Literacy Biography

This is the second (and final) installment of the personal essay portion of my literacy biography:

For years before seventh grade, I'd relied on reading circles, chapter reviews, and worksheets to lead me along through books. For years after, I would learn to pretend that I had read, listening like a detective when the teacher spoke about a book's material and turning these clues into an entire narrative essay or response paper, complete with limited source materials that reflected this same viewpoint. But when my teacher Ed (we used first names) introduced the reading log book, I panicked. We were expected to record the date, the book, the number of pages we read, and a small synopsis. We were expected to write in the book at least once a week.

The book sat on a low shelf underneath the blackboard, free for anyone to peruse during transition periods or lunch time (we ate in the classroom). My failure to read would be more than a shared knowledge between myself and Ed. The whole class would see that nice, quiet Austin Murphy was lazy, uninspired, unmotivated, unfit to join the ranks of the best and the brightest.

There were many ways to respond to this new challenge. You could lie, write that you read pages whatever to who-gives-a-shit, and copy something it took you twenty minutes to load up on dial-up AOL about the plot. You could pretend to be actively reading a book that you had actually read in an earlier grade, shrug your shoulders thoughtfully when the teacher asked if you'd consider reading a more difficult book. You could pick a book that looked way above your level so that you could do a cursory, sloppy job in the log book, falling back on the semi-truth that you were challenging yourself, so it was OK that you only read ten pages last week or that you're description always involved the phrase, "I'm not quite sure what's happening..."

It was through this third route that I discovered Richard Wright's Native Son. It was the perfect ruse; a stern, uninviting black cover, over five hundred pages in length, and filled with words no white suburban seventh grader would have any reason to understand. I borrowed it from the class shelf and settled in for a semester of faux-intellectual wrangling.

I don't remember how long I went on like this; this lack of memory is probably testament to how little I thought of Wright or his giant book. All my basketball cards were alphabetized, I updated all the old rosters on my NBA Live '95 game to reflect all the off-season trades, I learned the finishing moves of every character in Mortal Kombat, I read the phrases "Knicks suck!" and "Yankees RULE!" in more chat rooms than I care to remember. Occasionally I would pick up Native Son and thumb through the pages. It seemed like a story about a black chauffeur working for a rich white family. I'd think of my rich classmates, and wondered if they had these kinds of people working for them. I'd put the book down and watched an episode of the Simpsons that I had seen five times.

Through it all, I buried the feeling that I was falling behind, that everyone else had made a seamless transition to independent reading. I was happy-go-lucky with my friends, got As and Bs in all my classes, and tried to present myself as the model embodiment of the student I knew deep down I was not.

The change came when Ed announced late one week that we were all required to move on to another book by the beginning of next week. After class, I asked him if I could get extra time because, you know, my book was so big! He said it had been clear at the beginning that we had a limited amount of time to read our book, and I should have been pacing myself or picked an easier read. He was not mean, he did not scold me. In fact, he told me that he allowed me to pick such an advanced book because he thought I could handle it. But it was time to complete the job, and that was that.

The tough thing about memory is that I often have trouble accessing specific details about times when I felt inadequate. I made every effort to avoid listening to my screaming conscious at the time, so it doesn't surprise me that I have no idea what I did on the Saturday afternoon before I was to complete Native Son. Maybe I went to Scotty's Music downtown and visited every listening station, even the country-western. Maybe my friend Jesse and I walked to the newsstand and snuck peeks at Playboy magazine when the cashier wasn't looking. Maybe I said, "Patrick Ewing SUXX you dont know what ur talkin bout!!" to KnicksRDaBomb2543.

Whatever happened during the daylight hours, my dad's insistence that I start tackling my homework before Sunday night led me to the leather chair in the study. And for the first time, I had an experience that I have replicated countless times in the years since; I forgot to check the time, forgot that I even had a body. I was reading.

