Primary Phase: The Literacy Narrative

Welcome to the Great, Big Universe of Writing! It’s kind of wild out here, and it can be a little tricky to figure out, and that’s even without considering any past writing trauma you may have suffered.^[1] Instead of trying to throw you into the worst of it all right from the start, we’re going to try and begin with something a bit easier. This first essay—the literacy narrative—is, I think, a gentler way to begin because, first, it’s about something you’re really familiar with,^[2] so there’s absolutely no need to do any research or refer to outside sources. Second, it’s a bit more informal than all of the other papers we’ll be writing this semester, which means you can be fairly conversational in your writing because, at its core, it comes from a deeply oral tradition. So, let’s start figuring out exactly what this thing is.