Esrat Sadya
December 1, 2020
Professor Velez
English 11000
Language and Literacy Narrative cover letter
I have learned a lot from doing this assignment. The videos we watched and the personal stories and poems we read as a class helped me to understand that we all have struggles pertaining to learning and developing our language and literacy skills. I used to always be conscious of my accent, however, hearing Safwat Saleem’s TED talk about his struggle with the English language and how he was stereotyped into having an “Indian” accent, made me rethink my journey with the English language. So often, we try our best to sound a particular way because it is the standard way of speaking. But why should our accent have a label on it? As I wrote my narrative, I questioned myself over and over again about why I feel the need to sound “American”. I started to realize that as long as I can get my message across and speak professional English in job interviews and formal settings, it shouldn’t matter if my accent sounds “broken” or otherwise.
I first started writing my narrative solely for myself, because I wanted to experience my journey over the course of a decade through my writing. After I finished the narrative and added digital images that held meaning to my life, I realized the memories those visuals brought back. I became emotional and realized soon after that my story can be related to anyone who had a similar experience as me. Who came to America speaking one language and then over a few months or even years, learned the English language through struggles and setbacks. When I read over a few of my peer’s edits of the Narrative, I would sometimes come across images in their narratives that I was able to connect with and I hope anyone reading over my narrative can also relate to my story.
Throughout the stages of completing this assignment, I realized that I started to become a better writer. My peer’s feedback helped me strengthen my story-telling and helped me to level up my editing and revising skills. I strongly feel that because I was first writing this narrative for myself, and then for an audience, I was able to get better at honing my story-telling skills. I first began to talk about my struggles with the English language and then how I progressively got better at speaking but was always conscious of my accent. Then I began to connect my story to the present day to show that the struggle hasn’t ended and that I am always looking for a way to improve. I am setting goals for myself to read more books and thereby sharpen my writing skill and pick up new vocabulary words on the way.
Language and Literacy Narrative: Finding Myself Through Reading
As an immigrant, I barely knew more than a few English words at the start of my American school career. Reading, as a result, was always difficult for me in the beginning. I couldn’t understand much of what I read and my reading level scarcely improved as I moved up grades. It always frustrated me that my peers surpassed reading levels and advanced towards the more difficult levels for elementary school students while I stayed behind. My frustration stemmed from my lack of understanding of the stories I read or the too-difficult-to pronounce words that were embedded in children’s picture books. My exasperation drove me to avoid reading books altogether unless it was absolutely necessary until I got to my later years of middle school.
I despised going down to the loud and crowded cafeteria of my small community middle school. The kids were always too rowdy and all over the place. There were always pasta sauce or milk splashes on the floor or plastic wraps haphazardly thrown under the tables. I wanted so badly to escape the lunchroom and find a quiet place for myself.
I remember that one day, during my lunch period, I visited the school library that was perched on the corner of the main floor’s northeast hallway. The librarian informed me that I was welcomed to stay as long as I needed. Being that the library was so quiet and peaceful, it became my sanctuary for the rest of my middle school years. Of course, I couldn’t just idly sit around and do nothing to pass time, so much to my surprise, I started to pick up books and read. One of the first books that captivated me with its intricate world-building and its mind-blowing plot was a series called Divergent.
Divergent was unlike anything I had read before; it was about a world divided into factions and about finding your place within those factions. But what if you didn’t belong to any of the five given factions or you belonged to too many? The main protagonist, Tris, was one of those outliers, who wanted to explore the world around her but couldn’t express her true identity in fear of receiving society’s backlashes and facing an eventual death. I recall now that I wanted to experience more of Tris’s story and so I began to come back to the library instead of going down to the messy lunchroom in the dank corner of the basement.
My vow to avoid reading was long forgotten in the midst of these wondering stories that perched themselves on the cream-colored pages of chapter books. From then on, I began to start reading more books. One thing that influenced me to continue on was some of the coming-of-age books like “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio and “The secret life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd that my class and I collectively read for our English assignments. Some of these stories were so breathtakingly beautiful and raw that I often lost track of time.
Fast forward to the beginning of my high school career, I remember being bombarded with lots of work. Coming from a small local middle school on the north side of the Bronx didn’t prepare me for the immense amount of workload and the large student population. I began to lose myself fast and started falling in the cracks of depression. Then, one day, my freshman year English teacher, Ms.Witty, told us to pick an independent reading book. I picked The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and fell in love with reading once more because the story captured my heart and mind.
This was about a young boy struggling to earn his father’s love, making countless and irrational mistakes, and paying for those mistakes even after he turned into a grown man. This story gave me a more clear perspective on life. At the time that I read the novel, I was going through some tough times, and I realized after reading this book that my mistakes and struggles don’t have to define who I am as a person. For Amir, the protagonist, it seemed that he had to pay for his mistake for years. No matter what he did to try to repent, Amir always felt tormented for betraying his one true friend. This story taught me the strength in friendship and to think before I act, to be selfless so that I am not plagued by my wrong actions years down the line.
This novel also encouraged me to start reading more books so I can experience these amazing and heart-capturing stories. However, as much as I wanted to hold on to reading novels more often, that became impossible as years went by and I became busy with school work. However, during the last few months of my senior year at Brooklyn Tech, I was once again assigned to independent readings. This time I read a full series called the Matched trilogy by Ally Condie.
After I finished the series, I realized how much I missed reading books and immersing myself in these stories, and visualizing myself as the characters as I read. I made a plan to start reading more often, however, this time I set realistic goals for myself and took actions to achieve those goals. To get started, I began reading in between my long train rides to school and back home. To keep track of the books, I started by downloading the Goodreads app and listing books I already read and wanted to read in the future. I was determined to read at least twenty-five books for the entire year, suffice to say I have surpassed that.
Soon after, the pandemic started and during the lockdown, I started exploring more books and came upon an amazing series called An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. Out of all the books I read, this had the most impact because I was able to connect so much with the characters. As a person of color and a minority, I had never before seen someone like myself be represented in books and so these characters had a lot of influence on me and I began to tick more books off my “to be read” list after that. Laia, one of the protagonists in this series, wanted to save her brother from the tyrannical Martial Empire but she didn’t have enough courage or faith in herself to rescue him from a dangerous Kauf Prison. However, throughout the book, we see her experience new things, and who despite doubting herself, grows to be a strong woman. Laia taught me to have courage, to not give up even when life gets hard. Laia’s Nan once told her, “As long as there is life, there is hope.” So I continue to persist even when life seems to hang in the balance.
These new experiences and heart-breaking stories of novels and series allowed me to hone my reading and writing skills. In the end, not only was I able to get better at reading, but my writing skills improved quite a lot and I started learning complex vocabulary from my weekly readings. Now, I read books not only out of habit but because it has now become a part of my lifestyle.
When I look back on my journey as an immigrant to now a United States resident, I see that so much has changed. I look back at myself and see how much I have developed in my reading skills over the course of an entire decade living in the United States. I didn’t want to let my fear and frustration get the best of me, so I continued to work through the difficult times. To anyone struggling to take that first step, there is hope, all you have to do to ignite it is to persist and work hard. Because if you don’t work for yourself, then who will?
