My Literacy Autobiography

I find it difficult to recall my first experience reading the same way I do not remember how or when I learned to walk. I suppose it was something I began doing and never stopped. Reading, like walking is something I do, and just like walking, something I hope I am doing for the rest of my life. Reading has always been a way for me to explore new worlds, and between the pages of a book it has granted me permission to enter unfamiliar spaces. I don’t remember the first word I read but I do have some memories of people that encouraged my literacy. I can recall my mother telling me stories which did not come from any books, but were inspired from her life experiences. Hearing her tell these stories suddenly opened up new historical landscapes in my mind that we could share. Perhaps in this way my mother taught me the importance of listening in forming connections.

I can also recall my sister, who retained some Hindi language literacy from our early childhood in India, reading to me as a child. Personally only knowing how to read in English, my sister became a decoder that was able to unlock words with familiar sounds from a mysterious book in a dusty box in the attic, that perhaps another me could read in an alternate universe. My father on the other hand inspired me on the books I enjoy reading though it was not his intention nor encouragement. Being a man of the dominant race in India, moving to the United States must have been a brave yet daunting task. To provide for his family, having a stable job was of great importance and his background in Science enforced his belief system for its importance. My father allowed us to read some fiction, but Science was the main subject he wanted my sister and I to focus on for he felt knowledge of Science could lead to secure employment in the future. It still makes me laugh when I think about how I would place The Babysitter’s Club books in opened textbooks if my father happened to walk into the room. Reading works of fiction became deliciously forbidden endeavors I couldn’t resist. I was the rebellious younger child after all, albeit a cautious immigrant one.

Unfortunately reading aloud wasn’t always the best experience in my early Education. I can recall a distinct moment in second grade when we students had to take turns reading paragraphs our teacher had assigned beforehand. Instead of paying attention to my classmates, I was busy rehearsing my paragraph in my head so that I didn’t perform any avoidable mispronunciations. In that class, reading aloud was not about comprehension but performance. This fear of performance led to my long battle with public speaking to the point where I would visually scan any syllabus I received on the first day of any class and automatically deduct “presentation points” from my final grade. My relationship to writing is a direct result of my fears of miscues during public speaking. Writing has often been a crutch aiding my hesitation and lack of confidence when it comes to public speaking, because writing gave me the ability to express anything I was too nervous or unskilled to say. If any teacher or colleague complimented me on my writing, I would assume it was just astonishment instead of praise because I believed I had poor communication skills. I am slowly beginning to understand writing and speaking are two forms of literacy and the beauty of speaking is the spontaneity of thought it produces. In my adult life I have had the opportunity to teach a few students where I was forced to work on my communication skills because the success of my pupils depended on it. Unlike silently reading to myself and digging tunnels into new worlds in my head, getting out of my head was important in this case because I began to realize I was creating an environment in my classroom in need of a flow of communication with me as the facilitator. In order for my students to avoid similar irrational fears like I had, I could not allow my hazardous belief system regarding public speaking to affect their grasp of the content. I had many people in my life who modeled how I felt about, engaged with and communicated my literacy and now I am on my way to becoming the one that’s modeling positive literacy behavior for my students with the guidance I am lucky to receive at NJCU!