acquiring literacy makes for a good story as our culture values the rags-to-riches fable of individual achievement through self-education and hard work. (25)
The stories we tell about literacy become, in Cathy Davidson's words, "documents or proclamations that articulate a carefully limited and defined concept of progress" and often act to reinforce the ideologies of Nation, to demonstrate the achievement of democracy (25). Note: no page number cited for Davidson.
Thus stories about education and literacy are not simply stories about learning to read and write; they are attempts to define who we are and what we want to become, both as individuals and as a community. (26)
When we read stories we attempt, whether consciously or unconsciously, to make a connection between stories and our lives. Those narratives about education, about literacy and language, hold even more sway because our memories about these types of experiences (whether negative or positive) resonate with a bit of "truth," as we can often find at least a glimmer of familiarity and can often read these fictions through our own experiences (26).
No matter what ideological or political project is at hand, the trope of literacy as transformation or conversion or State of Grace occupies an important place in the American consciousness because it brings us back to those nationalist fantasies of self-reliance and success through hard work that have been part of our country's imagined narrative history and character. (29)
The literacy narrative fulfills a particular project: Writers and readers respond to the anxieties and crises that they face in their present cultural-historical circumstances by reading and writing in the genre of the literacy narrative. (34)
...the literacy narrative has emerged in many instances when marginalized peoples have been forced to prove their legitimacy as citizens or potential citizens through a demonstration of their literacy, education, and often a (cultivated) desire to join dominant culture. (34)
In each of the subgenres of literacy narrative defined by Eldred and Mortensen and Kaplan we find common tropes that set the conditions for the use-value of the narrative. Sanctioned literacy or language is represented as a goal, and students begin their process of Adaptation. They newly enlightened subject now becomes part of the community and enjoys the rights and privileges of membership (often represented as economic, political, cultural capital), the realization of power. Through education, transformation or conversion is achieved, and these "citizens" enjoy a state of Grace. While each trope plays upon different expectations to varied degrees--some tropes being more appealing than others--they all operate in the function of the narrative, as part of the rhetoric that attempts to persuade readers to a particular meaning. (34-35).
While there are variations on the stories we tell about literacy, we usually rely upon (both in writing and reading literacy narratives) recognizable characters, themes, and actions, even employing (perhaps unconsciously) Scribner's metaphors of Adaptation, Power, and State of Grace. On one hand, acting to naturalize experiences, preach transformation, and offer hope, the literacy narrative can provide meaning for those who want to remember their literacy experiences in uncomplicated ways and reinforce their achievement in society. On the other hand, the literacy narrative can often be an unfamiliar story for those who have had very different literacy experiences. The literacy narrative can create anxiety rather than nostalgia because it can further marginalize those who have already been marked as Other by privileging one story over another. (37)
Those who write literacy narratives are trying to tell stories that have often been hidden or ignored. But they also tell these stories as a way to create opportunities for engagement and interaction. (38)
The literacy narrative becomes more than just a story about acquiring language and education, more than a nostalgic remembrance or recounting of social and political struggles. The literacy narrative is a re/vision of those dominant narrative forms from the perspective of the minor subject... (38)
Through their stories about becoming and being literate and developing a sense of self in relationship to the community, minor and minority writers use language and literacy to insert themselves into American culture. The literacy narrative provides these writers with both a form and function that inserts them into a common cultural script of American individualism and achievement through hard work and education but also subverts this story through their use of minority discourse. (53)
