Personal Narrative: My Literacy Journey

The earliest point I can recall in my literacy journey is the day that I learned to write. I sat in a small room adjacent to my mother as she spoke to an old friend. Struggling to situate a pencil in my hand, I listened intently to the son of my mother’s friend, Keegan. He stood, peering over my shoulder annunciating foreign sounds he referred to as letters. I tried my best to hold the pencil correctly and copy the sequence of lines that he wrote onto my piece of paper. It took several attempts, but eventually, my name stared back at me from the piece of paper that was in front of me. My journey between that day and current day was a resistant battle against reading and writing whenever possible. I read when I was forced to for assignments and refused to do so for any other reason. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I would truly embrace reading and the benefits that could be had from it.

She would climb into bed, and my grandmother would read any book that they had, to make sure that her children would grow up literate. Therefore, my mother did the same for my siblings and I, although money was less of a problem. Every night I was engulfed in any book that was read to me. Every book was an adventure for my imagination, and I couldn’t wait until I could understand how to read the words that tauntingly sat alongside every picture. I finally learned how to do so when I reached kindergarten. My teacher read our names off a list on the first day and told us a letter to sit on. Throughout the year, we went through each individual letter and listed items that started with that letter. We learned the different sounds that each of the letters could make, and we combined these sounds to say very basic words. I was excited to read and write at this point in my life. I looked forward to it every day, but it didn’t stay that way for very