6 Discussion: Strategies Writers Use in a Literacy Narrative
6 Discussion: Strategies Writers Use in a Literacy Narrative
Harry Potter and the Deep South: My Literacy Awakening by Elisabeth Hieber
When considering my literacy development, the most memorable moment is not obvious. It did not involve the process that I went through to learn to read. It did not have anything to do with the first words I put on paper. Additionally, even though my access to the written word was never restricted or limited, as it was for famous writers Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie, and I had every opportunity to read and write, my major literacy awakening did not occur until after I had a reasonably advanced mastery of the English language.
Reading and writing have always been an important part of my life. I have grown up with them like two old friends. In fact, my earliest memory involves staring at a complicated book about lizards – the kind with more words than pictures. I was “reading” it on the couch of our very first home in Georgia, while my parents argued in the other room. I wanted them to stop fighting, so I kept pretending that I was reading aloud each and every word to distract them with my prodigious intellect, when in fact, I could only recognize basic articles like “the” and “a.” I could not have been older than three at the time. However, as striking as this memory is, it is not the most important event in my literacy development.
My most memorable experience came when I was much older, directly after the summer between third and fourth grade. As a family of Ohio expatriates, we were living in Oakwood, a small town in Hall County, Georgia. My parents gave me the first three books about the adventurous teen wizard, and I read them lying on the sun-bleached boards of our neighbor’s dock on Lake Lanier, listening to the water lapping up on the red clay banks. I would imagine that any day I was going to get my own letter via owl to go to Hogwarts.
However, my imagination was not enough to sustain me. I needed the story to continue. When school started again at Oakwood Elementary, I realized that a fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released the preceding July. On the first trip to the school library of the year, I was desperate to obtain that book. It was nowhere to be found. When I asked the head school librarian where it was, she refused to acknowledge my question. Confused, I found the assistant librarian, Ms. Sloan, and also asked her. She said they did not have it and suggested I try Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind instead. I took the book and left the library in a state of thorough confusion and frustration.
The weeks went on, and I still could not locate the book anywhere. I asked my mother to drive me to various libraries around the county, and as my main and most constant literary sponsor, she was happy to do so. But I could not find the book anywhere in all of Hall County. I would begrudgingly select a consolation prize at each and every library, and read the books with a fraction