Literacy as acceptance - Lisa

I initially had two motivations in the quest of learning to speak; to be accepted by my father and mother, and to fit-in with my community. I spent the first five years of my life in a small suburb in Michigan, in a tight-knit subdivision, on a very intimate street that contained four households; ours and three others that were also filled with children. Our small cult-a-sack housed a total of thirteen children and I was the youngest.

I am the youngest child in my family. I was born into a household with a mother, a father and two older sisters. My sisters and I were all two years apart, so when I was three years old, Beth was seven, and Kristy was nine. I initially had two motivations in the quest of learning to speak; to be accepted by my father and mother, and to fit-in with my community. I spent the first five years of my life in a small suburb in Michigan, in a tight-knit subdivision, on a very intimate street that contained four households; ours and three others that were also filled with children. Our small cult-a-sack housed a total of thirteen children and I was the youngest.

I knew that no other children on the block wanted to play with me. I had to be looked after, I was always causing messes, and I couldn’t even communicate with the kids, let alone the teenagers. I would mutter a word and I would get a mixed reaction. My sistersand the younger neighborhood children teased me and the teenagers half-teased yet half-prodded me to attempt to pronounce another word to follow. I had a speech impediment. I could not pronounce the consonants “r”, “l”, “w” or “s”. I was already a shy child, yet my own inability to pronounce words correctly and the experience of being teased” only increased the awareness that I did not quite “fit-in” with my neighborhood and my speech community.

Speaking never came easy to me, but reading and writing did. Reading was always encouraged in our household. My mother read to my family at all times. Before pre-school my mother always took me to the library to attend the organized readings and also to pick out books. The television was rarely on in our house, and if it was, it was on PBS or a type of educational broadcast. I attended Sunday school before pre-school and was often read to. I also attended religious study after school which played a tremendous role in learning to read various works outside a scholastic structure. At dinner time, one of us girls would have to pick a prayer from a book and read it aloud. A Book Mobile (a library on wheels) used to come to the neighborhood and we were allowed to pick out books just as a child would choose an ice cream treat from the “Ice Cream Man”.

I was taught to enjoy and appreciate literature at a very early age by my mother. I also recognized literature as a means of personal escape and communal acceptance. I knew that I was much better at reading and writing than speaking. I paid close attention to the teachers once I did get to school, I read “Sam I Am” books with fervor, and I practiced writing my letters over and over until they looked pretty to me, and acceptable enough to show my father.