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- The above examples from Brandt are extremely prevalent in the acquisition of literacy- specifically the suppression and enablement of the literacy narrators in their stories. We see some of these sponsors shown in Alexander’s piece when he notes the archetypes of narratives, and the ones I think would apply specifically to those descriptors would be Victims and Success stories. Victim’s narratives often follow paths of those who had a sponsor of literacy that negatively influenced their viewpoints on reading or writing, through the suppression of the narrator, or the “victim” of their own narrative. This idea of how one “casts the blame for negative literacy experiences” is often written as consequence of the suppression of one’s life/viewpoints/etc. On the other hand, the aforementioned enablement is often a descriptor for sponsors of the success stories, and how a person (peer, parent, teacher, cousin, etc) lead to their enablement in their journey for literacy, whether they expected it or not. My personal literacy narrative somewhat explored this, through multiple people. I discussed some of my peers in a program I was in, and how we all have been attributors to each other’s success.
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- The valuation of literacy in different environments, times, conditions, etc has changed so much throughout time, yet the theme has remained the same. Literacy became extremely equated with success, with the idea that success cannot be acquired without literate knowledge becoming more and more prevalent as the educational system grows and grows. Many people have different experiences and relationships to reading and writing as a direct consequence of this, as with such diverse backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, social classes, we find that the acquisition of literacy is quite different for many people. This has a lot to do with the topics we discussed on the last paper, where everyone’s learning is often attributed to being a direct result of their intersectionality, both in the way they perceive the content and in the way that the content is taught to them.
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- In the literacy winner category by Alexander, we find that the narratives surround one’s rise to the acquisition of literacy. The sponsors, as Brandt would note, are the teachers or peers that introduce the opportunities in which the students claim in order to “win” literacy. This could be someone that tells them, “Hey, you should sign up for the ____ competition/event.” This introduces the idea of some sort of competition, not necessarily externally, in the mind of the author. However, in the Victim category introduced by Alexander, we find that the sponsor of literacy is not one encouraging anything of the literacy narrator, but rather the opposite, by in some way going against the literate learning of the narrator. This causes the narrator to, typically through their own personal motivations or goals, be altered by this sponsor, as they typically will describe how someone “took the fun out of reading and writing.” (Alexander 615)
