RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

I’m not sure that I ever thought about the role of fantasy in literacy until Hicks brought it up in chapter three. Of course imagination plays a critical role in writing and research says that good readers ‘see’ what they are reading, but Hicks bring out the impact of reading on Laurie’s fantasy life. What she dreams, imagines, and plays are impacted by the exposure to literature and vice versa. What she is interested in reading and writing is impacted by her imaginative play. It saddened me to read that Laurie’s fantasy’s of becoming a reader and writer were so far removed from her school experience. So many of our kids come to school excited to learn to read and write and yet loose that excitement somewhere in the process.

Hicks makes an interesting point later on in her work on page 56 when she speaks of Laurie’s attachment to her mother and identification with her mother’s fantasy of finding a “prince charming” to release her from financial, social and emotional stress. Every little girl wants prince charming to find her, but most put aside the idea of rescue from life’s worries by adulthood. This made me think back to Henry’s’s article where she mentioned young black girls being viewed as sex objects. I disagreed that educational institutions were responsible and felt that this perception came from the music, dress and habits of Black culture. Is it possible that these behaviors are perpetuated by a desire to attract a ‘prince’? Are these children dressing in ways that cause them to be perceived as sex objects because they believe in part sex or being sexy may be one way secure their future? Would this be why Black females are, “evaluated by their physical characteristics such as hair texture and skin color…” as Henry asserts? What is becoming clearer and clearer through these readings, is that what children are taught to believe about themselves and the world around them has a direct impact on not just their educational performance, but their entire future. What we are doing is so much larger than teaching math and reading. We as teachers are not simply teaching, but re-culturing and reshaping our student’s worldviews. What we do impacts not only their literacy, but the ways in which they choose to live out their lives.

I was puzzled by the quote from Walkerdine that said, “It is perhaps important, then, that many young girls do not understand high attainment and femininity as antithetical” (p. 68). I thought that the discourse of Sothern women was the idea of the steel magnolia; women who are independent and capable, but soft and feminine at the same time. I fail to see how they are mutually exclusive. I was also a little confused when Hicks said that, “Deceit had become one of the ways in which Laurie was maturing socially.” (p. 75) I am not sure I can agree that deceit is a sign of maturity. Deceit seems a safer way for Laurie to gain control over the contentious relationship with her mother and avoid the consequences out outright defiance.
-Rebecca Ashby