1 What is a Literacy Narrative?

There are two important aspects to this essay that you must keep in mind when writing a literacy narrative: first, it deals with your literacy, and second, it is a narrative. The word “literacy” typically relates to the ability to read and write, but we are going to be using a broader definition of the word.^[1] A narrative is a story. See how the word “narrative” and “narration” and “narrator” all share the same root? They are all related to telling stories. So, this narrative essay will also tell the story of one of your personal experiences.

Narrowly defined, literacy is the ability to read and write, but that’s not the entire definition that we’re going to be using for the purposes of this essay. More broadly defined, literacy is our ability to make sense of the world.^[2] It is also a form of competence or knowledge about something specific. For example, while I enjoy sitting down and playing some Minecraft, Rocket League, or Legend of Zelda, I wouldn’t say that my video-game literacy is as developed or as complete as someone like Markiplier.^[3] By the same token, while I enjoy singing along to my favorite songs in the car, I know very little about crafting music, playing an instrument, or performing before a crowd and entertaining them a la Queen Bey. Her musical literacy is much, much higher than mine, even though I have developed my own musical literacy enough to be able to recognize different genres of music, read music at a very basic level, and sing reasonably well with a large group of people. My musical literacy is not zero, in other words.

If you take a bit to think about it, you should be able to recognize that, despite any self-doubt you might have, you have developed some parts of your literacy more than others. Literacy is not a binary thing that you either have or don’t have. It exists along a spectrum or range, so you can have small amounts of literacy in some areas and greater amounts in others. Of course, it is very likely that there are other people that possess a much higher level of literacy than you in the areas you excel at, but this paper is not about being the best at something. This paper is simply about some part of your literacy in whatever stage it might be.

So, for this essay, you will want to identify some aspect of your own literacy that you can relate to your readers. This could, of course, be about your ability to read or write, or even about developing a love or hatred for the same. However, you could also choose to focus on some other aspect of your literacy,^[4] such as music, mechanics, art, emotional comprehension, athletics, travel, sales, design, and so on. The possibilities are open very, very wide. You might even choose to write about something that you don’t have a lot of literacy in.^[5] That’s a perfectly valid approach, too.

The core of this essay will be a story that you tell your readers about whatever  aspect of your literacy you want to focus on. You will want to choose a story that you can relate with details, dialogue, action, and all the other things that make a story enjoyable to read. You want to engage the reader and bring them through the experience with you so that they get to live it, too, to a certain degree. Include some dialogue from the event you went through, even if you have to invent some or fill in some blanks in your memory to get the dialogue close to what happened. Hit the reader’s five senses with great details that help them feel like they’re there. “Make it really interesting to read” is what I’m trying to say.

But that’s not all this paper is. In order for this story to become an essay, you also need to reflect on it and talk about what this experience did to you or means to you. That’s what makes it an essay: the examination of meaning. Think (and write) about what parts of your life are different because you went through the experience you shared, how you are different because of it, and how you see the world differently because of what you went through.