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Karissa Balbuena
September 8, 2014
UWRT 1103-015
Literacy Narrative
The earliest memory I have about reading is when my father would
read to me when I was young. Every night before going to sleep, my sister
and I would snuggle up in bed as he read to us. He was still learning English,
which made it a learning process for all of us. As he read the books,
sometimes he would change the story to make it funnier, and my sister and I
were so excited when we would catch him because we knew the stories well
from hearing them so many times. Growing up, I loved listening to stories
more than anything, and before long, I was reading on my own. My mom
would take my siblings and me to the library, and I would go through the
shelves pulling off anything and everything that had an exciting cover and
title. We would bring home a big bin full of books every time. We would read
them all in a matter of days, and before long, we were back at the library,
searching the shelves for something we hadnt read yet, or something we
were more than ready to read over again.
Over the years, my sister began to realize that she hated reading. My sister Katie is
my best friend and was a huge influence on my life. Anything she liked, I
liked, too. Anything she didnt like, I didnt like either. Because she hated
reading, and being the easily influenced younger sister, I believed that I hated
reading too. My parents werent big fans of our dislike for reading, but they
didnt force us to read other than what we did for school.

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After being homeschooled in kindergarten and first grade, I began going to a private
school in 2nd grade. By 3rd grade I was rarely reading anything other than the
required books for school. I began to think all books were like schoolbooks.
Some of my friends loved reading so much; they were getting in trouble for
reading during class. I, on the other hand, didnt enjoy it nearly as much.
Because of my disinterest in the books, I struggled with reading
comprehension questions, which furthered my dislike for reading.
When I was about ten, I took a writing and poetry class. Being homeschooled at the
time, my mom thought it would be a good idea for me to learn in a group
setting. Writing the poems was so much fun, and by the end of the class, I had
created my own book full of poems I had written. My favorite type of poem to
write was a limerick. I loved them because they could be funny and I liked
rhyming the words. Looking back on them now, I realize I was really bad at
writing poetry, and I still am, but at the time I truly enjoyed writing it and I
am glad I took that class. It helped me to learn a style of writing that I would
never have experimented with otherwise.
Over the years, I have occasionally picked up a book and read it. Every time I read a
book, I enjoyed it, yet when I would think about reading, it didnt seem like
something I would want to do. This is essentially the same way I am now.
Except that now I do want to read, I just dont often find myself motivated to
pick up a book, and read it.
In elementary school, all of the papers I wrote came with a specific rubric. Every
paper had to have a certain number of sentence openers and dress-ups such

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as similes and metaphors. At the time, I thought that it was a giant waste of
time that made my writing sound stupid. I hated having to write my papers
by forcing in a cheesy simile or two, but now I see why my teachers had me
do it. While writing a paper, I no longer have to force my self to begin my
sentences with specific words, because I now do it naturally without having
to think about it. It may have been a nuisance at first, but now I have a clearer
understanding of how to write a paper the proper way.
When I was eleven, I had to write my first big research paper. It was a whopping
three pages! I was terrified. It is humorous to think about now considering
how short three pages is, but at the time, it was more than I had ever written.
I searched through books, writing down all of the information I needed onto
note cards. Once I had that, I was able to organize them into paragraphs, and
the last step was to write it. After that we made it into a speech and
presented it to another class. Writing it was not a breeze for me, but when
the paper was finished, I was so proud of myself; however, I never wanted to
write another paper again.
In seventh and eighth grade, I had a Lord of the Rings fanatic for a teacher. We read
all of the books. At first, I caught myself liking the books. The Hobbit was
amazing, and the pictures throughout the book were great. Then came the
first reading comprehension quiz. I bombed it. How could my teacher expect
me to know such particular details? It is hard to like reading when instead of
enjoying the story; you are searching for every minute detail, so you dont
miss a thing. For a moment, I had a glimpse of how great reading could be,

