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Parham 1 Darian Parham English 1101 Jan Rieman September 18, 12 With this essay being my first formal essay of my college career, I feel as though I did very well with writing this essay. Although there were grammatical errors and at times my writing was broad I was able to go back and make the changes necessary from my readers feedback from the peer-reading workshop that was done in class. I feel as though I provided enough details to convey a clear message to the reader and to draw them in as well. I think that I did a good job on my essay and hope you think the same!

Live, Love, Read

There are tears and frustration after staring at your computer screen, wondering, What am I going to write? But there are smiles and feelings of relief of expression while writing as well. Although writing has its ups and downs (especially in an academic setting), it has been a part of peoples lives from the moment they began learning to read, and in other cases, prior to that. Students may moan and groan about writing but lets face the facts. Its not going anywhere! Being able to read and write is an essential part of peoples lives within almost all cultures and we have made many memories learning to

2 appreciate and master this skill. These memories of reading and writing throughout my academic and personal life have molded me into becoming the writer that I am today.

It was merely love at first sight. Every night from the time that I was an infant up until Kindergarten my mom would lay down with me and read me a book before I went to sleep every night. My dad video recorded almost everything I did as an infant and as sat and watched the film I thought to myself, I cant believe Id listen to this woman talk for more than ten minutes at a time. I saw her cradling me in her arms as she read, creating different speaking accents for every character. Of course it sounds silly but that was my moms way of motivating and encouraging me to love reading. Looking at photos of me when I was a little girl I noticed that I carried around a book and my cassette player. My mom told me that I wouldnt go anywhere without my Disney sing along tapes with the book that went with the tape. The embarrassing memories dont yet cease. While rummaging through a box of old photos I found an old Polaroid photo of me sitting in the toilet reading a book. Not only was I obsessed with reading books, it seems like I was will to break nap time rules to fulfill my reading desires. My mom thought it was cute but as she was giggling and lightly nudged me I wanted to tell her, Cherish that memory, because that is probably only time you will see me persistently carrying a book around for fun.

3 One may think to themselves, Wow this girl was in love. And if they were thinking it, they would be absolutely right. Reading was what I thoroughly enjoyed as a child, even though at the age of three I was not able to read but during that particular time, just holding a book in my hands satisfied me. Unfortunately all of that changed between third through fifth grade, because that was when A.R. was implemented into the learning curriculum. Accelerated Reader a.k.a A.R. was the factor that made me slowly begin to hate reading. A.R. was required among all CMS elementary schools, and was implemented to encourage students to want to read, but for me it did the complete opposite. All of my teachers required us to read at least one book a week and record it in a reading log that our parents had to sign every night making sure that each student actually read, but there is a catch. There were different levels of A.R. and the higher difficulty level of the book the more points you earn. Points were the only things that made me want to actually read because I wanted to make 100s on the A.R. quizzes at the end of each week. Reading the books were the real chore, because a lot the books I was most interested in reading we not A.R. books. In my mind I was screaming! There wasnt much that I positively gained from the A.R. system besides the cool prizes I would win at the end of each month. Who doesnt love a pizza and ice cream party? Although A.R. was completely drab and tortured my booking loving soul, I still indulged in two of my favorite series, which were The Series of Unfortunate Events as well as Harry Potter. I wasnt one of those people that

4 stood in line at Books-A-Million 5 hours before the premiere of each new book but I was a pretty big fan of both series. When I read those books I felt like I was watching a movie. Each sentence that I read I could visualize the scene and the physical features of the characters just as vividly as they were described in the books. Most of my weekends in elementary school involved me staying in my room just reading nonstop. Those books were like an addiction that was awfully hard to break. With my love for reading at such a young age I excelled as a writer. My mom used to buy journals for me to record to innermost thoughts in or to just jot random things down that I experienced throughout the day, which helped improve my writing skills and the helped form the way I spoke. I grew up in an extremely diverse community, so I never saw race as a factor. Of course I knew that I was aware that some of my peers didnt look like me, share the same religion, or family and cultural values, but I did not discriminate, or look down on others because they were physically different than me. My parents never really exposed to me to racism because they were trying to shield me from it. As I became older my African American peers would mock the way I spoke saying that I was too white. Even some adults would be surprised by the way I spoke, because some of them assumed that since I was a black girl and large number of my peers were African American and sounded ignorant, they made the hasty assumption that I was just like them. Just thinking about that experience reminded me of Lisa Delpits article No Kinda Sense. It truly depicted the perception of how other

5 ethnicities view African Americans and their dialect. She also describes how the African American dialect, known as Ebonics, is looked down upon other races within American culture. Following elementary and half of middle school, reading and writing had exposed me to the racism of todays society, and I have improved as writer. I could freelance journal all day long without breaking a sweat, but when it came to academic writing my spine would quiver and my skin crawled. My teachers gave me the hardest time with my writing technique, there always seemed to be something wrong with the way I wrote and I couldnt stand having to make changes to what I was taught in the passed that was considered correct. The only academic class I felt like I could clear my mind in was my creative writing class. I absolutely adored my teacher. She wasnt as uptight as my other teachers, and she encouraged us to simply write was on our minds and to be as creative as we possibly could. Thanks to that class, my love for writing gradually increased throughout the school year. I would write short stories and daily poems. I used to carry around a composition notebook filled with poems and letters written to myself. Writing was finally once a part of my life again and still is till this day.

People may say that writing is a total pain but face it. Writing isnt going anywhere. It is an enormous part of peoples lives. Throughout the years there have been many ups and downs but I have learned to embrace and appreciate my skill.

Darian, Great start to your literacy narrative. Its wonderful that you write for yourself outside of an academic setting. I hope that you will keep doing so. As you revise, here are some things to consider: I suspect that you have more to say about the role dialect/writing expectations/and cultural influences have played into your literacy development. You may want to go back to that Delpit essay and pull out some specific ideas to look more closely at as they relate to your own school work. My marginal comments indicate some questions/comments I have as a reader. My final suggestion is this: If you have not already, please read your whole essay aloud or have someone read it aloud to you. As you listen to it, pay attention to clarity of ideas. There were some places (noted in my marginal notes) where I was confused. There were also places where I wanted more guidance from one topic to the next, more connection between ideas, particularly when you are changing paragraphs. I think youll be able to hear what Im talking about. If not, Im happy to talk through these ideas more with you.