Brandt: Remembering Writing, Remembering Reading

In Thursday’s class, when we went around the room explaining what our parents did for a living, I specifically remember saying that, since my parents have such prestigious careers, I was “surprised they actually let me become a Writing major.” Reading Brandt’s essay brought a new understanding to me as to why I, as well as almost everyone else it appears, think of writing in such a strange, almost negative, light. Writing, especially creative writing, has always been an ambiguous subject because it’s not something that can readily be taught outside of the technical sense (such as grammar or syntax). If one does happen to develop an affinity or talent for writing, it is even more difficult to develop an identity as a “writer,” seeing as society seems to have tabooed the word to have negative connotations (the term “penniless writer” comes to mind). The irony in the way we don’t value writing in the same way we value reading is that we all can appreciate a good book, newspaper article, or essay. But someone had to write that!

The way I see it, it is the “chicken and egg” debate: it’s not so much a question of “which came first,” but that we can’t have one without the other.

Thinking back, reading was always an important part of my curriculum, both at home and at school. I always had books at my reading level readily available in my home, and was always encouraged, I suppose because there is the assumption that reading is an important skill, not only in the practical way, but in terms of intellectual growth. My writing skills were never encouraged in the same way, outside of my parents making sure I knew the alphabet and could write out the words and spell correctly. My affinity for writing, therefore, had to have come solely from within myself, and from the encouragement of college professors, many of whom gave me positive feedback on my writing early in my college years.

I enjoyed the individual anecdotes of the people Brandt interviewed for her research to back up her essay. It’s amazing really to understand just how much children are affected by the behavior of their parents. We tend to want to do what they do, so we have a tendency to associate reading with pleasure and relaxation, but writing with things like paying bills or balancing checkbooks. Our early desire to write, then, comes from an individual source, “involving feelings of lonliness, secrecy, and resistance.”

Although I enjoyed Brandt’s essay, I didn’t find it to be nearly as controversial as Rodriguez’s, mainly because it seemed much more objective and factual, very A + B = C. Still, I think we could still have a provocative discussion on the way our own individual affection for writing has come about.

Rodriguez: The Achievement of Desire

Rodriguez explores in his personal essay just what it means to become educated in our society, while coming from a working-class family background that doesn't inhibit academic success. He goes back and forth between referring to himself in first-person and changing over to the notion of being "scholarship boy," a writing technique that he uses to illustrate his inability to find a balance between a part of his family and the educated person he desires to become. He struggles with the idea that he must separate himself from a life he lived as a child, feel ashamed of his "uneducated" parents and cultural background (and therefore guilt caused by this shame). Several times throughout the essay, Rodriguez refers to his education as both a success and a failure, even going so far as to call it a "miseducation" (254) because what he failed to realize, as he dedicated himself to his books and memorized all the facts, was that he was absorbing the facts without understanding what they meant in order to apply these ideas in the real world. He had all the makings of the "good" student: Rodriguez claims he was "highly ambitious, eager, desperate for the goal of becoming 'educated'" (240). In the end, however, it appeared his blind desire for an education got in the way of his ability to achieve knowledge.

Unfortunately (or maybe not so unfortunately for me), I cannot say that I've had many similar experiences as Rodriguez when it came to my education. My parents are both very educated people with respectable careers and, therefore, with high expectations for me. College was never a question, it was always the understood next step. In fact, I think that on some level, their constant reminders about how important my education was ultimately tuned down my once passionate desire for learning. Towards the end of my high school career, I became a closet underachiever, doing the minimal amount of work so as to not allow my grades to drop too alarmingly low for my parents to notice. Desire can be weird that way...we seem to want things more when we're facing adversity. But when opportunity is right under our noses, when it becomes an expectation, it seems somehow less desireable.

Although Rodriguez is speaking as an adult looking back on his childhood, in his writing he seems to have a very childlike understanding of why he feels the need to break ties with his identity in order to become "scholarship boy," especially since his parents seemed so supportive of his desire and proud of his academic achievements. My biggest question, I suppose, is how much the sacrifice of his former life is self-imposed, and how necessary it really was. Was there really no happy medium?