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but it quickly vanished, and I continued to loathe reading. I just couldnt
comprehend how people enjoyed the books so much, but I think that if I were
to try and read them again, I would like them better the second time around.
One day in middle school, my classmates and I were assigned to read an article, and
then respond to it. The assignment sounded simple enough, but I didnt
understand what it was trying to say. I tried my hardest to respond to it, but I
wasnt proud of my work. This, of course, was the one assignment that my
teacher wanted us to read aloud to the class. After hearing a few of the
responses, I realized that I had completely misunderstood the whole point of
what I was reading, and by the time I was done presenting my response to
the class, I wanted to die. This assignment not only showed my lack of skill in
reading, but also in writing. I feel that it is instances like these that Erika
Peterson was referring to in Past Experiences and Future Attitudes in
Literacy. This was one of my worst experiences with literacy.
In school, I found myself reading books that I didnt enjoy, or understand. Between
Homer and Shakespeares books, I decided that reading couldnt be fun.
However, in eleventh grade, my friends all began talking about this amazing
book series that I absolutely had to read. At this point, I was disinterested in
reading and brushed it off. But my friends would not quit raving, thus I read
The Hunger Games. I was hooked. I never realized that reading could be so
much fun, but then after that series, I didnt know what to read next;
therefore, I quit reading again. It wasnt until that following summer that I
asked my friend what I should read. She suggested a series called Goose Girl.

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It was amazing, and I finished the book in two days. Once again, I came to
realize that I didnt hate reading at all; in fact, I quite enjoyed it. My issue was
that I didnt know what to read. This is something that I am still struggling to
overcome because I would like to read more often.
During middle and high school, I was always writing essays and papers, and I never
truly enjoyed it because I didnt think I was good at writing. I didnt mind
submitting my papers, but I always feared peer reviews and reading my
papers aloud. I was nervous that my classmates would hear my bad writing
and make fun of me. But then in eleventh grade, I had to write an imitation
story of Edgar Allen Poe. I guess you could say I kind of got into it. The story
was dangerous and mysterious, and it was exhilarating to write. The best
part was when I read it to my class and they enjoyed it as well. This was a
sort of turning point for me when I realized that not all writing was
miserable, and I had found what I enjoyed.
In my last two years of school, I read many short stories by Flannery OConnor. This
was one of the first times I enjoyed what I was reading for school. Although
her stories were different from most writers, it had similarities to Edgar
Allen Poe because she aspired to write like him, and I think that is why I
enjoyed it. Her stories all had the same underlying theme, but every story
was vastly different from each other. The characters of her stories often
found themselves coming to a brutal end, but somehow, amidst all of the gore
and terror, they found peace. My teacher in this class didnt give reading
comprehension quizzes about these short stories; instead we would discuss

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them in class. While discussing a story, there is so much open ground for you
to talk about what you got from it. There arent specific things that you had to
catch while reading it, but if you did miss something, instead of being
punished, you can talk about it, and learn more by discussing it. I think that
this had an affect on how I experienced the stories because I was able to
really think about what I was reading, instead of looking for specific details.
For my senior year of high school, I was pushed to do something harder than
anything I had done before. I was required to write a fifteen to twenty page
paper on a topic of my choice. I chose to write about all of the pressure that
the media puts on women. I had to present my paper to the high school and a
panel of teachers who then questioned me. The thought of writing fifteen
pages was frightening, but once I began to collect research and write the
paper, it wasnt so bad, and being able to write about a topic of my choice
made it even better. Researching the topic was exciting because I wanted to
know the answers to the questions I was asking. I wanted to prove a point. By
the time I was done, presenting it was not an issue, and I actually got a bit of
a rush from it.
Although I have struggled to enjoy reading for a long time, I hope that in the future I
can continue to grow as a reader. I now know that I like to read, but I often
have a hard time finding the motivation to do so. Writing, however, will
never be a love of mine. I am no Malcolm X. I will never be determined
enough to copy a page of the dictionary, and I will most definitely never even
read the whole thing, but I am thankful for all of the courses I have taken

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over the years that have pushed me to grow as a writer. I hope that by the
end of this class, I will have become both a better reader and writer. And I
will be able to see how I have progressed over the years.