top of page
LITERACY NARRATIVE
​

One of the earliest literacy memories I have is going to the library while visiting my grandparents’ home for a week in the summer in northwest Georgia. Every summer, my sisters and I would be driven by my parents in a faux-wood paneled Caravan from northeastern Ohio. To me, the end of the twelve-hour journey was the greatest part, as the van’s tires left the noiseless asphalt of Ed’s lake road and began crackling over the long gravel driveway though a small pine forest to my grandparents’ modest ranch-style home. There has always been something enchanted about this passage for me, and I believe that it has a lot to do with the stories I knew that I would experience in the heavy calm of these Georgia woods. There were always tales of my grandmothers’ life in an orphanage in Texas, her mother being too poor to take care of her and her brother properly. These stories were always told with such beauty and detail, and romanticized to a point where my sisters and I wished that we too could be orphans in depression era Lubbock. We would also hear stories of my grandfather’s time in the Navy in the South Pacific, stories of witnessing historical events no doubt scrubbed clean for young ears as much as my grandmother’s orphan tales. Stories of people my grandparents have known who have no significance to my six year old self other than confirmation that my grandparents have known a lot of people and have tried their best to keep up with them, each story following a similar template of remembrance. “Old Herschel. He was a [occupation] at [location] in [time period and relation to grandparent]…[Funny story involving a misunderstanding ending in a punchline]…[Long discussion of where he lives now and when they last saw him and that they need to send him a note.]

​

The best stories were the ones told as we were falling asleep with my grandmother while my grandfather was in the other room watching a Braves game too loudly. We would lay in an enormous bed and my grandmother would start to tell a tale, passing off the story to one of us. We would continue this practice until the sound of snoring told us the story was over. (My grandmother Nora was lovingly nicknamed “Snora” by one of her children).

​

Aside from the participation in the practice of oral narratives, my earliest memories of visiting a library and checking out books occurred when visiting my grandparents. It is not that my parents did not encourage reading or visiting the library, but we were always more of a TV family than a book family. At my grandparents, however, the bookcase was prominently displayed, and while the books were not necessarily classics of literature (mostly Margaret Truman mysteries or WWII novels), seeing a three inch thick hardback that someone actually read was impressive to me.

​

The librarian knew my grandmother well and they would talk about Old Herschel or someone else, comment on my and my sisters’ freckles and how big we were all getting and ask if we were having fun with grandma. We would pick out picture books and read them immediately upon return, which would take all of thirty minutes, after which we would be back in the pool or in the woods and hearing stories from people who have made it through thick books.

bottom of page