What Is a Literacy Narrative?
Your assignment is for Essay #1 is to write a Literacy Narrative. Deadlines & related assignments are
given in the WR 121 Course Plan. WR 121 Course Competencies you will be developing in this
assignment and Evaluation Criteria used to grade this Essay are attached to this handout. So what is a
Literacy Narrative Essay?
First, a Narrative Essay tells a (non-fiction) story to make a point (thesis). Narrative Essays are typically
autobiographical, and draw heavily on the author's memory and personal experience (and narrative
techniques--see Dreams Ch. 3), looking back, re-viewing, and (re)interpreting one's past from the
vantage point of the present. Often, the goal is to help us better understand who we are today, why we
are who we are, how we came to be who we are. In My Name's Not Susie: A Life Transformed by
Literacy, Sharon Jean Hamilton explains the value of such remembering and self-reflection: "...I must
also be the author of my own life, and . . . in choosing which of my memories I wished to foreground and
which to forget I was not only shaping my past but also my present and potentially my future" (qtd. in
Thompson).
Literacy Narratives are (non-fiction) story-telling that re-creates and examines significant past
experiences in which reading, writing (or perhaps speaking, listening) figure prominently; literacy
narratives focus on key stages or events in one's development as a literate (reading, writing, thinking,
speaking, listening) person. A Literacy Narrative is autobiographical, and writing such essays can help
you discover and evaluate the role(s) literacy has played in your life, reveal the sources of your present
attitudes and abilities, deepen your understanding of how/why you have developed into the kind of
reader, writer, thinker, communicator that you have become. A Literacy Narrative prompts you to
explore, remember, reflect upon, analyze important moments, experiences, or stages of development in
your own personal writing, reading (speaking, listening, thinking) history: e.g., influential events, scenes,
people; stages; turning points or moments of insightful realization; failures and/or successes; "border
crossings" or passages into new, different kinds of language, reading, writing, communication, thinking.
Alternatively--since there are many kinds of "literacies"--Literacy Narratives can also address other kinds
of literacies, such as visual literacy, computer literacy, science literacy, film literacy, etc.
Essay #1 Requirements and Guidelines
Essay Length: The Final/Revised Draft of Essay #1 should be 3-to-5 typed / word processed and doublespaced pages long--about 700 to 1000 words--using a standard sized font and point size (e.g. 12-point
Times New Roman), printed in black ink on only one side of standard-sized (8 1/2" X 11") white paper,
with one-inch margins at top, bottom, and both sides. You should also use MLA-style Heading in the
upper left-hand corner of page 1: NO title page is necessary. Use Running Page Headers in the upper
right-hand corners.
[NOTE Well: The Revised/ Final Draft of Essay #1 (to be graded) should be double spaced. I do not
double space in this handout only to save space.]
Topic Scope: Keep the above essay length recommendation in mind as you focus topic and draft Essay
#1 for the Literacy Narrative. (Tips: If you can't achieve at least 3 typed/word processed & doublespaced pages, you need to either provide more specific development of your narrative, or expand the
scope of your topic. On the other hand, if you have reached page 7 in drafting your essay and you still
have much more you want to narrate to make your thesis point, you need to narrow down the scope of
your topic.)
Topic Focus of Your Essay #1 Literacy Narrative may be:
One single experience (story, event, moment, scene, encounter with an influential person, stage of
development) in your personal literacy history, that you will recount, interpret, and analyze to make
your thesis point
Two or three related experiences (stories, events, moments, scenes, encounters with influential
person[s], stages in your literacy development) whose inter-connections you can show and explain--and,
taken together, all contribute to supporting/developing your essay's thesis.
Experience(s) that you choose to narrate may be, but do not have to be, drawn from your formal
schooling; life experiences with literacy outside of formal education
Arriving at an Essay Thesis (i.e., Your Theory of Meaning/Significance and Your Response to the imaged
readers' "So What?" Question that your audience will expect you to present and develop). You must
write in the genre of the essay. You must use your narrative to make a point. This means you must do
more than simply narrate and describe your experience: you must analyze, interpret, explain the
meaning/significance of the experience--and do so fully enough that even uninformed 1301 readers can
understand why the experience is significant to you--and perhaps to others of us as well. You may not
know what your thesis is at first: you may wish to write a "discovery draft" recounting your experience-then reflect and analyze it to discover what it means and why it is significant to you. The following
leading questions may help:
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Why do I remember the experience(s) I narrate? Why does it stick with me, even perhaps years
later?
Why do the experience(s) seem important and influential to me now? How did the experience
shape or influence the kind of reader, writer, thinker, speaker, and/or listener I am today?
What role have encounters with language and literacy (reading, writing, speaking, listening)
played in my life, in creating who I am and how I think today?
What is my essay narrative saying about how/why developing literacy (reading, writing,
speaking, listening, thinking) has, or has not, been important in my life up to now? And do I
consider this an advantage or disadvantage: that is, have the narrative experience(s) helped or
hurt me, or both?
What have I learned from the experience(s)--about myself, others, the world? By the way,
failures and/or successes can be addressed (for we sometimes learn as much, if not more, from
our failures).