Learning, Forgetting, and Remembering How to Read (A Literacy Narrative)

I first learned to read English through a secondhand Leapfrog toy from my older brother.  It was a large navy plastic block with little yellow keys for each letter of the alphabet that lit up and shouted the letter’s name when pressed.  While my father argues that the design of the toy was extremely engaging and thorough, I am still unsure why my focus as an infant gathered directly upon this toy.  Both of us agree, though, that the toy was well worth it when I started pointing at shop signs and squealing the letters I recognized from my time smashing buttons and watching them illuminate the board.

Soon afterwards, I became captivated by letters on pages without their electronically bright light and sounds.  Worlds upon worlds began constructing themselves from ink on paper, and the very act of reading letters became so instinctive that I forgot any time from before I learned to read.  Unlike many of my other childhood endeavours, reading was a passion I found almost entirely organically and encountered very few obstacles with from adults around me.  After I finished my first grade classroom’s class library, I received special permission from the school librarian and my first grade teacher to be taken out of class by our TA during our designated reading block to check out books that were exclusively reserved for 4th and 5th graders in the school library.  This was the greatest accomplishment I experienced as a six year old.  Even now, I feel indebted to the kindness of my teacher and librarian back then for encouraging my thirst for books rather than extinguishing them on the basis of a “school policy.”  

My love for reading continued far beyond the walls of my public education.  As the daughter of a man who quite literally memorized dictionaries for fun, family trips to our local library were more than a frequent occurrence.  For nearly four years, every weekend and weekday evening was spent hidden in the stacks of the local public library.  Month to month I shifted between the genres, from picture books, VCRs, historical narratives, and nature stories to biographies, fantasy series, graphic novels, and DVDs.  Once I had thoroughly perused every shelf in the building, I moved to a finished section as if reuniting with a familiar friend, discovering new additions and seeking out old favorites.  My brother and I used to play a game where he would ask for a book on the most obscure topic he could think of (one of my favorites was “fire hydrants”) and I would close my eyes before supplying the exact directions to find a book on that subject.  By nine years old, I was certain beyond reasonable doubt that I would become the best librarian that library had ever seen. 

This dream was quickly torn aside when my family made the decision to transport to Hong Kong for the next three years.  While that experience was full of its own ups and downs, one of the few aspects of my life that took nearly no transition or difficulty to translate was my love for reading.  After being presented with a new school library, I spent every possible lunch period and recess in the library reading.   There were exactly two days in my 5th grade year when I was not at the library during recess: the first being when I was called out of school to retrieve my Hong Kong ID card from a government building, and the second being when a boy I had grown fond of (and who was likely fond of me) invited me to play four square with him near the end of the year.  After that day, I decided that playing four square would never be worth time spent away from reading.  The boy left and I returned to my books for the remainder of the year.

My efforts were thankfully supported by my teacher at the time, Mr. Stanulis, who awarded me the “Hermione Granger Award” at the end of the year during our primary school graduation.  I have the certificate and everything.  He argued that I deserved it for learning to read while walking down the stairs and avoiding collisions without stopping to turn the page.  Looking back, I would have rather deemed myself impotent or oblivious, but at the time I graciously agreed to his claims and committed to continuing that behavior until I moved back to the U.S.

If moving to the libraries in Hong Kong had felt effortless and refreshing, returning to the libraries in Illinois felt paralyzing and dizzying.  Upon my return, I found that the library I had so lovingly memorized was put under remodeling.  All the treasures and secrets I had hidden away three years prior were thrown into the open, exposed, and ripped apart.  I sometimes wander around the new shelves when I get the chance and I still refrain from going up to the second floor where my favorite shelves used to be out of fear for the nostalgia that may or may not come.  I cannot gage whether I am more afraid of finding a layout that is unrecognizable to my memories or seeing pieces of recognition amid the floor.

It was also around this time of renewal that the time I used to spend buried in pages became crowded with words like “college admissions,” “holistic applications,” and the “future.”  Books became an accessory to an application or a purse, manipulated into an aesthetic to support some inane superiority complex.  High school was the first time in my life that I ever heard my parents say the words to me, “You’re not reading enough,” and I was left defenseless to the truth.  Each time I pick up a book and begin my journey, I feel the familiar warmth and pull of the words.  However, time is an expensive commodity nowadays.  Instead of lazing a day away to read a book, each word is timed and paced to match some other, more practical task.  As much as I’d love to simply blame this on a society that dictates our lives too harshly, I am ashamed to admit that this was my choice.  When even the distance around the earth could not rip me away from my books, I had abandoned them for the sake of exhaustion and competition.

Although I had forgotten how to read in this way, my love for books themselves never stopped.  While I wasn’t reading much, I still collected books and stories in every way possible and after a little too much introspection, I determined that I needed to read for fun.  Fun is a thing that I’ve never been able to fully conquer, except for when I am reading a book.  Books are fun.  Even the most depressing, dreary manuscripts are fun in the act of turning a page and inhaling another person’s thoughts.  The image, and better yet the experience, of picking up one of those books and starting a sentence reminds me of that.  Nowadays, I try my best to reunite with reading.  A few times a week, at the very least, to say “Hi, how have you been?”

As libraries, people, and worlds change, it is impossible to claim that one thing will go on forever.  So I will avoid any cliches of loving books, or loving reading, forever.  Love, of course, would be too subjective for that.  What I will say though, is that in the few hours of the night that I am able to sleep, I lay in a bed surrounded by stacks of books on all sides except for one.  And in the bottom of the middle drawer that pulls out from under my bed, is an old, plastic, navy blue board with little yellow keys that light up and make themselves known to the world.