Deborah Brandt

Majed Fitaihi lived in Massachusetts until he was six years old when his family moved to Saudi where he learned English and Arabic and graduated from high school with a bilingual degree. Throughout his education, he has experienced many of the aspects of literacy acquisition which Deborah Brandt discusses in her article “Sponsors of Literacy”. Majed has benefitted from the tutorage and encouragement of sponsors, he has set and met his own high expectations, and he has experienced many different literacies, from cultural to creative and more. Spurred forward by the drive to understand and interact with others in a meaningful way, he has developed his own literacies both alone and with encouragement from others. As Deborah Brandt describes,

His grandfather writes for an Arabic newspaper in Saudi and his grandmother on the other side of the family has directly encouraged him to write. “My grandmother supported me in anything that I did” Majed commented. This motivation which his grandmother provided prompted him to keep writing and reading so that eventually he got himself published. His novelette, A Dreamless World is a historical fiction piece which he worked on for eight months until it was professionally published. His grandmother’s personal gain from encouraging and supporting Majed’s writing was that she got to see him persevere all the way to publication. His appropriation of the lessons which his grandmother instilled in him and which others in his family modeled led Majed to create his own fiction, directly satisfying his thirst for literacy and creativity. Overall, Majed and his family have benefitted from the many sponsorships of his

When he was young, he was “noticeably better” in English than his classmates, but instead of slacking off in school, Majed decided to learn Arabic (Fitaihi 1). As Brandt describes, competition is often one of the most potent drives in sponsorship (Brandt 48). For Majed, competition against his classmates and himself in learning Arabic and drove him to learn as much as he could. He came to realize that language is literacy which extends beyond the knowledge of syntax and grammar. “Understanding two different languages…” Majed expressed “you need to understand the culture that goes along with it… I think you develop a broad way of looking at the world.” He attributes his outlook on interacting with others to his exposure to different cultures and languages. His own sponsorship and drive which developed from his interest in learning Arabic and challenging himself to excel was a driving force for his growth in cultural literacy. Similar to Dora Lopez in “Sponsors of Literacy” Majed experienced the struggle to learn the language of his heritage while feeling disconnected from that world. Majed’s own motivation for learning Arabic was to understand the culture of his family and the country where he was living in a more authentic way, his own gains from this self-sponsorship, although not the same economically as Lopez, paid off when he could