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Austin Smith
Mrs. Lynn Raymond
URWT 1103
September 17, 2015
The Story of My Literacy
A long, long time ago, when I was only in kindergarten, I became infatuated with the idea
of reading. I absolutely loved reading and imagining the stories in my head. I remember when I
had such a vivid imagination, and I was able to create immaculate stories in my head. As soon as
I learned the basics of reading in kindergarten, I was hooked. I read all of the books that I could
in the house, starting with easy books, like The Magic Tree House, and working my way up to
harder books. Most of them were fantasy and adventure type books, but later I took an interest in
Greek and Roman history and mythology books. That was how my literacy narrative began.
The community I grew up in was a small rural area that was about a 30 minute drive from
the closest town. As such, we typically kept to ourselves. There were about five or six families
all together in the area. All of the families were good friends with each other for the longest time
it felt like. As a child, I was friends with all of the other kids in the neighborhood. We would play
together all the time and had a great time together. One of my childhood memories that stands
out the most is the memory of a Halloween Party that I went to the year before I entered
kindergarten. The whole neighborhood was all at one house, having a very good time. My father
was driving around a tractor pulling a trailer with hay bales on it for a Halloween hay ride. This
memory is probably the happiest of my memories of the neighborhood. As time passed a few of
the families moved away and one of the men that lived in the neighborhood was diagnosed with

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cancer and passed away after about a year. Another one of the families became bitter towards
everyone else and began to complain about the most trivial matters. Another event that stands out
in my memory as a time where I went from passively going through life to really striving for
success. For a while, I had average grades on assignments and just sort of generally floating
through life. It had started late middle school and progressed into early high school. I wasnt
really focusing on my homework or anything and I was just grazing by. Eventually my father
confronted me. He said, Son, you cant be stupid all your life. That phrase has spurred my
motivation and inspired me to do great things with my life, instead of merely grazing by. When I
do things now, I try to put all of my effort in to doing them. I have been inspired to do something
that is really worthwhile and will make me remembered by many.
I believe that my economic status did have some influence on my literacy narrative. Id
say that my family is in the middle-upper class of economic status. My father is a dentist that
owns his own practice, and he does rather well for himself. If I ever wanted anything, it wasnt
whether or not we had enough money, it was whether or not I could convince my father to buy it
for me. Both my mother and father were very supportive of my reading, so they were willing to
spring for any books I wanted to read. Due to this, my book collection was quite extensive, but
most of the books I had were books that I wanted to read. There were very few books that I read
that were outside of the genre of my choice, which was fantasy, action, and adventure. I believe
that has had quite an impact on my literacy narrative.
My communication methods most definitely affected my literacy narrative. Most of the
written way that I communicate with the rest of the world is through email or text message.
Before college, most of the emails I sent were not in a professional manner unless I was emailing
one of my teacher, which rarely happened. Along with email, my other main method was texting.

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When I texted others, I usually created my texts with proper grammar, spelling, and sentence
structure. I didnt understand why others sent texts that were so abbreviated and short. If I was
going to take the time to respond to somebodys message, I would do so in a professional
manner, so as to show others that I actually put effort into responding to them. Most of the other
people my age didnt care much whether or not I texted them in a professional manner, but the
adults that I texted took notice to the way I texted them and appreciated the professionalism that
I used in my correspondence. The way I composed my text messages has affected my literacy
narrative and grown my reading and writing skills significantly.
I believe that my life does connect to The Secret Life of Bees in some ways. I grew up in a
bit of a rural community and my fathers side of the family was mostly rural farmers, so Id say
that I was exposed to a great deal of racism throughout my life. My great grandparents were alive
during the time of segregation, and my great grandfather grew up in the southern part of the
United States, so he has very strong racist tendencies. A time where this was made very clear was
during Obamas first election. After he was elected, my parents were not exactly happy. They are
both strong Republicans and have been all their lives. After they heard the results of the election,
they were baffled that he was elected, my father in particular. He came up with ideas of why he
won, such as voting fraud, and he was saying the only reason he won was because he was black,
which while it may have played a role in his election, it most likely was not the only reason.
When I visited the rest of my family next, they were complaining about Obamas presidency
already. They were saying that John McCain should have won the election and that Obama was
going to plunge the country into more debt than we already had. From a literacy narrative
standpoint, I can write from the same place that Sue Monk Kidd has in a way. She also grew up
in the South during times of great racial tension and from that she created a highly awarded book

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from her experiences. While I may not be able to write as well as her, I can still see very clearly
her history and relate to it a great deal. Through my writing, I can share some of the message that
she was trying to spread. My message may not have as much of a feminist undertone, but will
still spread the messages of the injustices towards other races.
I can relate to Malcolm X a good deal because typically during the summers of my youth
I was essentially left to do what I wanted with my time, as long as I was at home or close to it.
Like Malcolm X, I had more free time then I knew what to do with and so I spent it the best way
I could, with reading. During the summers of the time that I was in first through fifth grade, I
would read countless amounts of books. I dont believe that I could even name all of the book
series that I have read over the years. When I was in elementary school, I changed schools a
good deal for reasons I didnt understand at the time. I spent kindergarten and first grade in one
school, second grade in another school, third grade in a different school, then finally settled for a
while in fourth grade through seventh grade. I transferred once again after seventh grade. I spent
half of my eighth grade year in one school and then I was home schooled for the second half of
the year. After I finished middle school, I settled in high school and attended the same high
school for four years. Transferring schools so many times when I was younger secluded me from
other kids in a way, I believe. I suppose I was friendly enough to the other kids, and I did make
some friends, but for the most part I couldnt make very many friends because the other kids
were unwilling to leave their comfort zone that they had already constructed within their friend
group. I believe that because of this that I was able to just focus on reading during my summers.
Since I didnt have the distraction of many friends I could just seclude myself and read, which
was fine by me. After elementary school, I became a bit more social to my peers and found that I
was accepted into many of the friend groups at that school, so I didnt read as much at that point.

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During middle school, I got an IPad for Christmas. I mostly used the IPad for reading books.
Using the IPad to read made it much easier to buy book and read them. I was no longer
constrained by needing to go to the bookstore every time I needed another book, I could just
order more books online. It also allowed me to read in low light situations, whereas before I had
to have a flashlight or something similar to read when my surroundings were dark. By my eighth
grade year, I had almost stopped reading entirely and was mostly hanging out with my friends at
that time. Perhaps if I had kept on reading recreationally over the years, I would have a much
higher reading comprehension level than I do today or maybe even be a better writer than I am
currently.

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Works Cited
Bullock, Richard. Writing Guides. 2005. Web. 22 September 2015.
iUniverse.com. 2015. Web. 22 September 2015.
Scocco, Daniel. Daily Writing Tips. 2014. Web. 22 September 2015.
X, Malcolm. "Learning to Read." Smccd.net. n.d. Web. 7 Aug 2014.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin. 2002