Karen Mooney
Professor Barbara Gleason
English B8104
Basic Writing Theory and Practice
December 18, 2014
Reflective Essay:
Writing the Literacy Narrative
I learned to write
long before Janet Emig’s notion of process writing filtered down to the everyday
classroom. Although someone must have taught me the value of revision and
writing multiple drafts, I never stood back from the process and examined its
parts. Writing the literacy narrative in this semester’s Basic Writing class
encouraged me to do so. Some of those parts were especially challenging.
I realized, working
through the assignment, how uncomfortable I am writing about myself or about my
own experience. My generation, as children, wasn’t encouraged to explore
feelings as much as children are today. Although I write for a living now, I
usually do so in someone else’s voice. Because of this habit and practice, the
traditional academic essay or book review is easier for me to write. I am
comfortable writing in a neutral or “objective” form.
In this class, I
learned to appreciate the limits of those traditional forms and to see that some
students may be especially confined by them. Kimberly K. Gunter’s “Braiding and Rhetorical
Power Players: Transforming Academic Writing through Rhetorical Dialectic” was
particularly enlightening on this point. Her essay argues for allowing students
to weave their own experiences and rhetorical patterns into their academic
writing. Gunter also demonstrates by example in her essay, interjecting very
refreshing moments of memory and irreverence from time to time. She doesn’t
seem to be afraid to show who she is, even to an academic audience more accustomed
to a single style and voice.
I would not find
it easy to break out of the mold with personal experiences or idiosyncratic
language in a formal piece of writing. It was harder still to write the
literacy narrative, a project wholly in the first person. First, choosing an
aspect of my own history to write about was difficult. I don’t like to go back;
I always prefer to look forward. And because I chose to write about why my
notion of literacy is today a hybrid, I was structurally challenged to tell a
story that started 40 years ago but took a long time to develop. I was also
keenly aware of the gulf in age there is between me and most of my classmates. It
wasn’t just that I feared seeming to be quaint and old-fashioned: it was an
issue of audience, how much would be understood and how much would I have to
explain. Case in point: anthropologist Margaret Mead featured prominently in my
essay. Two of the three classmates who peer reviewed my work did not know who
she was.
Responding to criticism was new to me with
this assignment. Interestingly, for all the writing I do, I rarely get formal
feedback. I watch closely for the changes that are made in what I submit, and
in that way learn to conform closer to expectation the next time. The literacy
narrative was a rare instance of participating in a formal review of any kind. One
of the three peer reviewers basically said, “Fine the way it is.” Two others
directed my attention to one part of the original draft, the transition from
the original event I describe to the unfolding in the latter part of the essay.
Each person, however, said something different about it. I also had a nagging
feeling it wasn’t right. Altogether, that told me I should take a closer look there,
though I had to figure out my own solution.
Similarly, our
class group discussion of the various drafts that students had written in an earlier
semester was eye-opening as well. The difference of opinion was striking. I
generally argued for making a text less specific and more universal; others
felt the opposite. I disagreed with some comments, including some from my
teacher. This was a new experience for me, and inspired the biggest question of
the semester: How does one decide, among all the different opinions, what is
good and right? The only answer I came to is that the writer has to develop a
sense, partly as I do at work, by seeing what is accepted, or what connects to
whatever audience he or she is writing for and then also consider what feels
right. As a writer of a broader range of work, I must develop a sense of what I prefer and wish to defend.
I suspect that the
uncertainty of it all is likely just part of the process. And if it can be so
disconcerting for me, an experienced writer, I can imagine how much more
difficult it could be for a student without experience, who comes from a
different language tradition, or whose education hasn’t prepared them
adequately for higher level work.
This conclusion drew
me back to my original observation, that I am more comfortable writing in
someone else’s voice. I asked myself, what would my voice be like? What would I
want to say? That’s what led me to consider taking the Non-Fiction Writing
course that I am enrolled in for next semester. My goal is to develop that
voice, if I can. I am interested in the structure and style of general interest
essays. I think it will be difficult because I may feel exposed. Will I find
the class to be a safe and supportive place in which to experiment? I hope so,
but I’m nervous. Still, I want to go into that fear and master it.
I don’t expect to
become an essay writer. But I do believe the experience—taming that fear,
learning to write more individually, learning to respond to criticism—will be
useful to me in understanding the writing process better and in helping the students
I hope one day to teach.
Works
Cited
Gunter, Kimberly K. "Braiding and
Rhetorical Power Players: Transforming Academic Writing
through
Rhetorical Dialectic." Journal of Basic Writing 30.1
(2011): 64-98. Print.
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