Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

I often wonder if the younger set out there was plagued during their adolescent years by the scourge of last name identity as it relates to literacy and worth. After reading Hicks research and accounts of "we of me" and the fact that literacy is not just reading, many memories flooded my mind. In my dating years and in the years of friendship cultivation, I remember quite well my experiences with my family and in particular my mom. In my county we had many people with the last name of Cox, Smith, Brady, Brown, Deaton, Kiser, Moffitt, Craven, Teague and the list goes on. When I mentioned to my mom certain interest in cultivating friendships or dating certain people, she immediately referenced them by the last name as if it would be a predictor of their worth. "On no", she would say, "you don't want to date a Deaton or make friends with a Brady." "Their families are illiterate or poor or bad and so on." These kids were lableled already and off limits to me. My literacy evolution was to be threatened by the very parameters she set. I suffered during these years and realized potential friends avoided me and thought I was an introvert. The "we of me" was always my family and I began to think there were no other people out there quite as good as my family. The Holy Bible and study was written literacy for me and my content area studies. However, as time evolved even my family ties could not stop the evolution of relationships and new "we of me" experiences. We never stop evolving in this way and as meet people or change circles of friends. My we people change as well as my thirst for new and different literature based on what they bring to my life. They shape me and mold me. How fortunate I have been to be able to break out of the small southern community stereotype and become intertwined with culturally different and diverse beings. The very socialization with many people continue to make me what or who I am and I don't see this ever stopping until death. Am I a Hybrid? You betcha I am. As a matter of fact, I change the nature of my hybrid existence depending on where and with whom. In reference to the podcast, I now understand as well that I am a literary product of the female south. That is innate and will not change but I revere and applaud my friends and experiences from different cultures and backgrounds. With each relationship and experience my readings become more diverse and clear. How in the world do we expect young children from certain cultures and backgrounds that experience only that because they can't flee the nest, to understand some of the literature we as educators place before them. How can we test them on such? They must live and experience in order to learn as do we. Relationships, experiences, people, places, all form our literacy background. Reading and reading for understanding is the product of those things. That is true literacy.

Candace Kee