A History of My Personal Literacy. This is my Историја Писмености. Una Historia de la Alfabetización. 識字的歷史. Une Histoire de l'Alphabétisation. eine Geschichte der Alphabetisierung. Istorija Pismenosti. ਸਾਖਰਤਾ ਦੀ ਇੱਕ ਇਤਿਹਾਸ. История Грамотности. Una Storia di Alfabetizzazione. تاريخ من محو الأمية.
Before
I begin any sort of autobiography, I would like express my discontent
with the assignment. I am not one, nor have I ever been one for
succinctness. Shakespeare may have said that “Brevity is the soul
of wit”, but who cares about Shakespeare anyways? Just because he
did some good things, doesn't mean that every little thing he has
ever said needs to be taken as true. It is ironic and strange to put
a limit on an assignment about literacy! I refuse to be bound by such
oppression! I have a lot of say, and I think that I am extremely
interesting. I feel like editing anything out would be equivalent to
committing an injustice against myself. So, I, for one, have no
intention of keeping this short and sweet. Now, sit down, pour
yourself some tea, and get ready to pay attention to me!
The
founder of Moscow State University, Mikhail Lomonosov, said that
“...the Hispanic tongue was seemly for converse with God, the
French with friends, the German with enemies, the Italian with the
feminine sex, and the Slavic with all.”
It
could just be my patriotism, but in my mind, truer words were never
spoken. My parents were refugees from the Yugoslav Civil War. As a
result, the first language I learned was Serbian. Serbian is a
completely phonetic, Slavic language that uses Cyrillic script.
Today, being someone who is fluent and proficient at Serbian, French
and English, I can truly say that Serbian is a language which is
impossible to fully master, unless spoken from birth. It features 8
different conjugations, for each tense, for each gender. In layman's
terms, it's very difficult. That being said, Serbian is, in my
opinion, a far more beautiful language than English. But, let's be
real: English simply isn't a nice language.
By
the time I was four years old, I knew all the letters in Serbian,
according to my mom. Very soon, I started reading in Serbian. It was
not perfect, but it was a start. Around five, just before I was
supposed to start my first year of school, the Serbian Church in
Vancouver hosted a cultural event. They required artists, singers,
folk-dancers, and cooks; all to create things that would be
reminiscent of the motherland. My father asked me if I would like to
participate. My desire to fit in with the adults, and the fact that I
was very confident in my abilities, led me to agree. My dad then
produced the Aleksa Šantić poem “Moja Otadžbina”, told me to
read it and informed me that I would be reciting it.
Being
that my days were fairly free, I spent every day, for three weeks,
perfecting the poem recitation with my mom. She drilled me hard,
until my cadence and memory were perfect. When I got up on the stage
at the church, I remember lowering the microphone to my level, and
looking through the audience in attempts to find my mom. I saw her,
cradling my new born sister in her arms, and already crying hard. I
smiled at her, as if to reassure that I was going to be great. I was
very confident and my recitation did go off without a hitch. To this
day, I can still recite that poem on command. Reading in Serbian was
confidence-building and great, but then school came along, and with
it came English.
When
I started Kindergarten, I barely spoke English. My secluded,
Serbian-speaking world was all I knew, and all I loved. The ugly,
Germanic-sounding English language was not just hard to accept, but
hard to learn. I, however, was lucky. Being that Vancouver is such a
diverse city, a lot of my school peers were in the same predicament.
With two years of Rosetta Stone and ESL, I learned English, and began
excelling at it. In grade one, I completed all the phonics workbooks
in my class before my classmates; I was exceeding everyone's
expectations.
My
school suggested me for cognitive testing. I scored very highly, and
this got me put into a special program, at a different school, for
gifted children. Even in this special school, my peers writing was
not stunning, nor was their reading. Our teachers took no time to
give us concrete grammar lessons, or concrete reading; they simply
went with the motions. When a mistake was made by the majority of the
class, the teacher would discuss it. If no mistake was made by the
majority, too bad for you – you would have to figure it out on your
own. It was strange schooling system for my mom to comprehend. She
was appalled at the fact that our schooling here in Canada was far
less rigid than that of hers in Socialist Yugoslavia. She believed,
and still does, that repetition is the way to learning. Due to her
dislike of the system, she pulled me out of school to home-school me
for a year.
