Post 9

According to Shirley Heath, she defines a literacy event as “a conceptual tool useful in examining within particular communities of modern society the actual forms and functions of oral and literate traditions and co-existing relationships between spoken and written language.”  She also states, “It is any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes.”  Heath identifies many literacy events in Trackton.  One was negotiating how to put a toy together.  Another was how to fill out a voter registration form.  Form a younger perspective, some events were distinguishing brand names from product descriptions on boxes or bags, knowing how to find the price on a label which contained many other pieces of written information, and recognizing cars, motorcycles, and bicycles.  When thinking about Sherman Alexie, the Indian boy who taught himself to read using a superman comic book by the age of three, we can identify the literacy events in his life.  The obvious one is reading comics and recognizing or identifying the characters.  Reading comics was apart of Sherman’s society, especially at home.  A major literacy event for the Indian society was powwow songs.  The children in his class could not always answer the teachers’ questions, but Sherman says they were able to recite some of their cultures powwow songs.  They were also able to tell complicated stories and jokes.  That is what society focused on while the family would be spending time together such as when they were eating dinner.  Sherman Alexie encountered and wrote about the many literacy events in his life.  When considering my own, I realize how different every person’s are.