A literacy narrative...

I remember being in elementary school and trying to write a story. My story was going to be the adventures of a courageous tiger cub which would inevitably become a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough. I had the perfect story in my head: an abandoned tiger cub dodging dangers and prowling through the undergrowth in search of food. I never realized that I had the story, but lacked the means to vividly tell the story. My climactic moment of triumph was nothing but “then he jumped on a rabbit.”

I wanted to be the next David Attenborough. My favorite shows were on National Geographic or Wild America. My reading material mainly consisted of books on the animal kingdom and the Berenstain Bears. This would often start an argument with my mother; I wanted to read for fun whereas she wanted me to read something more “educational” – like the dictionary. She would give me books to read and have me write a summary and a response. We were living in Korea at the time, so I think she was concerned that I might forget English.

Sometime after that I started writing for myself. It was mostly nonsense. These periods of doodling never lasted very long because I eventually grew bored or didn’t have very good material. Nevertheless, I wrote a few journal entries and even a poem. At one point, I even tried being my own version of Harriet the Spy. I thoroughly enjoyed having a notebook with secrets. It was empowering. Best of all, since I was living in Korea at the time, I didn’t have to worry about my notebook being discovered. I don’t think it had much of an effect on my voice as a writer, but it’s always amusing when I come across a dusty notebook half filled with the grandiose wisdom of a fifteen year old.

When I came back to the United States, high school writing began with “a topic sentence, a concrete detail, and two sentences of commentary.” English was never a subject that I prioritized. It was always about getting good grades in biology, chemistry, or math. So, I never gave it much thought when I had the highest grade in my freshman English class, or when my sophomore English teacher wanted to read my essay aloud to the class as an example of good writing. My junior year certainly did not encourage me; I enrolled in AP English and struggled. The red ink on my essay never seemed to say anything useful and I couldn’t figure out how to improve my writing. I think the best essay I ever wrote in that class was a B-. I didn’t even pass the AP exam. Oddly enough, writing became easier after that class. My teacher must have subtly taught me how to refine my writing because I never felt like I had learned anything in her class.

She must have done something right because I never struggled with an essay again. My writing was the only thing that kept my GPA up when I was getting D’s and F’s in Zoology and Calculus at Las Positas College. It took much longer than it should have, but I eventually switched majors from Biology to English. I like to think that it was my pursuit of writing that reignited a thirst for reading. Upon transferring to CSU East Bay, I noticed that their English department didn’t have a very wide selection of classes; even the core requirements for my option hadn’t been offered in years. Their literature classes, however, were excellent. It is where I found a new appreciation for American, medieval, and classical literature. I even got to taste American drama with Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire but my personal favorite was A Long Day’s Journey into Night.

I like where I am now as a writer; I feel comfortable with what I’ve learned and what I have managed to achieve so far. I really should thank Mrs. Smith for helping me become the writer I am today, but I still think she could have done a better job explaining what I was doing wrong. Then again, it’s entirely possible that she did and I never paid attention.