Literacy Narrative

Rhode-Elise St. Jacques

Prof. Gleason

Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy

Literacy Narrative 1st draft

October 21, 2014

Writing Creatively

In the seventh grade, I had been in the United States for only two years.  Though I believed it took me less than one year to learn English, partly because on the first year anniversary of my living in U.S. I told a teacher who was surprised at the level of proficiency I had acquired in such a short time, I was still an ESL student and did not quite feel comfortable expressing myself orally.  Early on in the year, my teacher, Ms. Claudia Cohen, gave us an assignment.  Though I do not remember the specifics of the assignment, I wrote a story entitled “Mr. Ching Chong’s Surprise.”  (I know that this is a racist title but I did not realize that then). When my paper was returned, it bled profusely due to the merciless attacks of Ms. Cohen’s red pen.  I made countless grammatical, punctuation, and sentence structure errors.  However what was pleasantly surprising to me were Ms. Cohen’s comments.  She loved my story.  She found the story plot of this poor Chinese man (I do not know why I chose to make this character Chinese considering I had not yet met many Chinese people) being stalked by a secret abhorrer who writes ominous notes to him, fun, clever and creative.  That Ms. Cohen liked my story in spite of the many grammatical errors taught me that I was a writer, that I was funny, and that words can be used to convey and invoke emotions if cleverly assembled on paper.

That I was now a writer meant that I had purpose.  This sad, lonely little Haitian girl was special.  Believing I was a writer meant that I would take several creative writing courses in high school, eventually rewriting that pivotal seventh-grade assignment and renaming the title character “Mr. Williams.”  It meant that every day I would effortlessly write short stories and what at the time I thought was poetry.  It led me to join the creative writing club and be published in the school literary magazine for two consecutive years.  I was a writer.  I had a way with words which meant I had a way of gaining attention, which happened when teachers read my work aloud to the class.  I often used my way with words as a shock factor.  When in my ninth grade ESL class the teacher asked us to write sentences using newly learned vocabulary, my word was ‘yearn,” I boldly wrote on the board, “His kiss was so passionate that she yearned for more.”

As time went on and I became less sad and less lonely, the ability to write effortlessly faded away.  After high school, it would be several years before I went back into the classroom.  I began to realize that I had been a writer.  Once back in school what I became was and is a student that writes critical analyses, reading responses and research papers.  Though in college I won the 2012 National Black Writers Conference fiction writing contest, and though I was even featured in the school paper a few times and in the first issue of the school’s literary magazine, writing creatively no longer comes easily.  The worst thing is that I now need to be prompted.  Though I am proud of my writing accomplishments in college, they do nothing to sway away that mindset that when it comes to writing, I lost something very special.

Today, though no longer writing short stories and having long ago abandoned what I once called poetry, what “Mr. Ching Chong’s Surprise” does for me when I sit in front of the blank screen of a computer is remind me that if in the seventh grade, while attempting to master the English language and having to manage two other languages in my mind, I succeeded in conveying an entertaining story through a well-organized plot, I can find the words to complete my assignments.  “Mr. Ching Chong’s Surprise” has become my motivator and my adviser in those times of frustration, helping me to produce works that contain less grammatical errors and more structured sentences, less hilarity and more scrutiny, free, I hope, of prejudice but filled with respectful and uplifting language, and though less imaginative, at the very least, passable!