Ashley's ePortfolio

Gender and race may make literacy acquisition much harder for those who are in the minority. Victim and outsider narratives could take this into account. Alexander writes “Outsider narratives portray a literate self who does not fit in and looks in on the literate activities in which others seem to participate as part of the norm…[the victim, rebel, and outsider] narratives demonstrate that anguish, loss, and hopelessness are also parts of the journey toward literacy” (627). This is true with…

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Deborah Brandt brings up the idea of sponsors in her literature Sponsors of Literacy. She writes about how sponsors are one of the main reasons why people are able to acquire literacy. Brandt describes a sponsor as “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). Though Brandt says that it is “any” agent which is “local”, just how…

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