Lit Narrative

Our very first assignment was to write a literacy narrative-- a personal reading history.  It was actually a very interesting exercise and something I had never done before and never even thought to do.  As an aspiring English teacher, I feel like it was an important exercise.  It's one I'd like to have my students do at the start of a semester because it will be helpful for me to see where they are at-- what they like to read, what they hate to read, if they like to read period.  I think it's also a good process for the students, simply because it's useful to reflect on our habits, interests, and to see how we change as students, and as readers.  In writing my own, I noticed that I've gone through different phases with respect to what I enjoy reading (trends, topics, genres, etc.) but I've also gone through long periods of not reading for pleasure at all. 


Anyhow, here is the Literacy Narrative I turned in at the start of the semester. It also gets into why I chose to go back and get my high school teaching credential.


Lots of Dead Women

I never read for pleasure in college or graduate school even though English was always my “favorite” subject.  In high school I read because I had to. “There was NO not reading the book.”  My A.P. English teacher would slam his fist on a desk or throw a book and yell this at us when someone didn’t pass the reading check test.  I often stayed up late or set my alarm clock for 5 a.m. to finish the reading.  I read every assigned book, and I remember almost none of them.  I do remember Heart of Darkness, but I think this was largely because I taught it during graduate school, and thought, “how in the hell did I read and understand any of this as a teenager?” It wasn’t until I taught it that I began to sort of understand it.  And even still, my memories of the book are mixed with images from Apocalypse Now.   I can envision one student who sat in the corner writing in his final review of the class, “the teacher was too liberal and pushed her liberal agenda on the students.” Hopefully he will remember at least one of the books we read.

My college women’s literature course ignited my interest in feminist literature, so I decided to go to graduate school.  It was largely because I read a book called My Dark Places by James Ellroy. It was creepy, depraved, and fascinating.  It was completely different from anything I had ever read for school.  It was edgy and contemporary, but the themes were familiar. It shaped my writing sample and letter of intent that led me on to CU Boulder.   I was in graduate school for 5 years.  During those years I read a lot. So much so that my eyes are considerably worse. But I didn’t read for pleasure.  I read Chaucer, I read Meville, I read Joyce, Faulkner, and Derrida.   I actually don’t think the graduate school was very different from college or high school.  It was almost always canonical literature. So many dead white men.  I eventually got bored. I even tried to pick what I enjoyed most: literature with images.  Graphic novels, photography in literature, books about film and T.V.   But what I realized is that I typically liked books most when I was able to teach them.  And though teaching was a part of graduate school, it was the least important part.  I began to hate reading.

I only recently started reading for pleasure, after quitting my Ph.D. program. Coincidentally, much of the literature I’ve been reading lately is Young Adult literature.  I think it started last summer when I read The Lovely Bones for a book club at work. I loved it so much that I read Sebold’s autobiography, Lucky, and then picked up Speak because we had it on our bookshelf at home, I’d been bored at work, and I thought I would probably like it too.  By the time I became conscious of the trend, (my affinity for books about rape, death, and women), it had consumed an entire summer. I picked up Push, watched the film Precious, read In Cold Blood, Savage Night, Montana 1948, among others. I decided to take a break from morbid books. And then I didn’t read for a long time.  

A few months ago a friend recommended The Hunger Games.  I don’t typically like fantasy. I never got into the Harry Potter books. The Hunger Games sat on my bedside table for over two months. In that time, I was let go from my job. I’d been working in the Legal Department at NetLibrary, a digital publishing company in Boulder. I hated it.  I hated staring at a computer all day. I hated commuting to Boulder. I hated filing papers, going to pointless meetings, and sitting under florescent lights.  When  NetLibrary was bought by Ebsco last April, I briefly considered moving to Boston for a job with the new company. I even flew out and visited their offices.  They were a little prettier­—on a river, in old historic mill buildings with big windows and a lot charm.   But I knew that there was no way my husband would give up his teaching job in Denver. And I knew there was no way a cubicle job could get me to give up my life in Colorado.  Losing my job has been stressful and unsettling, to say the least.   But it pushed me out of an easy routine and forced me to make a decision about what I wanted to do with my life.  I know that sounds very cliché, but it’s what actually happened.  I missed teaching, reading, writing, and learning. I discussed it with Aaron and decided to take the beginning steps towards getting my teaching license.  


I also finally picked up The Hunger Games. After speeding through the book in a few nights I ran out to buy Catching Fire. I was obsessed with the characters, the story, the themes, and ideas. And I realized that I didn’t simply want to read the books; I wanted to teach them.  All I could think about for weeks was how fun it would be to incorporate these books into a syllabus with other novels that deal with reality T.V., with trauma, documentary, and surveillance.  I would have loved to read something like this as a teenager.  I am excited to read the books on the syllabus this semester.  I actually think it’s going to be fun to read them.