale of how tools (external aids) mediate activity, altering the flow of behavior” (180).  The authors then go on to explain the domestic activity of the home and the disciplinary activity of the workplace, in respect to gender and their roles and how those aspects play vital parts in the writing process.  CHAT is used to, “help us understand and conceptualize such literate activity as well as how exploring the specific issues of such literate activity—what is afforded theoretically by this disciplinary object—can in turn inform the evolving theories and agendas of CHAT” (181).  Prior and Shipka are immensely concerned with the activities that lead up to the final project rather than the final project as a whole.  As an English/Language Arts teacher, we are taught to implement formative assessments throughout the learning process rather to simple rely on summative assessments.  Formative assessments are assessments taken throughout the learning process to help both the student and teacher better understand where the student is in their own understanding. Summative assessments are mean to be a final expression of the student’s knowledge and a culmination of formative assessments.

            Prior and Shipka ask several students (all post-secondary) to complete a writing/reading/drawing activity to help both the students and the instructors (in this case, Prior and Shipka) gage their level of understanding and the process it took to capture that understanding.  Prior and Shipka give examples of the students drawings and notes and a way, in my opinion, to better see how the project developed.  Formative assessments, or as Prior and Shipka refer to them CHAT activities are vital in the education process, for both the student and the instructor.  Without these extremely important products, students have no way of expressing their knowledge and teachers have no way of knowing what the student does and does not understand.

Week 9: Reading Responses

·         Cushman’s Chapter 1: The Struggle and the Tools

o   Cushman writes, “Language transfer is a socially complicated process that can best be understood when examined in a back-and-forth fashion between community and institutional contexts” (7).

§  As I read this sentence, I couldn’t help but realize that I, too, do this between my personal community and institutional personas, per se.  Being from a small, Southern Alabama town, I have acquired all of the stigmatized attributes of the language associated with the religion.  However, as a member of a family that prides itself on education, I assumed two personas: Kelly, the Valley Girl (or rather, the girl from Valley, Alabama) and Kelly, the Masters of Education, Graduate Student.  Friends of mine from Auburn have heard me on the phone with my Mother or friends from home and even though they may also be from the South, they often times tell me later that they could barely understand what we were talking about.  I definitely agree with Cushman that language transfer or code-switching is extremely prevalent in individuals who are participating in a community and an institution. 
 

·         Cushman’s Chapter 2: Activist Methodology

o   Cushman writes, “Without immersion in the community, I would not have had access to the private ideologies that inform residents’ cunning language use” (14).

§  In reading this, all I could think about was Margaret Mead and her ethnographic studies with the Samoan people.  Why does Cushman think she has actual, true knowledge of the actual language practices of this community?  She mentioned earlier in the book that she was from a similar community and was a woman, which made her more accessible to the families.  I suppose that after hearing what happened with Mead, I am a little more skeptical of ethnographic research, so I guess now I’m always looking for flaws or weaknesses in the system.

·         Cushman’s Chapter 8: The Transfer of Language in Gatekeeping Interactions

o   Cushman writes, “the transfer of language can promote social and political equality, an egaliteration ideology often implicit, yet not actualized, in encounters with social service institutions” (178).

§  I agree that by putting everyone on an even language playing field, there are positive things that can come out of it, but isn’t there something to be said about rising above and making more of yourself?  I cannot imagine walking into my Graduate level classes and talking like I just left my family’s farm and expect to be taken seriously.  I definitely see where Cushman is coming from and in a Utopian world, that would wonderful, but that is not the world we live in.  People with education, power, money, etc. are expected to speak, behave, etc. one way and those without are not.  While I think those social tags are slowly merging, it is still not the norm.

·         Peck et al’s “Community Literacy”

o   Peck et al write, “Community literacy then—in a stark contrast to urban development and social service efforts—places education and inquiry at the center of its practice.  To speak theoretically, the process we want to foster is one in which writers construct a negotiated meaning, rising to greater reflective awareness of multiple voices and sometimes conflicting forces their meaning needed to entertain.  The understandings writers come to in text are a provisional resolution constructed in the middle of an internal conversation” (582).

