Noticing cultural stories about writing.
During the second part of class we used discussions of who you are as a writer, and descriptions of your early experiences as writers as a way to do some reflecting on cultural stories about writing. By a "cultural story" I mean a way of thinking and talking/writing about a particular subject. In talk about "being a writer," we noticed that being creative and organized (assumption - writers need to be creative and to have "good" organization) came up. I pointed out that being a "good" writer generally drew from - often unconscious- assumptions connected to audience values and beliefs. And while there are in fact MANY assumptions, values and beliefs about writing => DOMINANT discourses (sets of assumptions values and beliefs associated with particular groups of readers/writers/storytellers) will play a disproportionately important role in the selection of writing that is published (successful writing).
The study of college students who told stories about traumatic experiences is an example of how dominant discourses shape what kinds of information about & representations of trauma are possible to tell. Within this study, certain kind of feelings about/relationships to traumatic experiences were just not "tellable" = at least not for middle-class, white, college students. This does not mean those feelings/relatinships do not exist - but rather it suggest that subjects in the study not have acceptable cultural forms for telling + receiving them. If you would like to read the original study, the reference is below.
Thorne, Avril, and McLean, Kate C. (2003). Telling traumatic events in adolescence: A study of master narrative positioning. In Robyn Fivush, & Catherine A. Haden, (Eds.), Autobiographical memory and the construction of a narrative self: Developmental and cultural perspectives (pp. 169-187), New York: Springer.
Literacy narrative assignment
We spent the last part of class reading about your first writing project. The assignment sheet + the sample literacy narratives are available at the links to the right.
You did some writing about your early experiences with reading and writing - and as we talked about them - we held them up in light of broad assumptions about reading (that it was 'good for you' - as in Marietta's story), that it was "fun" and that teachers valued students who "like" it (Sara's story), that it helps students work through age-appropriate developmental issues (the box car stories, mentioned by Sarah + Alison). We also noted in Yasmin's story that reading and talking for home and for school can be associated with DIFFERENT languages.
For next class:
Read the 3 sample literacy narratives.
Come to class prepared to assess these narratives in terms of the criteria for the assignment. What did these writers do well? What do they need to work on? What did reading these samples help you think about in terms of writing your literacy narrative?
Thanks for your good participation, and see you next week.
Lite
