Week 4: Reading Responses

·         Heath’s Chapter 1

o   Heath writes, “The younger generations acknowledge, but do not share, their elders’ gratitude for and sense of belonging to the mills.  Resentment over unionism, heath hazards, and blacks in the mills run high among the young” (29).

§  As a member of a mill town, my generation was the first of four generations to not have been employed by our local mills.  While my generation is, in my opinion, grateful for what the mills have provided our families and town, they are not “our” mills.  It is almost as if we reaped the benefits without putting forth any effort.  Because of this separation, there was always a disconnect, I’ve found, between the younger and older generations—the mill workers and the non-mill workers.  I think Heath’s attempt to focus on this disconnect is true of many Southern small towns.

·         Heath’s Chapter 2

o   Heath writes, “But the oldtimers do not want the young folks to deny themselves the benefits of the modern times.  In fact, they themselves have incorporated into their daily living facets of the new times: a liking for travel in campers, a preference for store-bought clothes, and an avid interest in the secular and biracial activities of the Senior Citizen’s Center.  They like to talk about old times but do not spend their days lamenting their passing.  Instead they keep busy using the talents and enthusiasm for hard work and family recreation those days fostered in them” (36).

§  Once again, I agree with Heath and her words ring true to my raising.  All of my family members who were mill workers believed in hard work, but they also pushed for us, the younger non-mill worker generation, to do more and leave our small town for bigger and better things—for a better education, for better jobs, etc.  I think it is because of this push that many Baby Boomers (most of them mill workers in my hometown) made sure their children went to college and could have a brighter future than what their parents gave them.  For every generation, having a job in the mill meant providing more and better for your children until one day the more and better would mean a life without the mill.

·         Heath’s Chapter 6

o   Heath writes, “Many authors have painted the contrast between ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ traditions in strong terms, emphasizing important differences in attitudes and behaviors.  Most of these accounts, and many images in the mind of the general public, categorize communities as either literate or oral.  Oral traditions are often considered as essentially the same, with only minor cultural differences, wherever they are said to characterize a society.  Many accounts also tend to consider the forms and functions of literacy in a ‘literate’ community as having certain universal characteristics” (230).

§  So once again, for the 400^th time this semester: What does it mean to be literate?  I honestly think this is a question I will continuously struggle with defining for myself, but I like Heath’s attempt.  I can see the reason for wanting to separate the two (literacy and oral), but why?  If literacy means to have an understanding of what is being said, then oral traditional definitely accomplish that.  However, one key facet of literacy is the ability to not only read and write, but to understand that reading and writing.  Obviously, oral traditions lack both of those key elements.  But I guess one must look at it in context: Would a community who only has oral traditions and does not have an alphabet need to be able to know how to read and write?  Couldn’t those members effectively communicate orally with other members?

·         Brandt’s Chapter 2

o   Brandt writes, “To write words down is not to give them a detached life but to give them a public life—to make them shared.  To commit oneself to paper is really to ‘give one’s word’ to someone else, to commit to having written something” (39).

§  I never really thought about my writing as the way Brandt talked about it.  I always looked at my writing as a reflection of me and that those words on the page were my words, but I never quite looked at writing as a way of giving life to words, and thereby making them shared—but it makes sense.  If Shakespeare had never “shared” Romeo and Juliet with the world, we would have never been able to enjoy it.  And by writing something, it means I take ownership for that writing, whether my name is on it or not.  Even if no one ever knows that Kelly Mezick wrote that something, I will know.  I will always know that my words and thoughts were written down, at a particular time, about a particular topic.

·         Street’s “The New Literacy Studies”

o   Street writes, “An understanding of literacy requires detailed, in-depth accounts of actual practice in different cultural settings” (430).

§  I think this is as close as I’ll get to having literacy be defined on an individual basis.  We can’t define literacy (as a whole) as what it means to be literate to us, but what does it mean to be literate within a particular culture or community.  As previously mentioned, the community that communicates only through oral tradition technically isn’t literate by Western standards.