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April Kochman

9 January 2020

Prof. Lambert

ENC 1102

Reading Response #2, Chapter 2Wardle and Downs, Pages 64-67 WAW

“Chinks in My Armor: Reclaiming One’s Voice” by Julie Wan, EW p. Xx-xxix

My concepts of literacy have always been around background and how you learn. My

mom is insanely smart, so is my brother, and the two of them know every word and concept and

item and crossword puzzle answer ever, giving me an advantage and increased exposure to

knowledge. That said, I put like a million ands in the last sentence, so it is also about personality.

I had a teacher who said that voice was very hard to put in writing, but I write how I talk a little

too unapologetically. I have never been able to speak another language, for lack of dedication, so

it was definitely interesting to hear about how learning english as a baby after already knowing a

language changes syntax and thought process. I have a few friends, more than I know, that

learned english second and one of them, my best friend, does not use articles like I would. She

says “I parked in garage” as opposed to “I parked in the garage” just little things like that. I mean

she is full blown American -starbucks and lulu lemon leggings- but it’s those little things that

might be because her first language is Hindi. It has literally never occurred to me, I thought she

just chose not to. As Wan said “White Americans benefit from inflation perceptions of their

literacy” which I think carries over into many white Americans only knowing American English

(Wan xxi).
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I think on a completely separate note from my first analysis, I also kind of related to

Wan’s struggle with writing that was “scattered with misdirection, bloated with redundancy, and

read jarringly” and hers stems from losing her original language and baby bird falling out of the

nest into english where I think mine just comes from expectations versus reality of my thoughts

in writing. I write very choppy sentences and write how my thoughts come to my head which

does not translate to everyone at first glance, but once they slow down it becomes more clear that

the robotic writing I can’t seem to subscribe to. A lot of the questions in WAW about reflection

on literacy got me thinking about how I write (64). Horribly. Uniquely? To appropriately answer

the questions, my view of writing or literacy has not fundamentally changed but has been added

to with the concept of mental clashes in literacy. I mean, now I am not sure why I write this way,

no one taught me to use sentences in this way or to break the fourth wall and mention that I am

writing what I am writing. Guess that is what we are here for!

Wan ends her story with the fact that though her name and looks reflected that she is

Chinese, she had too many barriers put up against her heritage to become more like everyone

else (Wan xxviii). Very Disney Channel ‘stay true to yourself’, but it is a way that now a part of

her is mostly lost which is very heart breaking. I think good writing gets the job done. I think it is

just to communicate ideas and keep a record of thoughts. Typing and writing make momentary

sequences of words into stories to be retold. No matter how you say it, as long as the message is

accurate and the structure is congruent to the application it is a job well done. But also, I have

been very anti-establishment these days because I think dressing nice is such a stupid construct

so I dress confidently instead of nice, weird little context tidbit. I am not sure how my literacy

experiences have contributed to my definition because literally ANY sponsor would yell at me

for that. I guess it’s the class of coloring between the lines but also being original, there is only
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so much you can do. I want to be original in my writing, and I do not want to be impersonal

unless it is inappropriate. It may be that my sponsors always encouraged originality (teachers,

family, friends) and I have always embraced that. After being in high school and writing so many

papers on identity, but of Asher Lev or Holden Caulfield among all of those vaguely similar

books, I think I lost favor with the cliches. Everyone wrote their papers on the same three ideas

based on “what is identity” that I think I got tired of using someone else’s words. Now, I

understand that literacy is a tool and you can bend and shape words to fit your meaning out of

traditional contexts to make a phrase more specific. It is easier to draw on the collective of

human brains than to write as though you (the writer) does not exist. We all exist, and we know

we exist, it is not a secret, so why not act like it?