Who are you as a reader, a writer, a learner? What are your beliefs and philosophies about reading, writing, and learning? How have reading, writing, and/or learning played a role in your life? How have reading, writing, and/or writing shaped and been shaped by cultural contexts in your life and the larger world?

Literacy Narrative

Literacy narratives “allow writers to reflect on the people, ideas, and events that have shaped them as writers. . . . They exist . . . to help writers share their reflections about their relationship with reading and writing” (Palmquist and Wallraff 137). Literacy narratives draw heavily on tools like context, theme, and descriptive language to recreate a story of the author’s growth as a reader, writer, or learner. This assignment does not require outside sources.

Literacy narratives not only recount past experiences but also interpret and synthesize these moments into meaningful reflections of who you are as a reader, writer, and learner and about identity, education, values, and culture. They consider questions such as: Who are you as a reader, a writer, a learner? What are your beliefs and philosophies about reading, writing, and learning? How have reading, writing, and/or learning played a role in your life? How have reading, writing, and/or writing shaped and been shaped by cultural contexts in your life and the larger world?

In this project, you will write a literacy narrative about one of your own experiences with literacy, broadly defined. As you’ll see in our readings, there are many possible ways to approach your literacy narrative: working from a significant event (or events), following a chronological pattern, discussing significant people, texts, practices, etc. Whichever approach you decide to take, your project will probably:

Provide both narrative (what, who, when, where?) and synthesized reflection of the experience or practice (what does the narrative portion mean? So what?)