According to Deborah Brandt, literacy sponsors are “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way” (556). Sponsors are regularly defined as a person or organization that provides funds for a project or activity carried out by another. When applied to a literacy narrative standpoint, sponsors are the ones who support the author’s experience that they are going through in their narrative. For example, in “My Mom Prepared Me for the World” by Alexis Ouellette, her grandfather had passed away. Her grandfather was her hero, they were very close; so losing him impacted her really hard, especially at a young age. But her mom both helped her grieve, and also prepared her for her grandfather’s death by reading the book The Little Match Girl to her. This book got Alexis through tough times and helped her to understand the concept of death, making it seem more comforting. In this literacy narrative, Alexis’s mother was the sponsor. She was the one who supported Alexis. Her mother could even be seen as an agent. Agents are defined as a person who acts on behalf of another person or group. In this circumstance, Alexis’s mother acted as an agent, acting on behalf of Alexis, so that she was able to cope with the death of her grandfather. She was the one who took an active role in her life in order to produce a positive outcome: grieving easier. In Gee’s writings, he talks about Discourses. In order for one to become apart of a Discourse, one must apprentice under someone who is already in that Discourse. One must have the right “saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations” (6). In other words, one must act like someone who is in the Discourse, mimicking them to “fit in”. Along with sponsors, you must regulate these combinations so that you are able to fit in with the Discourse. “Regulate” is defined as to control or maintain so it operates correctly. The master of the Discourse must help the apprentice regulate these combinations in the correct way to be able to enter said Discourse.

On page 558 of Deborah Brandt’s Sponsor of Literacy, she writes “Literacy, like land, is a valued commodity in this economy, a key resource in gaining profit and edge.” Though here she says that literacy is so valued, many of us have complicated, or even horrible, experiences with reading and writing. There are many reasons why this rings true. In Kara Poe Alexander’s Success, Victims, and Prodigies: “Master” and “Little” Cultural Narratives in the Literacy Narrative Genre, Alexander was able to create a coding schema for all the different cultural narratives that literacy narratives fall under, along with how frequent they appeared. The cultural narrative “Victim” was the second most popular narrative, occurring in 19% of the 734 total episodes (616). This type of narrative shows the author being placed as a victim of bad experiences with literacy whether it be inside or outside of the schooling system. The victim usually blames their bad experiences on someone else for “[taking] the fun out of reading and writing” (615). The “outsider” and “rebel” cultural narratives also portray the author going through negative experiences with literacy, showing them not fitting in within a certain establishment and being misunderstood, rebelling against the said establishment. Whether it is the victim, rebel, or outsider, there are many literacy narratives that can be used as proof that people can have negative experiences with literacy. Someone could have negatively involved themselves in their literacy life, possibly ruining it forever. Reading and writing are, perhaps, the most important counterparts of literacy. But, for example, if a student is a victim of an English teacher who beats down their students for the slightest mistake, that student, over time, may become overbeaten. This can cause the student to have a negative association with English (literacy/ reading and writing), feeling very hopeless and resulting in a very complicated and conflicting relationship with literacy for most, if not the rest, of their life. Many people do not even have the access to these establishments, would this result in a negative relationship with literacy? Or only fuel the drive to achieve literacy?

“Throughout their lives, affluent people from high-caste racial groups have multiple and redundant contacts with powerful literacy sponsors as a routine part of their economic and political privileges. Poor people and those from low-caste racial groups have less consistent, less politically secured access to literacy sponsors – especially to the ones that can grease their way to academic and economic success” (Brandt 559). It is quite obvious and well known that the more well off you are, the more advantages you tend to have. Poor, and or underprivileged, people tend to not have as many opportunities as those that are privileged. James Paul Gee may say that with the example of Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez from Brandt, these roles are part of their primary Discourse. A primary Discourse is an initial Discourse that you are born into and grow up in. It is your home life, your family, how you were brought up and with what values (Gee 7).  “Primary Discourses differ significantly across various social (cultural, ethnic, regional, and economic) groups in the United States” (Gee 8). Raymond grew up a European American, and the son of a professor father and a real-estate executive mother. He grew up with being able to mess around with computer programming at his father’s science lab. His parents were able to provide greatly for him, even gifting a personal computer and a modem when he was 12 and 13 years old respectively. Raymond was able to attend university and became very successful (Brandt 560). While Raymond grew up with a privileged primary Discourse, Dora Lopez did not. She grew up in a family of farm laborers in a Texas border town. Though she ended up moving to the same town as Raymond, she was not as better off as he was. Her family had to drive 70 miles just to get groceries and Spanish written literature. Dora even had to teach herself how to read and write in Spanish, something that a lot of her family did not even know how to do (Brandt 560). Though Raymond and Dora grew up in the same surroundings, their primary Discourse led them to lead very different lives with different difficulty levels.