It wasn't just the act of reading that shocked me; it was the story itself. Without giving away spoilers, I will say that Native Son is a story of how much of life is decided by circumstance and dumb luck, how a small misunderstanding and the fear of being misunderstood can conspire to create grave tragedy, how easy it is to lose everything even when you have almost nothing to begin with. Wright challenged everything I thought I knew about race, class, and power in America. On Saturday afternoon, I was a seventh grader who assumed I had no advantages, that people make it or not based on what kind of people they are, how hard they are willing to work, and whether or not they choose to be good or bad. On Saturday night, my view was so distorted and shattered that I cried for Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the novel.

My reading of Native Son may be why I have spent my brief adult life working in urban public schools, trying to close the societal gap I first learned of on that Saturday night in seventh grade. I know that it's why I value questions over answers, why I'm always interested in hearing points of view that my limited personal experience doesn't touch upon. Native Son taught me to question everything I think I know. I'm glad I had enough nags in my life to force me to read it.

Update

It seems I wasn't clear when I posted an excerpt from my multi-genre paper. I've written other pieces of it, but that is as far as I've gotten in the personal essay. I will write more this weekend, so expect another installment of that on Monday.
Here's a poem:

STRAIGHT FROM THE GUT

When I hear the name
Jack Welch
Former CEO of GE
I think of the time his book was assigned
for a Corporate Power class
at Vassar

I thought,
what an Ass.
He fucked up the Hudson and
doesn't think he needs to clean it up
because
he didn't know about PCBs

He's a suit
Scumbag

When I hear the name
Jack Welch
I remember Jason in my room
Reading lines aloud
"It's always good to have a power plant
for a neighbor"
Laughing

And Vassar in the Spring
White buds blossoming
Frisbee and hookah and
grass stains on my
cargo shorts

This has nothing to do with
Jack Welch
But everything to do with
Reading
his book.

My Literacy Biography

For my Teaching of Writing class, I have to write a multi-genre paper (five pieces in four different genres). I've chosen to write about myself as a reader, which is important for me to explore before I start trying to transform my students into readers. This is due next Thursday, so I thought it'd be nice to post bits and pieces here and see what you guys think. That is, all two of you guys (er, gals) who actually follow this blog...

When my parents split up, my dad moved to an apartment two towns away. The first time he took me there, he wanted to show me how close he would be. We got stuck in traffic on the highway, and arrived 40 minutes later.

My dad would take me out to dinner on Wednesday nights, and I'd stay with him on weekends. It took him time to fill his apartment with the kind of clutter that makes a house a home. On one of our first Saturdays, we tossed a sock back and forth in his bedroom.

Even when possessions began to move in, I hesitated to explore the space. I slept on one side of my dad's bed for months, ignoring the new unpainted bunk bed I had been excited to get for when my friends slept over. I spent the nights watching college football or basketball, my dad cooking ravioli for dinner as the games ended and I signed onto AOL to browse the sports chat rooms. I'd go home on Sunday night with none of my homework done, my hair matted from not having showered all weekend. My mom scolded me, told me I was old enough to take responsibility for myself.

Responsibility was a big buzz word in seventh grade. After years of being led along by the hand, of having every step of every assignment looked at and commented upon and discussed one-on-one with the teacher, seventh grade was supposed to be the time I started to take education into my own hands. I got a B minus in Math the first marking period, then an A the second after the teacher agreed to tutor me privately. I was not ready for change.

Letter to Vassar

To Whom it May Concern,
My name is Austin Murphy, and I graduated from Vassar in 2005. Although I was not an English major, I took many classes in the department, and I'd have to say that Composition and Narrative Writing were my favorite. My interest in writing has led to my pursuit of a Masters at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Teaching of English. I am eager to share my passion for reading and writing with my students, a passion that might not have blossomed had I not been able to take these writing courses at Vassar. The Vassar Creative Writing program changed my life, and I am incredibly dismayed to hear that you are considering doing away with it.
The Vassar I remember was a place where creativity was valued, where kids who were smart but a bit "off-beat" went to share their unique perspective with others, to invest time and energy in pursuits that were more about discovering their life passions than preparing for a big post-graduation payday. Please have the courage to stand up for the Vassar I remember. Financial difficulties come and go, but the character of an institution lasts. Don't make the mistake of turning Vassar into just another degree factory. I will not be proud to have graduated from that Vassar.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Austin Murphy
Vassar '05

