20 Mar Literacy Narrative

Literacy Narrative 2.0

High Stakes Assignment One – ENGL 327W – Weddington

Length: Approximately 1250-1750 words

Due Date: February 23, 2022, end of day

What role does writing play in your memories, your life, your identity?

For this formal assignment, you will zoom in on one compelling moment from your life to tell a true story (narrative) about writing. You will interweave reflection with this narrative, offering an interpretation of the larger social significance of the event(s) chosen. You’ll draw connections between the younger writer/student/human you were when this event took place and the writer/ student/human you are today. Finally (though perhaps not in this order), you will connect your story to that of others–via any of the theory or craft texts or literacy narratives texts that we’ve read thus far this semester. While you are welcome to include outside texts, the primary focus of this conversational essay should be your story and its significance; the secondary focus is how your story connects to other stories about writing. Additional research is not required for this assignment.

While choosing a story to tell, know that you don’t have to sever your writing-self from your reading-self or speaking-self or critical understanding-self, but the construction of yourself as a writer must be foregrounded with this particular essay. You won’t be able to discuss every aspect of your writing life in this essay. Choose what’s most compelling and see if you can understand and work toward a unifying theme. Here are some thematically-telling title examples to get you started: 

• Vulnerability and writing

• My love affair with adjectives

• Writing and receiving letters to/from my grandma

• How Reddit saved my writerly mojo

• Red ink: classroom writing as cultural control

Be sure to offer vivid and concrete details throughout your writing. Develop a scene or scenes (using dialogue, sensory experiences, actions, feelings in that moment, thoughts in that moment) to allow readers to experience the event from which the essay’s meaning is constructed. Try to interweave meaning-making with scenes/anecdotes so that your essay doesn’t end up with a moral tacked onto the end, like a parable. Morals don’t typically come so easily or neatly in this style of writing. Moveover, try to allow that same voice that can draw meaning from this literacy event to incorporate connections to outside literacy narratives or literacy theory/craft. These connections are typically made via informal citation (mention of the author and text in the body of the sentence, but not an MLA citation). If this feels uncomfortable to you, try using Chicago Style footnotes, which are more commonly used in magazines that publish conversational or exploratory essays. Again, however, this is not required if the informal citation is clear.