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

tells us how he learns to read and write; while Rodriguez tells us about learning to enjoy books even if he wasn’t fully comprehending what he was reading. Like these authors, I had to learn reading starts with the alphabet, can be pleasurable, and one’s first impression of reading changes over time.
A, B, C, and well, we all know the other twenty-three letters that come after that. All twenty-six letters make up the alphabet, which is where almost all children start their reading experiences. Although he was not a child, Frederick Douglass, writes about the alphabet being his first step in his piece “How I Learned to Read and Write.” Douglass tells us that once he learned the alphabet from his master’s wife, even after she would no longer help him, he hungered for more. He goes on to tell us that once he took the next step of reading, he followed up with learning to write. Quoting Douglass, he says, “Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell” (272). To me he is saying that once she taught him the alphabet nothing, not even the threat of death, would keep him from reading and writing. I connected with what Douglass was saying, but once I learned to read the words I couldn’t see the meaning within. For a long time, for me, they were just that, words. In about the second-grade I had a teacher who became my saving grace. She stayed after school with me for about an hour every night. With her help, I relearned the alphabet and started retaining/ comprehending words. That year I was given the first step to reading, the alphabet. However, like Douglass, I didn’t stop there.
Growing up I viewed reading as being something that I had to do, I never saw it as something pleasurable.

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

pleasure.
Remembering my first impression of reading books when I first started climbing the reading ladder is vastly different from today.

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

imprinted.
I look back at my childhood and I’m proud of the experiences I’ve had in school. I’m happy I was taught the alphabet and learned that reading can be pleasurable. I’m also glad that my thoughts on reading have changed and will continue to change as the years progress. The alphabet was my starting point; I grew to not always see reading as a chore, and now with a changed mind I can one day pass all of that on to my children. Now for me knowledge is reading, in whatever form I can find it.