Elizabethport Public Library

This is a post I made for Open Salon (http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=56447), who were looking for writers on the subject of "the worst job I ever had...":

It may not be the worst, but a job I had was as a desk clerk for the Elizabethport Public Library in Elizabeth, NJ. An off-shoot of the main branch, this was a tiny building that sat less than a mile from Newark airport, directly under the flight path. The defeaning roar of an airbus every two minutes was about the most exciting thing that happened there - the library had only English books in a mostly Spanish speaking neighborhood. The only customer I remember was a man in a torn jacket that smelled like piss who sometimes wanted to use the copy machine.

I sat at the main desk for eight hours every day, trolling the internet till I had spots in my vision. My co-worker, a Hispanic woman who ate foul smelling chicken for lunch in the break room, told me that the library didn't allow the clerks to read books while they were working. Apparently we were supposed to be making sure all the books were in order. The irony of a library that didn't allow its employees to read didn't escape me.

I was home from college for the summer and I was still sitting at home watching Jerry Springer in mid-July, so the library job was actually a bit of a blessing. And I do have a few fond memories from the second half of that summer. Every day, I met my friend Bekah at the mall for lunch. She'd watch me eat a Ranch One Chicken sandwich and waffle fries, and then we'd cruise by Lids for Less or Sam Goody's. I remember buying The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips after reading glowing reviews from my library computer. I don't listen to that album much anymore, but it gave me comfort when I drove home with the sunset in my rearview every night.

"Feeling yourself disintegrate..."

The Auto-Tune Effect

This is also known as the T-Pain effect, that little digital modification that makes a human voice sound robotic. It is designed to correct inaccuracies in pitch, but artists like T-Pain seem to use it as an aesthetic of its own. In the same way that drum machines mimick drums but have an unmistakably different feel to them, so does the auto-tune voice change the way a singer sounds on a track.

Is using the auto-tune effect "cheating"? Country artists like Reba McEntire and Tim McGraw have admitted to using it during concerts, a way to ensure that the audience gets their money's worth by hearing the proper notes. T-Pain, and more recently Kanye West, make no secret of their use of the effect, so can we really think of their use in the same way? Is the auto-tune effect a new instrument altogether, used in different ways by different artists in the same way that a jazz enthusiast can tell Louis Armstong's trumpet playing from that of Dizzie Gillespie?

And the way that it "corrects" pitch...could we see that as a democratizing force in music? If all stray notes are pushed into perfect pitch, doesn't it stand to follow that anyone can sing a song with auto-tune and have it sound polished, maybe even "professional"? Might this allow a wider swath of singers onto the airwaves? Or does the effect actually serve to gloss away any natural characterstics of voice and instead create a one-size-fits-all model of "singer"?

Auto-Tune Democracy...an elective course, coming soon to a liberal arts college near you...

Me as an Educator

I just wanted to get down this thought while it occurred to me. Yesterday, I taught a lesson on the six traits of writing that was WAY over my eighth graders' heads. When I talked with my supervisor about it, it seems the biggest problem was that I just tried to do too much in too little time. I thought too big.

And today, I am constructing a 3-week unit plan for my Teaching of Writing class. I'm pretty overwhelmed with it, so I e-mailed my professor, explaining how I wanted to cover writers' circles, reading of memoirs, accessing our own childhood memories...all kinds of good stuff. She said I'm trying to do too much. Think smaller.

This is something I'm noticing as I try to think of myself as a teacher. I get the big ideas, which my supervisor says is the hardest part. I know what I want my students to know...but when I try to deliver it to them, I expect too much, I cram too much, I don't think of the little details enough. I need to work on much more detail-oriented thinking next semester. And now that I've written it here, I will be reminded of this when I start to over-plan again.