Kara Poe Alexander writes about a popular literacy narrative which she calls the “literacy success story”. This type of narrative typically shows the author facing literacy and, in turn, quite obviously, succeeding. Success seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Many students equate literacy with success, so it seems like the right topic to write about when assigned to write a literacy narrative.
Within “Successes, Victims, and Prodigies: ‘Master’ and ‘Little’ Cultural Narratives in the Literacy Narrative Genre” by Kara Poe Alexander, “master narratives” are defined as “an overarching story people tell themselves about their experiences in relation to the culture, literature, or history of a society” (Alexander 610) . Alexander then goes on to say that, for both students and researchers, the master narrative that is the “literacy success story” is problematic. This can be due to the overgeneralization of the master narrative, it is almost just the easy way out for literacy narratives. She believes that unlike what many students may think, literacy does not automatically equate to success (though it can make many tasks easier than if one were to be illiterate).
“Little” narratives are narratives that are less generalized, and more personalized and “artistic” (Alexander 611). “Little” narratives are typically written by groups who have been overlooked and marginalized. These groups may include minorities, immigrants, women, and others. “Expect the Unexpected” by Hannah Merrill and “Blank Screen” by Meghan Mazzochi are both examples of this. Even though they did not succeed very well, they were able to find it within themselves to realize that they do not always need to rely on others.
“What are the little narratives students invoke in literacy narratives, and how often are they invoked in comparison with the master narrative of literacy equals success?” “If little narratives do exist in student essays, do they challenge the success master narrative, thus causing it to lose some of its power, or reinforce it?” (Alexander 612) can compare to the question from the shared Google Doc, “why are literacy narratives one of the more common papers to write about?”
This shows my planning out how to answer these questions by writing quotes and notes for myself.
3 thoughts on “Reading Alexander”
Q1 very quickly defines the literacy success story, but not in much depth. Q1 also asks you to go on and make connections to some of the Rising Cairn literacy narratives.
Q2 gives a bit of Alexander’s definition of master narrative, but not enough to capture the robustness of the concept for explaining what’s problematic about the literacy success story. You do get some of it, but there’s more to be gotten.
The same pattern of response applies to Q3 and 4. Compared to other work I’ve seen from you, this seems a bit rushed.
Acceptable quality.
I like the notes on the question sheet. I was looking for annotations on your Alexander reading – pp. 608-614.
If you click on the link that says “Annotations from Alexander” it will bring you to a Google doc that has them, I had complications with resizing them.
3 thoughts on “Reading Alexander”
Q1 very quickly defines the literacy success story, but not in much depth. Q1 also asks you to go on and make connections to some of the Rising Cairn literacy narratives.
Q2 gives a bit of Alexander’s definition of master narrative, but not enough to capture the robustness of the concept for explaining what’s problematic about the literacy success story. You do get some of it, but there’s more to be gotten.
The same pattern of response applies to Q3 and 4. Compared to other work I’ve seen from you, this seems a bit rushed.
Acceptable quality.
I like the notes on the question sheet. I was looking for annotations on your Alexander reading – pp. 608-614.
If you click on the link that says “Annotations from Alexander” it will bring you to a Google doc that has them, I had complications with resizing them.
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