§  This selection speaks directly to the book I am reviewing for our class’ book review project, so it immediately jumped out at me.  The current trend in the ELA classroom is not for students to simply read and text and move on (as was in previous years), but rather for the student to take steps to have an understand of the text for themselves and to then know how they came to those conclusions, therefore, making them a better writer and reader.  “Meaning making” as it is called is such a crucial aspect in an ELA that most every piece of material is centered around what meaning can be individually made and then to, once again, know how that meaning was made.

Week 9: Executive Summary

Ellen Cushman’s The Struggle and the Tools: Oral and Literate Strategies in an Inner City Community: Preface

           

            Cushman begins the Preface by giving the reader a slice of her background and what has brought her to write this book.  She says that she is from a poor, inner city but has worked her way to now be teaching at the local university.  As she visits the nearby town of Quayville, she overhears young people of the community talk about the “higher-ups” (the students of the university in which Cushman is a student and instructor) and it reminds her of how far she has come, yet still remembering where she came from.  Because of this, she began ethnographic research in the community to look at the linguistic and social patterns that were appearing in the town.  Young people were struggling with being raised by poor parents, yet wanting to go on and do more for themselves.  Cushman discovered that most of the women: 1. Were independent and did not rely on the assistance of the unstable men in the community and 2. Looked to the younger generation as the hope for the community or the gatekeepers, as Cushman calls them.

            Cushman says that by, “portraying the complex oppositional perspectives that residents used in their daily living, I hope to show how they conceptualize the power relations that emerge in everyday interactions” (xii?).  Cushman seems to be interested in the relationships of the community members and how those interactions drive the individuals’ lives and choices.  The Preface goes on to make reference to what will be discussed in each chapter and then concludes by saying, “In the end, this book challenged the validity  of the notion of false consciousness by grounding a discussion of hegemony in the daily political and rhetorical tactics of inner city residents” (xv?).  I feel like after reading the Preface, I have a better understanding not only of what the rest of the book will consist of, but also of how Cushman began piecing together the different ideas and concepts that would eventually make up the book.

Week 8: Reading Repsonses

·         Greene’s “Misperspectives on Literacy: A Critique of an Anglocentric Bias in histories of American Literacy

o   Greene writes, “In the Americas, the Spanish were responsible for many literacy firsts.  Some of the literacy firsts in the US are the following:

§  The first recordings of births, deaths, and marriages

§  The first basic reading grammar text

§  The first theatrical works

§  The first schools

§  The first written musical compositions

§  The first maps

§  The first petitions

§  The first European signature artifact

§  The first written translations of books into Indian languages

§  The first scientific journals
*Not a complete citation

·         I never realized until reading this piece how influential the Spanish were to forming and shaping the language and practices I am involved with on a daily basis.  With English being such a Germanic language, I never would have thought Spanish to be such an important aspect of the English language.  Maybe not to our language itself, but Spanish had more of a impact in the practices we take part in (i.e. recordings of important events, maps, scientific journals, etc.).  I suppose I should never take for granted what I think I already know how the language I use every day or the practices it employs.

·         Mignolo’s “The Materiality of Reading and Writing Cultures: The Chain of Sounds, Graphic Signs, and Sign Carriers”

o   Mignolo writes, “Writing is a communicative device common to all cultures, although its conceptualizations and uses diverge and not every member of a community has access to writing, whereas in Walter Ong’s conception, writing is limited to alphabetic or syllabic systems.

§  So if I’m understanding this correctly, Mignolo is saying that everyone can write (whatever writing means to him…?? But then what is that?) and Ong is saying that writing can only be achieved through an alphabet or syllabic systems?  So I’m inferring from that that Mignolo is viewing writing as any type of pictures, symbols, scribble..?  Once again, what is writing? Not to be confused with the most popular of questions: what is literacy?  I suppose that we will never have a solid definition for the two because they are such universal concepts and with that, comes extreme differences.

