Aalia Harris
Literacy Narrative
January 30, 2019
As a child reading was a punishment to the older kids within my household. Whenever they would get in trouble, my mom would sit them down, give them a book, and tell them that they are not allowed to get up until they finished the book. I was the youngest in the house, and of course wanted to be included with what the older kids were doing, including punishments. So, I would get a book, sit down with them, and read. What they saw as a punishment, I found to be quite fun. So the mindset of reading being fun led me to become a Bibliophile.
As I did grew, so did my library, and the worlds I knew. Within each book was a portal, that transported my mind to the most magical places, with breathtaking people to go on epic journeys with. I was able to become a wizard and battle Voldemort with the Golden Trio, I became a Demigod and fulfilled great prophecies, and I attended Gatsby’s marvelous parties and partied with the most exquisite people. These worlds became my safe space. Books became a place in which I could get away from the everyday stressors of life. I could get lost within the worlds and let my troubles fade away as well as reality. They were a pillar of stability in my ever changing life, I could always depend on them to take me away from the troubles of reality.
I like many genres of books, and would read almost anything that gets into my hand, except assigned books. If I am assigned a book to read for school, 9 out of 10 times I will hate the book. But, whenever I get assigned a book that’s in that 10% of me liking a book, I usually love that book and it becomes one of my favorites. It’s either a hit or miss with school assigned books. Whenever I get assigned a book at school it feels like a chore to me or school work and then I can’t enjoy the book due to the mentality of it being work. Also, assigned books goes along assigned writing and I hate assigned writing.
Whenever I sit down to write a paper, my brain goes blank even though moments ago I had pages upon pages of ideas flowing within my head. And even when I do manage to get words down on paper, my brutal self criticism leads me to edit my work until there is not one single coherent sentence within my work. Being the reader is easy, but to be the one stringing the words together into an actual thought is hard, especially with assigned writing.
Most people believe that if you like reading, you will also like to write. For some it is true, but for me writing is the bane of my existence. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write, it’s more like I can´t get those words onto paper. I have worlds, stories, and complex characters swirling in my brain yet they will never see the light of day due to my inability to write them out in way that won’t make me want to delete it all. I feel like my inability to write coherently is due to mainly again my own self criticism. I am much more hasher on myself than I am to others work. Hopefully, I can learn to be a little less harsh on myself, especially within my writing.
Literature has been a big part of my life, I feel like I
spent most of the days in with my nose in a book, but my mind far away.
Literature is a place in which I could always retreat to no matter where I was,
to escape reality. Even though writing is the bane of my existence, I know that
I could always do it as well. Literature itself has always and always will be a
big part of my life.
Aalia Harris
Professor C. Ellis
ENGL 11000 CN3
February 9, 2019
Literacy Narrative
I had really enjoyed writing this assignment due to it being a narrative. Narratives tend to be easier than other types of writing due to the lack of rules that follow it. You can´t truly be wrong with a narrative because it´s your experiences. I enjoyed writing this narrative because it was focused on literature, which I really like. Literature has always been important to me, so to write a whole paper on it has been amazing. I love being able to write about an interest because it motivates me to write more. I hope I have more assignments like this in the near future. I felt that my assignment was quite short though cause it wasn´t three pages. I didn´t add more though because if I did, it would be too much.
The only stressful thing about writing this paper is that its for a college class which caused a bit of stress. I wanted to give in a report that was at a college level, which caused my to edit a lot and nitpick my work. Hopefully I will give myself a break with my writing and have more faith in it. I hope that I will get feedback so I can use the feedback on future writing.
