In these paragraphs, I tried to mainly focus on connecting the different authors together instead of just connecting the authors to the literacy narratives.

Sponsors are not always needed in order to be able to acquire literacy (or at least to appear as though you have). According to Alexander, the success story cultural narrative could be so popular because the success story is “what teachers want to see” (624). If this is true, then are there certain key points that are missing from these narratives that point out an obvious sponsor? Since so many students write about what they think their teacher wants to see, then maybe a lot of them also want their teacher to think of them as strong, that they could do it on their own. So they simply exaggerated the truth, conveying themselves as the “sponsor” of their own literacy narrative. This is similar to “mushfake” in Gee’s journals. Gee writes that “mushfake” is when one uses “partial acquisition coupled with meta-knowledge and strategies to ‘make do’” (13). He talks about how sometimes people just simply do not have what it takes to be able to be welcomed into a Discourse. These people then must fake their way in as they can. When students write these narratives where they appear to be able to succeed on their own, these students may just be “mushfaking” their way. They are not truly being one with the Discourse, they are making do with what they have in order to make it appear as though they truly belong.

Gee writes about primary Discourses. These Discourses are what we acquire in our early years of life while we grow up at home. They also include your race and gender and overall background (7,8). These key factors can be what constitutes how someone is able to acquire literacy in life. With Dora, she was born a Mexican American female. Her race and gender alone already make it harder for the “average” person to acquire literacy. “Dora Lopez undertook to teach herself how to read and write in Spanish… neither her brother nor her U.S.-born cousins knew how to do” (560). Dora’s primary Discourse has raised her into hardship, to know how to work with what she is given, and work for what she is not given. Primary Discourses set up a basis for all of the other Discourses and interactions in our life. Dora did not have easy access to literacy from a young age. Though she had struggled, she was able to take her early experiences and turn them into motivation to better herself.

Your background and environment have a huge effect on your acquisition of literacy. As Brandt writes in Sponsors of Literacy, “Literacy, like land, is a valued commodity in this economy, a key resource in gaining profit and edge. This value helps to explain, of course, the lengths to which people will go to secure literacy for themselves or their children” (558). Literacy is such a valuable thing to hold in your belt these days. One could go nowhere in life because they are not able to acquire adequate literacy. This situation can be seen in the literacy narrative Education by Daria Letcher. In this narrative, her family is told to be born and raised into a time of segregation, making receiving education very difficult, if not impossible, due to their race.  “My family put a lot of pressure on education because of my family history… many of my family members grew up in a time of segregation when education was not easily accessible.” Because of this, Daria’s mother made sure that Daria never had a chance to miss out on a good education. Daria’s mother is doing just as Brandt describes. She realizes the value and importance literacy withholds, and she will do anything to “secure literacy” for Daria.

Could not having a sponsor actually give one an advantage? This is in the sense that one instead uses their backbone to get through what is ahead. Gee talks about such a thing in Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction. He writes “when we come across a situation where we are unable to accomodate or adapt… we become consciously aware of what we are trying to do or are being called upon to do… can make “maladapted” students smarter than “adapted” ones” (12,13). Though the students who are not well suited in the subject tend to be expected to not do well, they can actually be smarter than those are are more suited for the subject. In the literacy narrative My Academic Nightmare: The Myth of Academic Dishonesty by Jordan Jawadt, Jordan does not necessarily do well in his english class. He results to looking up the answers to questions on quizzes. This puts him ahead of everyone else. Though this was true for  a little while, eventually being “maladapted” caught up to him. “I’m kinda glad I got to realize that the road I was going down was the wrong one, and that there was other ways to get around and having to fake my intelligence would get me nowhere.” So really, in Jordan’s case, he was not able to stay ahead of those who were “smarter” than him.