Week 8: Executive Summary

Susan Wells’ Out of the Dead House: Nineteenth-Century Women Physicians and the Writing of Medicine

            Wells begins this chapter by introducing the reader to Marie Zakcrzewska, a ten year old girl living in Berlin.  Zakcrzewska was the daughter of a midwife and followed her mother to school.  While at the midwifery school, Zakcrzewska was introduced to medicine and began her life-long career in the field.  Wells brings Zakcrzewska to our attention because she is the perfect example of how females entered the medical field in the nineteenth century.  Wells writes, “The protagonist comes to us as a little girl, curious, unafraid, strangely concentrated, usually accompanied by her mother and almost always be someone who acts as her father” (3).  Zakcrzewska is just one of many who began their careers in medicine during the nineteenth century, and while Wells points out that medical school then was not as rigorous as it is today, female medical school students faced far more obstacles than their male counterparts.  Because of this, female medical school students would convey themselves as females, but write as if they were males.  Wells points out how gender and writing and rhetoric all played such vital, import roles during this time.

            Because gender and writing and rhetoric are such important issues, even today, Wells looks at how the female medical students’ notes would change: some more feminine, some more masculine (she never stated reasons for the differences to her in what caused the separation).  Even the idea that female medical students were possibly looking into new forms of medicine through their female perspective, but were not given the abilities to do so, seems to greatly affect Wells.  “Seeing gender as a performance helps us to appreciate the rhetorical skill of these women physicians and their uses of the slender rhetorical resources available to them” (Wells, 6).  Female medical students were constantly having to prove their worth within the medical community, even though they were the ones pioneering less intervention, less harsh drugs and surgery, and overall, more empathetic to patients’ needs (8).  The gender different was definitely reflected in their notes and journals and Wells even suggests that they were practicing another type of science all together.

Week 7: Reading Responses

·         Chapter 1: Starting Places

o   Cintron writes, “The distinction between intensity and specifics interests me.  This ethnography contains a set of specifics that I could not have understood if I had not lived ethnographically in a particular place at a particular time, but how does one understand, indeed, experience, the emotion intensities of people, their desires, envies, and resentments?” (6).

§  As someone who is just now becoming familiar with the practice of ethnographies, I found this statement very appealing.  You can tell Cintron wants nothing more than to do a true, well done ethnograpghy, but he is also concerned about things that he (or the people being studied) have any true control over.  How does he (or anyone else) study the desires, envies, and resentments of people? If stated, are they the true emotions? Can emotions be truly verbalized?

·         Chapter 2: Mapping/Texting

o   Cintron writes, “And silence speaks loudly when the silent become acculturated to silence; indifference settles in, for whatever reasons, and most do not vote” (27).

§  I would imagine it would be a very difficult thing to try to study a group of people and they go silent.  However, it seems that Cintron sees this as being a much more powerful statement than the people communicating with him directly (maybe he views silence as a communicative device).  While most people view silence as a negative, it seems as though Cintron and the people he is studying view it as a positive.  Communication without communication.

·         Chapter 3: Looking for Don Angel

o   Cintron writes, “Don Angel, who was born in 1934, was deeply connected to those he called los viejitos, or the old ones.  The viejitos and the world in which he grew up in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes have all but disappeared.  He considered himself one of the few who remembered their folk beliefs, stories, tratamientos or cures, and the way of life that once existed in his tierra or homeland. The viejitos that he knew growing up were far more knowledgeable than he, and he believed, therefore, that he represented them poorly” (60).

§  Identity is a key concept for anyone and it seems that it is also extremely important for Angel.  “Measuring up” to any group one is trying to identify with is also a crucial eventually successfully becoming a member of that group.  It seems as though Angel does not quite realize the true identity of the people of which he is attempting to identify with.

·         Chapter 4: A Boy and His Wall

o   Cintron writes, “How did the pictures of cars on Valerio’s wall fit into this larger portrait of cars in the neighborhood?  These posters were not of thumpers and Too Low Flow, instead, these posters were of Porsches and Ferraris imaged an exotica that was even more out of Valerio’s reach. Europeaness, exorbitant cost, and streamlining were a few of the characteristics that these posters could excite in the imagination” (118).

§  As previously stated, people like to identify with certain groups.  However, sometimes people would rather not identify with certain groups for various reasons.  It seems as though Valerio is making a conscious effort to disassimilate himself with the group found in his neighborhood.  Furthermore, because of the posters of Porsches and Ferraris instead of thumpers and Too Low Flows, it appears to me that Valerio is wishing, dreaming, yearning to rise above his neighborhood group members and prosper.

