theguide11e

Composing Your Own Literacy Narrative

This chapter invites you to compose a literacy narrative. Your instructor may add specific requirements to this assignment, but in general you are to write about a memorable literacy experience—learning, unlearning, or relearning, as Toffler would say, to communicate with others. Below are some questions and examples to help you choose a subject. But let’s begin by considering the assignment’s rhetorical situation.

Apply the rhetorical framework: who? what? when? where? how? and why?

Since this is the beginning of a new course, you could view this assignment as an opportunity to introduce yourself to your instructor and classmates by choosing a literacy experience, genre, or medium (assuming your instructor gives you leeway to choose) that would enable you to make a particular impression on your readers. For example, if you want to emphasize the importance of reading graphic novels or playing video games in your literacy development, you might consider composing your literacy narrative as a graphic memoir (like the Lynda Barry selection) or video game.

Like the remembered event narrative in Chapter 2, a literacy narrative tells a story about a person or event from your own life. To be effective, it must

tell a compelling story;
vividly describe the people and places;
convey the event or person’s significance in your life, how the event or person affected your literacy practices or your understanding of the power and complexity of the ways we try — and sometimes fail — to communicate with one another.

These are the basic features of the genre.

The first part of the Guide to Reading in Chapter 2 provides a more detailed introduction to the basic features of remembered event narratives, and the Guide to Writing in that chapter supports their drafting and revision. Use those sections to help you invent as you draft and revise your literacy narrative.

Devise a topic

You may already have an idea about what you’d like to write about. But if not, the following ideas may give you a jumping-off point:

an influential person who played a role — for good or ill — in your literacy education;
a challenging project that required using a literacy you had not yet mastered;
an occasion when you had to display literacy in a particular academic discipline;
a new literacy you had to learn at a workplace;
an experience learning how to communicate better with classmates, team members, siblings, or people in your community.

Your instructor may ask you to post your thoughts to a class discussion board or compose a fully developed literacy narrative like the example by David Sedaris. If your instructor approves, you might also consider using multimedia — for example, creating a Web page with visuals, audio, and video.