Literacy History

My parents read fiction for leisure, particularly my father who was at one time a high school English teacher. I was regularly read to. I acquired an above average vocabulary by 3rd grade but it was from verbal rather than literary experience. Both my mother and father played scrabble and enjoyed crossword puzzles with great regularity.

I never felt drawn to books, however, and though I can't ever remember a time in my life having difficulty understanding a text reading was not something that I had any particular affinity for. I enjoyed watching public television all through my childhood. Preferring nature shows and shows about science above all others, NOVA, Wild Kingdom, Life on Earth with David Attenborough. I loved watching, though I rarely understood the nuances of English drama like Masterpiece Theater and comedies like Monty Python that were on later in the evenings. These I would watch with my mother. Educational shows like Sesame Street and Electric Company I watched many hours of. I never cared much for the books that were a part of my required readings in high school, but as I said I did not have trouble understanding them.

When I went to college I probably had only voluntarily read 3 or four books after 5th grade. I had quite a different experience with reading there. The material was occasionally challenging as with Kant and Heidegger and it was enormously more interesting. At this time I began to develop a modest but important reading habit. Non-fiction science popularization books, accessible philosophical works, books about how to meditate, and books on martial arts techniques became my staples.

A second strand of reading that began to weave its way through my life were a series of highly recommended works of fiction that my then girlfriend now wife took turns reading to each other. One Hundred Years of Solitude is one that sticks out in my mind. This experience of reading together deepened our relationship and serves as the basis of the way she and I absorb pop culture into our household in a sort of measured and deliberate pace. We watch cartoons with our children and read to them in a way that seems to be aimed at that same kind of knowing one another through shared experience.

I was always disappointed by cartoons on television as a child, with the exception of Robotech, which was on when I was a 3rd grader. Though not strictly a Japanese cartoon, Robotech had many elements of Japanese cartoons which made me like it. The distinction between good and evil in their stories is not so clear or heavy handed and more time is devoted to plausible back stories. I may have been more prone to enjoy these from watching the programming on public television that on the whole had more nuanced and plausible stories.

I majored in Studio Art in college and eventually parlayed that into an illustration job when I lived in Taipei. During this 2 year period I worked within the confines of a professional publishing work-flow. I had an editor that oversaw my work. I had to write and edit text myself occasionally. It was the best job ever and I really don't think I became confident in my writing and my literacy in general until I had that job. I also got a crash course in technology while working that job. There are worse ways of learning about technology than editing and illustrating server hardware, laptop, and cell phone repair manuals and user documentation.

I have a sense that the early encouragement I received to watch certain television programming and the linguistically rich verbal atmosphere I was brought up in played an enormous role in shaping my literacy. My favorite movie: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Book: Godel Echer Bach, Cartoon: Adventure Time, Word game: Banannagrams.