·         Chapter 5: The Logic of Violence/The Logic of Trust

o   Cintron writes, “As for Maria, her knowledge base was different, and she seemed to have trouble competing on the terrain of technical expertise (“Why does one need algebra?” “I don’t know what algebra is.” “I don’t understand it.” “I’m not going to read something that I don’t understand.”)” (141).

§  It seems that in this particular neighborhood, technical knowledge or academic knowledge is not as valued as “street” knowledge and Maria is a perfect example of this.  She doesn’t understand it, so she doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.  Algebra equals technical/academic knowledge and all she seems to be concerned with is being able to function and prosper in her neighborhood.  Just as we have determined in class that there is no one definition for literacy, so, too, is seems to be the case for knowledge.

·         Chapter 6: Gangs and Their Walls

o   Cintron writes, “In short, the possibilities for appropriating mainstream symbols and recontextualizing them into new meanings were almost endless.  These appropriations pointed to one of the most important characteristics of Angeltown’s street gangs and, I believe, American street gangs in general” (167).

§  Even though these gang symbols and their meanings seemed to be a very emic idea for Angel, Cintron found them to have etic qualities.  Once again, Cintron is attempting to find areas in the community member’s lives where outside-identifications are being made.

Week 7: Executive Summary

Cintron, Ralph. Angels' Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life and Rhetorics of Everyday. Boston (Mass.):
            Beacon, 1997. Print.

Chapter 7: Blacktop

            Cintron begins this final chapter with signs(?) or informational texts for members of the community of which he is doing an ethnography on.  The text are items such as “Be Considerate” with statements such as “Keep weeds and grass cut” and “Keep loud music and parties inside—not outside” and “Be Neighborly” with statements such as “Welcome new neighbors and get to know old ones” and “Join with neighbors to clean up local streets, parkways and vacant lots and help plan other neighborhood projects”.  Cintron then explains that the rest of the chapter will:
                    Attempt to understand certain fieldwork experiences through an
                    analytic lens that relies heavily on such concepts as dirt versus
                    the neat and clean, disorder versus order and, most importantly,
                    the ‘discourse of measurement,’ a term that I will slowly unwrap”
                    (199).

            The rest of the chapter speaks of two males: Ramón and Pablo and then speaks to the “discourse of measurement”.  Ramón laid blacktop as a way to support himself financially as a way to not rely on others.  However, he owes a lot of people money because “his Latino clients often did not pay on time” (201).  Ramón also did not own the correct equipment because of his lack of money, causing some of his work to be sub-standard.  Ramón did, however, “handle contracts and bids well despite his limited English” (202).  Pablo, on the other hand, was “a businessman extraordinaire” (203).  He owned several businesses in and around town.  Pablo could even afford to hire an architect to draw plans for a building he had bought.  Pablo needed to fix the sidewalk in front of one of his store for insurance purposes and was willing to do the work without money from the city, but the city refused to allow this, stating that the sidewalk needed to be re-engineered (205).  The final section of the chapter is labeled “The Discourses of Measurement”.  Cintron defines measurement in this case as “a broad metaphor to imply precision, the sort of precision that is often associated with numbers.  Most simply, the discourses of measurement are ways by which a precise order gets made” (210).  Cintron goes on to compare discourse of measurement to “instrumental rationality” (210).  Cintron then gives four characteristics of the manufacturing process, as it applies to the discourses of measurement:

                        1. The discourses of measurement seem to begin with an
                            identification of a kind of emptiness, formlessness, or
                            ambiguity, and it is to the emptiness, now targeted, that
                            the discourse address themselves.

2. The discourses of measurement tend to belittle other
                knowing systems--implicitly, if not explicitly—or at least
                to make prior discourse of measurement obsolete.
           
            3. Quite often the discourses of measurements are aimed
                at the control of perceived death, decay, and instability.  
           
           4. Discourse measurements are thoroughly integrated into
               the economic sphere.
               (212-214)

Week 6: Reading Responses

Duffy, John. Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2007. Print.

