Personal Journey: From Illiteracy to Literary Enlightenment

Staring at the front cover, I stick my tongue out and furrow my brow at the thought of reading a book in its entirety. This is how my mind worked as a small child. Reading was not my idea of fun nor was I even comprehending what I was looking at. My parents weren’t the best students, so I always felt like it was pointless to ask for help at home. However, I did learn to read and comprehend books after I had help from an inspirational teacher. She took extra time out of her evenings to teach a child that there is more than just the alphabet arranged across pages. In “How I Learned to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” by Richard Rodriguez, they tell us their own stories about books and reading. Douglass

I eventually learned, it could be. In “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” written by Richard Rodriguez in 1982, he writes about his journey with reading. He tells us how he goes from not reading because of the isolation, to reading a very long list of books. In this piece, Rodriguez writes, “Never did I see either of them read an entire book. Nor did I see them read for pleasure” (293). Talking about his parents, he is explaining how he never saw them read a full book or anything that wasn’t a bill, work related, or something required in some way. They didn’t read just to read, it had a purpose behind it. I had the same experience with my mother so I can relate. I never saw her read a book. If she was reading anything it was either bills or something on the computer for games or music. Watching these actions reading felt like a chore for me. After sometime I did find that I enjoyed reading I just had to look for books that kept me interested until the end. I began to love books. Reading became my escape from my own reality. So, even though I never saw my mother reading unless it was for a reason, like Rodriguez’s parents, I learned reading could be a delightful

In “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” Rodriguez takes us through his mindset of reading. He explains how he didn’t like reading when he was young because it felt like something he had to do. Though he admitted it was also because he didn’t like the isolation it required. Once he put all of that aside he began to enjoy reading. Rodriguez writes, “What did I see in my books? I had the idea that they were crucial for my academic success, though I couldn’t have said exactly how or why” (295). He is saying that as a young child, he thought books were important for learning but he didn’t know how or why they were important. When I was a child, I didn’t exactly think they were crucial for my academic success, but I did know that reading books was important, I just couldn’t get interested. That being said, I didn’t like reading. Like Rodriguez though, I did begin to like reading. Once I found a specific type of book that I liked to read, I read all the books I could. Given I had free time to do so. I would read books that were for students of higher grade levels because that’s what kept me interested. Reading books went from being a chore to else altogether. It became a pass time I enjoyed. My first impression of books was that I didn’t like them in any form. Today that impression has been lifted and a new one