Devan Twibell: Literacy Narratives

As I read Tanya Barrientos story it made me more aware of how quick people are to judge others. She grew up in the 60's and 70's when different ethnicities were not as widely accepted in the U.S. as they are now so she separates herself from her Guatemalan ethnicity and tries her hardest to be "white". Then suddenly society changes and children were told to picture America as a "multicolored quilt". Tanya had tried so hard to fit in with white people that she says "I was left wondering where I fit in". So now she wants to embrace her Latino heritage so she takes lessons and listens to tapes to learn Spanish but she still struggles to fit in with the rest of the Latino community. She tries to speak Spanish with others and always ends up getting a dirty look when she stumbles over a difficult sentence. I see Tanya's predicament and it would be a hard place to be in always wondering who you were and where you belong. At the end she asks if there are others like her and if so to speak up and not be embarrassed.

At first while reading Frederick Douglass's story and reading how his mistress was teaching him to read, I thought to myself that there were "good" slave owners. I was happy to see that she was teaching him the alphabet. Then he describes how all of her heavenly qualities disappear when her husband tells her to quit teaching him. He describes her as anxious to do better than what her husband commanded. This is when we are introduced to Frederick's ingenuity. He makes friends with the poor white boys and trades bread in exchange for reading lessons. In his reading of Sheridan he was showed slavery in the eyes of the author who was anti-slavery. He learned to detest his enslavers and said that the readings, "Had given me a view of my wretched condition, without remedy". I think after reading something like that anyone would feel hatred for their masters and not have anyway of getting rid of this hatred. He now wishes that he couldn't read because all it brings to him is anger and misery. After speaking to some irishmen he decides to learn to write so he can escape to the North. Once again Douglass's cleverness shows as he reads the timber from the ships. He would trick boys into teaching him to write by saying he was better than them. It amazes me that he grew up as a slave and after years of teaching himself learned to read and write well enough to write this narrative and many other documents. He served as an advisor to President Lincoln and voiced his opinions against slavery.

While reading Malcolm X's exert I was in shock of everything he did while in prison. How someone could enjoy the tedious task of copying the whole dictionary is incomprehensible to me. I am glad that after I read Malcolm's opinion on college that not everyone shares his opinion. He says his problem with colleges is that, "There are too many distractions, too much painty-raiding, fraternities, and boola boola and all of that". He says he studied for as much as fifteen hours a day. Of course if we all studied that much America's youth would consist completely of geniuses but let's be honest we would be miserable.

When Amy Tan says that she winces when she describes her mother's English as "broken" it shows you how much she appreciates her mother's language and she doesn't like to refer to it as something that needs fixed. To Tan her mother's english is perfect and it is what helped her shape the way she saw things and the way she observed the world. I believe Tan should be commended for doing what she wanted and not what everyone else thought was best for her. She was told to go into math and science and stay away from writing but as she describes her rebellious nature took over and she did the opposite. I like how this story centers around the love and respect Tan has for her mother even if in the past she has embarrassed her several times with her broken english. Tan also says how so many Asian-Americans go into engineering but not many into creative writing programs. She wonders if other Asian-American students have this so called "broken" English spoken in their homes and have teachers who steer them away from writing which is what happened to her. I think this is a good assumption that could be true.

Mike Rose story is witty and fun to read. He describes his life as child with personal memories that one can easily picture in their mind. When he gets his chemistry set you can feel his excitement as he describes mixing solutions and seeing the results. Then when he hears of Ada's brother he wants his experiments to be dangerous. He says "I wanted all those wonderful colors to collide in ways that could blow your voice box right off". This kind of frightens me coming from a child but it does show his excitement for experimenting. Then after getting his job selling strawberries he would tell stories to the kids who would otherwise have him for breakfast. Shortly after getting this job he was introduced to astronomy books and became fascinated with the stars and planets. He says he could sit for hours with potato chips and the stars tracking the sky.

Freewriting is just writing for five or ten minutes non stop just to get ideas on paper. Once the time is up underline parts that interest you. We did this in class and I think that it would be a useful tool in writing a story. Looping is writing for 5 or 10 minutes and then picking out the important parts at the end. Then write again for 5 or 10 minutes and repeat what you did before. You continue to do this until you have a complete understanding of the topic. I don't like this process as well because it takes longer than freewriting which I think is effective enough for me. I think listing would be an effective process just because there are no boundaries and you can list any topic that comes to mind. This way you have all your topics out on paper for you to observe and look through. Clustering is what I used in grade school, middle school, and high school. You put your topic in the middle and then write things related to that topic around it. You continue to do this until you have no more ideas. Outlining is a good writing tool to use because you can get all of your main ideas onto paper and it shows the relationships among your ideas.