·         Chapter 1: Lost Books and Broken Promises: The Hmong People in China and Laos

o   Duffy writes, “Perhaps few groups have experienced the contingent nature of historical narrative more dramatically than the Hmong, a people whose history still continues to be refracted through a prism of competing stories” (24).

§  When I began reading, all I could think about was the Via people and if the stories of the Via and the stories of the Hmong would be similar.  While portions of their stories are similar, the Hmong people, in my opinion, were given more opportunity while still being suppressed (if that makes any sense).  I think it speaks to the true character of the Hmong to go through such hardships—more than any of us, I hope, will ever know—and yet still managed to succeed.

·         Chapter 2: Rumors, Ropes, and Redemptions: Hmong Writing Systems in China and Laos

o   Duffy writes, “We have seen, for example, how Hmong narratives link the loss of a writing system to the death of the Hmong king and the exile of the Hmong from their homelands in China.  In such stories, the absence of writing is connected to the political subjugation of the Hmong and their identity as a stateless people” (37).

§  I can understand how the loss of a king and a homeland would affect the Hmong’s identity and therefore, their own writing system.  If you feel you have no official identity, why then would you still choose to continue with an official writing system that is attributed to that identity?  I would imagine it to be extrememly difficult for the Hmong just as it would be for me.  If the United States ceased to exist and we were taken over by France, for example, would I feel a stronger need to identify as American and read and write in English—a country that no longer exists—or would I learn to read and write in French?

·         Chapter 3: Never to Hold a Pencil: The Problem with “Preliteracy”

o   Duffy writes, “The literacy experiences of the Hmong, however, compel us to take another look at the concept of preliteracy.  Specifically, the Hmong experience suggests that the presence or absence of writing among certain peoples is not an expression of mentalities, values, or attitudes, but rather is the outcome of historical encounters and relations among peoples, especially among peoples of unequal power” (61).

§  I chose this passage because I had to read it several times in order to understand it.  Because of my background in linguistics, I’ve always known that people can and do pick up the language(s)/dialect(s) around them the longer they are exposed.  However, for most peoples throughout history, that exposure was not one of choice, as is the case with the Hmong.  The absence of writing speaks the power balance that, at the time, the Hmong simply didn’t have. 

·         Chapter 4: Other Gods and Countries: Hmong Literacy Development in Laos

o   Duffy writes, “Materially, Hmong village schools in the late 1960s and 1970s were characterized by simple construction, too few students, and a chronic shortage of such basic educational supplies as paper, pencils, chalk, and books.  These conditions limited what teachers and students might accomplish in the classroom and influenced pedagogical choices, particularly as these pertained to reading and writing” (83).

§  As an English/Language Arts teacher I can relate to this.  As an English/Language Arts teacher in east-central Alabama, I can really relate to this.  Some people may think that a teacher doesn’t need much in the means of materials in order to be effective. However, in order to teach reading, you need materials to read; to read writing, you need materials to write with and on.  I have had to make illegal copies of short stories for my students because we didn’t have enough textbooks.  I can definitely understand how lacking materials would affect pedagogical choices.

·         Chapter 5: Writing Hmong Americans: Reading and Writing in the United States

o   Duffy writes, “For many of the Hmong interviewed for this book, memories of learning to read and write in U.S. public schools involved not only books, teachers, and computers, but also memories of loneliness, racism, and physical abuse” (139).

§  As a teacher reading this, my heart broke.  A learning environment should be one of safety and positivity, not one of neglect and negativity.  I have, however, seen first-hand particular students be picked on or called-out by teachers just because of the students’ ethnicity or learning level.  I do not in any way agree with these actions, but it unfortunately speaks to how the people of the United States points out the “other” whenever possible.  That was true for the Hmong and it still holds true today.

·         Chapter 6: Hmong Americans Rewriting: Testimony, Gender, and Civic Life

o   Duffy writes, “Literacy, for some, was a means to testify about their experiences in the war, to write about and remember them.  Many of the Hmong interviewed for this project spoke of using the literacy skills they had learned in school, church, or even work to compose autobiographical accounts of their wartime experiences” (157).

