Category: Student Posts

Re-visualizing my literacy narrative has been a truly eye opening process for me. My original literacy narrative and this updated version, The Story Behind the Pan and Paper, depict very different aspects of my journey with reading and writing. While creating these drafts, it became clear to me that the story I wished to share with the world had changed immensely. In this new version I decided to dive head first into the true driving forces behind my literacy journey instead of the surface level story in my original. Thus, I was forced to expand my analytical thinking and break down the experiences and memories that eventually drove me to my love for reading and writing. Doing this allowed for a deeper writing process that was, at times nerve-wracking, but ultimately liberating as I was able to share my story and release some of the trauma that I’ve faced in my life.

After working with a visual medium in creating the comic version, this story seemed to fully come alive in my mind. It was difficult to draw each image and relive the memories that I was depicting, but it gave me the opportunity to look back at these experiences and what I really felt in those moments. Creating the comic provided me with a deeper understanding of my real story and all the emotions that came with it.

The literacy narrative assignment as a whole has truly challenged me to become a better writer and to look back at some of the most traumatic moments of my life. As for the learning outcomes for this course, I believe completing this project as helped me meet many of them. Writing as a process has been one outcome that I have really come to understand because of this project. My first draft was not my best work, but it allowed me to reflect and think deeper in order to complete my comic and final narrative. Along with this, the comic portion of this assignment forced me to imagine my story visually and compose it in a medium that had been all new to me. Ultimately, the literacy narrative project provided me with great progression as a writer. It has taught me many things about myself and showed me the potential I have for the future. I feel very proud of the work that I have completed and will use what I have learned from this assignment for all of my writing to come.

For this assignment I knew I wanted to do a holiday movie as soon as my roommate brought back a tree for our room so we could “feel the Christmas magic”. In order to decide on what to do, I googled “Christmas tree movies” and once this scene from Home Alone came up, I knew it was what I wanted to recreate. Logistically, the greatest struggle was finding somewhere where I could be on the other side of a “window” because there was no way to be on the other side of our dorm window. Working with my roommate, who is featured as Kevin in the picture, we brought the tree out into a study room where I would be able to peer through the study room door. One of the hardest parts of this process was having the different portions of the movie scene to scale, since our tree is much smaller than the one use in the film. We did our best to keep the wardrobes the same, but I did have to substitute a bucket hat for a beanie. I chose my roommate to be Kevin because of how she embodies child-like joy, especially around Christmas, so although her facial expression isn’t the same as Kevin’s I was happy how it turned out because it captured both her spirit and the general “Christmas magic” in the air that Home Alone portrays.

Image Source: https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/20/why-i-have-to-watch-home-alone-every-christmas-7037310/

For my third and final Literacy Narrative I revised my story of how poetry shaped me as a writer. All the revisions I’ve made to the initial draft can be surmised in the simple changing of the title from “Literacy Narrative 1” to the “The Birth of A Poet.” This rebranding of my work reflects how my perception of the assignment became more personal as I progressed over the course of this semester.

Initially I didn’t understand the purpose behind writing a story about how I became a writer. It wasn’t until after creating my comic that I understood why this assignment was so integral to my journey as a writer at Emory. These literacy narratives weren’t simply about recounting moments that made me write a certain way. They were about making me understand as a writer and critical thinker, why these moments made my writing the way it is. Upon understanding this why, I can confidently say that all of my writing assignments have become more enjoyable.

Before taking this class I did not enjoy extended writing assignments. I spoke of this discontent in my first Literacy Narrative. I also stated that I seperated the idea of writing assignment for class from creating poetry. I was very invested in poetry because “it gave me a voice and I began writing poems about people, places, politics and social justice issues I found compelling.” This was the why behind my writing.

Once I realized that not only poetry, but writing in general, allowed me to have a voice, I became more invested in my writing. Although his realization may seem obvious to some, it took a very long process for me to come to this conclusion. Ultimately it was the comic in “Literacy Narrative II” that I created which gave me this new perspective. I decided to structure the comic in the form of a poem and capture the main ideas of the alphabetic texts. To me, poetry has always been about capturing the bigger picture. In retelling the overaching concept of my alphabetic narrative in the form of a poem and illustrations I realized that poetry, drawing, and writing weren’t so different after all.

In returning to the alphabetic text I made sure that it captured the main idea of why writing was important to me instead of just recounting an boring old story. The process of creating a comic highlighted the main ideas of my first Literacy Narrative and in my revisions I believe I was able to use those main ideas to increase the clarity of my alphabetic text.

As for the Learning Outcomes I explored through the process of my Literacy Narratives, there are two primary outcomes that come to mind. The outcome of “ Rhetorical Composition” was most exemplified in the process of creating these narratives. As I stated before, it wasn’t until after I “composed texts in multiple genres,” that I was able to understand the importance of the assignment. Secondly, “Writing as Process” also helped me achieve this understanding because it wasn’t until my draft was peer edited and revised that I was able to thoroughly reflect on it. I really feel as though my comic and Literacy Narrative are “successful texts” due to the multiple revsions they underwent during the process of their publication.

The entire literacy narrative project helped me view my writing as an ever-evolving process. The process of writing, drawing, and writing again necessitated re-imagining my narrative with every new rendering. Thus, I was given the opportunity to develop my original idea more than I originally thought was possible. Returning to the alphabet narrative from having created a comic was much easier than writing from scratch. Drawing the comic after the original alphabet essay added more depth and meaning to my essay that I could pull from for the redraft. My narrative began as what I thought was a story about my anxieties around English. Upon revisiting, I realized just how superficial my first draft was – how it failed to address its subtext strongly enough to be clearly understood and deeply felt. My hesitance and need to convey a story clearly struck a balance in my comic; I could represent what was hard to say without using words, and I could spell out the ideas that would guide interpreting my illustrations. In the draft of my alphabetic narrative I took all the ideas from both drawings and text to tell my story again, this time with a bolder voice. For my literacy narrative, the three parts were practice in exacting and amplifying my writing voice, riding it of fear of saying exactly what I want to say.

The process of creating all three literacy narratives touched on all of the learning outcomes. I accessed the rhetorical composition learning outcome by writing visually and alphabetically. After each narrative was published, I had to think critically about how to improve and focus my story. My narrative is about recognizing writing as a process. By posting three different versions, each with reflections, the project has added six pages to my digital identity. The most meaningful learning outcome I met was in visual thinking. Thinking visually–somewhat ironically–completely changed how I view my writing and thinking process. After writing my first literacy narrative, I had some ideas for what needed improvement and tried to revise the essay before I would have to draw it in comic form. While editing it to shift the focus slightly from outside approval to asking for help, I got stuck and didn’t know what to do. This forced me to map out my comic in a set of bullet points based on what would be the most important aspects to visualize. In doing this, I realized I had missed two key elements that would eventually tie my new theme together. After completing the comic form of my literacy narrative, editing the alphabetic text was by far easier. I was skeptical that drawing out my narrative would have any noticeable impact on my story, but in fact, it was a tremendous help. Thinking visually is a new and helpful tool I can now rely on to focus my work when I get lost in the revision process.