When I was a kid, I didn't speak English well. It wasn't my native and until I was 10, it wasn't my family vernacular. I had my own language, but without the correct one, I was alone among my English speaking peers. In the hallways of my elementary school, 3rd grade students had up projects that depicted stories with words that were beautifully written. I couldn't read. But, I didn't find them beautiful because of the meaning of the words. My speech teacher called the writing cursive and that it would take a while until I would have the opportunity to learn how. Cursive looked beautiful and with every project, I traced over the swirls and scribbles with my fingers. I thought, maybe if I can remember the way a swirl was written, I could draw it later.
I couldn't write. But I could make it look like I could.
Reading didn't mean anything to me. It's hard to enjoy a book when you don't understand it. We had no books written in our vernacular at home, so instead I drew words. Put together, they had no meaning, but to me, they looked beautiful and that's all that mattered. My parents had a large shower with glass walls all around. I would wait for the steam to fog up the glass then, with a finger dipped in shampoo, I would draw swirls on the glass. To anyone, a child was being silly. But to me, I was writing a story. The shampoo would keep the steam from covering up my words so I could look at them until I decided it was time to leave the water.
I didn't understand then, but I had a real jealousy for those who could write and read. Two things I didn't think I ever cared about, I desired more than anything. My mom looked at my scribbles and all she said was, "What is this?"
"It's cursive." But mom just laughed.
I never broke reading and writing apart. I always associated words by how they looked and what they're meaning was. It was the only possible way to do it at that time. Manguel explains a difference between "pure-sensation" and "perception". While one was an involuntary act of seeing, the other was a voluntary act of understanding. The importance of these two things was that "it identified for the first time, in the act of perceiving, a gradation of conscious action that proceeds from "seeing" to "deciphering" to "reading" (34).
Is that what I was doing? I thought I was just being ridiculous.
After learning how to read and write, I can't say reading is still the most meaningful, but now, I can understand and I can take part in something where I am not alone anymore. I hope that reading can make my writing better and with great writing, steam will never cover it.
I can really relate to this story. Though English is my native language, I did have problems reading and writing early in my school career. While all the other students were leafing through colorful books with "big words," I was still struggling to recognize my name on my box of crayons. Sitting in my first grade classroom, pretending to read the indecipherable text in front of me, I would entertain myself by observing the curves, the lines, and how they intersected. The words, though they meant nothing to me, held their own sort of meaning in their beauty. And despite the fact that I couldn't read, it was the one skill I most desparately desired. Obviously I eventually got over my problems with reading and it became one of the activities I enjoy most. However, my initial inability to read led me to love letters apart from their meanings.
ReplyDeleteI am happy that you pointed out the way in which Manguel brings up the difference between "pure-sensation" and "perception." I seemed to have overlooked this point in the reading. In reference to life many people seem to live in a state of "pure-sensation" where they simply see the world but do not perceive the complexities of it. Perhaps that is why the world is made up of people who are racist, sexist, and homophobic. People see the asthetic of the world, but cannot perceive the deeper intricacies of other's lives that make diversity such a beautiful factor of human existence.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has had English as their native language since they were born I have never realized how much I take the ability to write in cursive for granted. Everything that I write by hand is written in cursive, and has been since I was about 8 years old. The fact that someone had been denied that for so long makes me all the more grateful that I have been able to be one of those who was privilege to learn at such a young age. I feel that you have done quite well at overcoming the challenges you have faced in having to make English your first language, and your interest in being an ESOL teacher makes much more sense now. I hope that you can help someone else overcome the challenges of making a different language their own.
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