§  We have talked several times in class about why writing is so personal.  I think this speaks directly to the heart of it.  The experiences of the Hmong led to their literacy and then they used that literacy to write about their experiences.  Giving a person the ability to read and write gives that person power.  The Hmong people used that power to write and speak out about their experiences.

Week 5: Reading Responses

·         Brandt’s Chapter 1: Literacy Opportunity, and Economic Change

o   Brandt writes, “Regional histories also illuminate the value of literacy as a resource.  In the early days of mass literacy, the worth of individual literacy would rise with the rates of literacy in a region.  The greater number of people who would read or write, the more those skills could be traded on to conduct social and economic relations and the more likely that reading and writing skills learned in youth would not be lost” (29).

§  I suppose I take my literacy for granted.  In “my world”, reading and writing is learned very early and by everyone.  Because of literacy being acquired early and by everyone in “my world”, I never really thought about literacy being lost.  Sure penmanship and vocabulary may eventually fail me one day (not that either were amazing to begin with), but to complete lose my abilities to read and write for shear lack of trying? Will there ever be a day I don’t read and write? Does texting count? (joke)

·         Brandt’s Chapter 2: Literacy and Illiteracy in Documentary America

o   Brandt writes, “In the 1960s and 1970s with a focus on the on the prisoner’s right to read, there was a growing call for decoupling libraries from prison objectives and adopting the all-purpose service models of regular public libraries.  Throughout this period, however, most libraries remained under control of correctional authorities and functioned primarily as adjuncts to educational programs” (67).

§  Even in the prison system, literacy is not something that is common or a right for all.  Once again, this plays into the power-struggle of who can and cannot read and write and who controls the authority to say so.  As free men and women, the prisoners could expand on and practice their literacy, but while incarcerated, that freedom of literacy is taken from them.  Literacy is a very powerful thing and I can see how prisons, though I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with their system, would want to restrict or completely do away with the prisoners’ access to it.

·         Brandt’s Chapter 4: “The Power of It”: Sponsors of Literacy in African American Lives

o   Brandt writes, “The holistic sensibilities of the African American church helped to hold intact a powerful, multiply performing sponsor that promoted integration over fragmentation, persistence over change, remembering over forgetting.  As a by-product of helping members to keep body and soul together (often against the harshest conditions), the church also held together unique and enduring orientations to the written word that partook of this tradition” (112).

§  I think I often times forget that literacy can be fostered and developed outside of the traditional classroom.  I know that I can remember reading and writing Bible verses in Sunday School before kindergarten. When people come together and there is a need for literacy, literacy will be encouraged, whether it is in a classroom or not.  Moreover, in the case of a church, a specific or unique type of literacy is occurring that otherwise couldn’t be expressed in most schools and would otherwise be forgotten.

·         Brandt’s Chapter 5: The Scared and Profane: Reading versus Writing in Popular Memory

o   Brandt writes, “A closer look at the functions of writing and reading in households revealed how much more stratified writing was than reading, by which I mean there seemed to be more natural opportunities to share reading and knowledge about reading across generations than is the case for writing” (160).

§  While it took me a minute to figure out what I think Brandt is trying to say, once I digested it, it makes complete sense.  Growing up, my parents and grandparents read to me; they didn’t share person essays with me.  My parents and grandparents took me to libraries and book stores; they didn’t take me to writing seminars.  Reading just lends itself more easily to sharing.

·         Brandt’s Chapter 6: The Means of Production: Literacy and Stratification at the Twenty-First Century

o   Brandt writes, “Literacy became a key resource, a raw material, for the American economy of the twentieth century, and that in turn has had untold impact on the ways that literacy is accessed, learned, and rewarded—it affects the materials we use for literacy, the routes we have or don’t have to learning it, the public meaning that are ascribed to it, the social inequities that cling to it” (188).

§  I guess I’ve never really taken to the time to look back on how literacy came about and how my literacy happened until this class.  Literacy isn’t something that just happens, books aren’t just printed and read, and papers just don’t write themselves.  No, literacy is an active process that is constantly developing and changing with the world around it. Because of that fact, those without literacy are in world that simply doesn’t work for them.  A world where reading and writing are expected and praised and those without are left out.