Mom
recognized my lack of talent in the writing sector. She, despite her
limited English, was more than displeased with my writing after
seeing a few samples. She explained that my conventions and grammar,
Serbian or English, were terrible. It was time to kick it into
overdrive.
She
went back to my school and raided the book room, taking any workbook
she saw as potentially helpful. First, she studied them. Then, she
explained them to me and got me to complete a truly gigantic amount
examples. I hated it all, but especially subject and predicate. I
still remember her shrill, disgusting and fear-inducing voice yelling
at me. She would ask me in Serbian “Where is the subject and where
is the predicate?” I would guess. She would look at me with a
stone-cold seriousness. At some point, she took it to another level.
“Natasa, you're bright. I know that with a little focus you will be
able to figure this out. So, I need you to get off your ass, turn on
your brain and try. If you don't, I will make you chicken liver for
dinner, and take away your toys.” To Anglo-Saxon folks, this sounds
inhumane. How could someone speak to their young child like that?
But, as a victim, I will say one thing in defense of her tactics:
they work. There was a reason that Socialist Yugoslavia and Soviet
Russia were prosperous in their times – the intense methods of
study. I learned more, and just about everything I know, from my ESL
mom's English courses.
I
remember reading George Orwell's classic, dystopian novel 1984 in
grade 5or 6. At one point in my life, my parents had arrived at the
conclusion that the only cure for my intense hatred of reading was
force. They pulled out an assortment of classic, English novels.
Their theory was that, if they force these well-written novels on me,
I would absorb the literary construction of the novels and improve my
own writing – they were, again, right. My writing improved leaps
and bounds. A small child is very impressionable, and exposing them
to excellent writing early makes it stick with them. Even if only
subconscious, the effect is evident. I didn't read anything new. My
parents knew what was good. I mean, think about it; I hated reading
in general – nothing interested me. In that case, why not thrust
only the good ones on the reader? They could have, for example, made
me read Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story, but that wouldn't
have done me any good. That book is as severely riddled with the
filler-form of the word “like”, as Kim Kardashian is with fat
cells on her overly-plump lips. That wouldn't do me any good.
Rather,
they made me read things like The Jungle Book, Robinson Crusoe,
Treasure Island, and, my personal favorite, Around the World in 80
Days. The Jungle Book was the first book that ever evoked tears from
me. Treasure Island was a thriller, which got me interested in black
dots and pirates, and even inspired my Halloween costume. And Around
the World in 80 Days was just ineffably good. I felt like I had
traveled with the character, and I felt so transported. His journey
was just so mesmerizing.
These
books were all solid, and my writing was consistently getting better
because my mom had devised a way to ensure that I was reading while
simultaneously helping my writing – keeping a journal. I had to
read a chapter a day, and then write a summary of it in my journal.
At the end, I had to write a review of the book I had just finished.
Maybe that's where I get it from. All these critiques, which rest
lazily on my blog, have only my mom to thank for being born through
the ink in my pen. Later, I progressed to reviews about cheeses and
cereals. It made me feel important – the fact that someone cared
for what I said.
When
I grew up a little, and started staying awake until 11:30pm just to
see the nightly news. When I started discussing political ideas with
my dad. And, when I just generally became more interested into the
happenings around me, my dad introduced me to the next book I would
be forced to read.
He
explained that 1984 was a novel which was prevalent in themes even
today. He explained how Orwell predicted that such a society would be
in existence in 1984, and that we were, indeed, slowly inching our
way to Orwell's dystopia. With my new-found fascination with politics
and government, I was, even as a book-hater, a little excited to read
it.
After
flipping through every page, I was disappointed. 1984 was a slow
book, with themes too complex for me to understand and appreciate.
When
I went back to school, I was light-years ahead of my pathetically
weak-reading peers. I read aloud better, I wrote better and I wasn't
even a native speaker. Ha, take that!
Going
back to school meant that I was free from the forcible confinement of
reading. I didn't have to do anything with books anymore, and I
exploited the opportunity.
Book
trends would pass through my school. I would notice kids reading
certain books, and feel inclined to read them myself to fit in. I
would read the first page, and spend the rest of the silent reading
time staring at the word-filled page, glassy-eyed. Nothing seemed to
interest me. Until the trend turned to frat-boy books (at least
that's what we called them). Bringing Down the House was incredible.
