Nov 3 readings

Literacy in American Lives by Deborah Brandt

I found this book very difficult to read. The narrative sections about various readers were fairly interesting, but I thought the analysis was very lengthy and a bit overdone.

One section I did find interesting was chapter 3, on 4 successive generations of a family. It reminded me very much of my own family. My grandmother was a child of immigrants and grew up on a farm in southern Wisconsin. She graduated from high school, married and became a farm wife.  After having 4 children the family moved into town, my grandfather got a job in a factory and my grandmother worked as a domestic. Most of the reading and writing my grandmother did was church related or copying down recipes. My mother lived on the family farm until she was 10, and then lived in town. She graduated from high school and got a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. My mom worked in as a lab technician while I was growing up, but became a stay at home mom when my youngest sibling was born. My mom was an occasional reader, wrote reports for her job, but rarely writes now other than emails to friends. I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in Medical Microbiology and Immunology and Bacteriology, and I am now pursuing a master’s degree.  I am an avid reader, and did a lot of science writing for my job. I write often to friends for social reasons. My oldest daughter is in 1^st grade, is an excellent reader, and loves to write.

All of these things seem to parallel the family in the book. Each successive generation has more education, reads more and writes more. Each generation has jobs that require more reading and writing. It only makes sense as each generation has jobs that become more and more information related as opposed to a job that produces a physical product.

Another topic I found interesting in the book was how many families value reading as a family activity. However, writing is not held to the same standard. Most writing is seen as a lonely, solitary activity. In our household that is not the case. Most of our adult writing is not a group activity (except when my kids read over my shoulder to try and figure out if I’m talking about something of interest to them). But my kids love to write. They write songs they sing for us, they write stories they read to us or act out for us. They write down what has happened during the day, kind of like a journal. But I think the key difference for us, is that after they write something, they read it to us, or have us read it. Writing can be a very lonely or solitary activity if you keep it to yourself. But the written word is meant to be read, and if you can write something and then read it, it becomes more of an inclusive activity.