Literacy Just IS

You think you get it—you have a moment of understanding, excitement, and a glimpse of a brilliant insight…

And then it all diminishes and you are left just as unsure and curious as ever.

Fosen has instilled in me that rhetoric is EVERYWHERE. So I cannot help but to perceive every image as a mere form of persuasion. And while rhetoric and literacy have several connections, I have a feeling Hamilton is searching for more—though I am having a hard time grasping what exactly that more is. Probably just my process of overthinking.

In rhetoric photography is often manipulated. A photograph shows you what the photographer wants you to see—everything outside the frame is unobtainable to the viewer. It is focused to show you exactly what the photographer wants you to see and nothing more. Is this the power of photographs Hamilton is also referring to? Is Hamilton looking at photographs to see how they persuade how society views literacy? Or is she looking at photographs as a mere reflection of how society uses literacy? (Plus the line between ethnographic and media photography seems a little blurred to me—as both seem to reflect people and their cultures—making my thought process even more complicated.) Or is she looking at photographs on both levels?

“The public image of those with literacy difficulties is often a negative one but we were not sure how this negativity was achieved or how to go about constructing alternative ‘positive’ images.”

Hamilton’s statement furthers my curiosity on how exactly she is looking at photographs which depict literacy. Was this negative image around literacy (or lack of) created by photographs whose photographers manipulated what we were able to look at and see—persuading society to look at literacy with a sense of negativity? Or was this negative image developed by photographs whose photographers took honest shots of how literacy is used (or not used) in our society today?

No matter the answer I am aware that images have a presence and a force within literacy. Within rhetoric. Within English as a subject.

Wanting to avoid these questions and school and life in general I went home for the weekend to have time with my mom.

I had achieved my desire to avoid thinking about school or English until I walked into a coffee shop in my small hometown and saw two young girls…

I proceeded to take their picture (without getting caught) with my mom standing beside me laughing and asking how this picture had anything to do with any of my classes…

Though I had no inspiring thoughts or “smart” realizations during this moment I did find myself asking questions.

Did these girls like each other?

Were they reading because they were forced by their mothers to spend time together while the mothers gossiped outside?

Were they best friends who simply shared the love of reading and knew how to simply be together?

Were they even reading at all?

Do their parents read?

Were they reading just get to their names on the huge reading level signs that hang around all the elementary schools in Plumas County?

How many kids spend their Fridays after school reading?

Are these the rare few that actually read “real” books?

And even though I had many unanswered questions I look back at this picture and see literacy as a way of connecting these two young girls. It did not matter if they were friends or hated each other—they were forming a connection and sense of community through their literacy. They were not physically interacting, but I do believe they were connecting. In this image I did not view literacy as anything but sheer…literacy.

Maybe literacy does not have to be defined as something.

Maybe literacy just IS.