I read it and then reread it. It was that good. My parents were
naturally happy at the fact that I was reading; they didn't care
about the subject matter. Afterwards I read London Calling, by Edward
Bloor, which was also an excellent and compelling novel. I finally
reached the pinnacle of my reading career when my grade 8 crush lent
me The Book Thief. The Book Thief changed my outlook on books
completely. I no longer judged books based on their thickness, but
rather on their content. It was poignant, and sad, and painful and, a
whole spectrum of other emotion.
When
I started high school, I joined the debate team because they were
offering cake to anyone who did. It ended up being, to this day the
wisest decision I ever made. Debate changed my life; it gave me some
sort of direction. Additionally, it guided my literary career into
unexplored territory. For debate, I began reading articles. The New
Yorker emerged to be my favorite because of its provocative and
intellectual content. Good stuff. So good, in fact, that it still
remains my favorite thing to read. Books simply never appealed to me.
My
grade eight crush was intellectual and artistic; he read through
books faster than he skated down the school halls on his skateboard.
When we parted ways due to his moving out of the country, he gave me
one token to “remember” him by – a book. Actually, it was an
anthology of poetry. On the first page was a messy note:
“For
Natasa,
Poetry
isn't bad, or lame.
Read
up, as I go to wander lonely as a cloud/ That floats on high o'er
vales and hills,...
If
you ever feel bad about me leaving, or something cliche like that,
flip to page 122.
Love,
and lots of it to you, my pleasing but short-lived flower!!!”
This
just made things a whole lot more interesting. The note was like an
assignment almost. I knew that he had used poetry in it, and to find
out which poems exactly, I would have to read through the book.
So,
I began. Quickly, I finished. I highlighted the poems used in the
note. On page 105 was William Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud”. On page 97 was Mary Leapor's “An Essay on Woman”, which
described “[a] woman” as “... a pleasing but a short-lived
flower,...” And on the fabled page 122 was Lord Byron's “When We
Two Parted”.
I
had hated the poetry that they had made us read in school. I had come
to believe that no good poets existed in the English language. Every
poem I had ever read in Serbian was beautiful, but no English one
thus far could compare. This anthology changed my view.
I
realized that it wasn't English literature that was terrible, but
just the teachers' selections. In the anthology, I specifically came
to love the three poems mentioned, along with “the mother” by
Gwendolyn Brooks and a few of Shakespeare's sonnets. I felt like I
was getting acquainted with each poet as I read. It was as if each
stanza was a glimpse into their soul.
But
that time passed. I lost touch with my wandering, lonely cloud. My
romantic era was over.
In
grade 10, my English teacher forced me, along with the rest of the
class, to open a blog. Here we could post whatever we wanted. I
stopped ranting at my friends, and started ranting at my keyboard. It
faithfully obeyed and listened to every complaint of mine. With a
touch of my mouse pad, my words were boundless. Any human being with
Internet access could get a taste of me. One complaint, in
particular, galloped beyond all expectations and ended up published,
alongside Maclean's magazine. Even whining can get you somewhere.
Today,
I read articles in Serbian and English. I enjoy being in-sync with
society; with the events in the world. I skim through the novels I am
assigned at school, as to manage a basic level of understanding, so
that I can effectively write an essay. The issue is my reading: I
read very slowly. I need to reread one small paragraph at least 3
times before I can understand it. I do not know if this is thanks to
a lack of interest or focus, but either way, it's difficult to deal
with. In fact, it discourages me from reading altogether, in a way.
The only writing I can effectively synthesize in my mind is
non-fiction prose, like newspaper articles.
As
a young child my writing was pathetic. I had terrible grammar; one
sentence of mine was equivalent to a regular person's paragraph. My
English vocabulary was very limited, and as a result of this, my
writing suffered tremendously. My mom buckled down, and broke through
her ESL barrier to teach me how to write properly. My grade ten
English teacher gave me a platform – a blog. For some peculiar
reason, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot seem to take pleasure
in reading. Oh, how I would like to. I take such great enjoyment in
writing, so how is it then that I take such depression in reading,
especially in English. The Serbian language, like Lomonosov said, has
soul and grace, the English does not – it is for business and
debate, not art. For the record, I love learning new languages,
especially when they sound poetic.
My
entire life, I have had people ramble and throw words into my ears
about how important and wonderful reading novels is. My entire life,
I have doubted such a notion, but now, I guess I'm just not sure what
to think.
Thanks
a lot for confusing me, Ms. Thomson. But hey, at least you're making
progress in this fight against reading-phobia.