Readers Response #11

In the article, “Sponsors of Literacy” Deborah Brandt introduces the ideas that people can’t become literate on their own. She portrays that literacy is “sponsored” by people, institutions, and circumstances. Brandt discovers after interviewing a large amount of people, literary sponsors are everywhere. She also talks about the fact that people “misappropriate” literary sponsor’s intentions by using the literacy for their own reasons rather than the sponsors, portraying tensions between the two.

I can really connect Deborah Brandt’s “Sponsors of Literacy” to James Porters “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”. Porter introduces the idea that every text has a trace of another text. I think that really connects to the fact that although people often have their own personality, who they become has a lot to do with who their sponsor was while they were growing, and that has a big effect on them.

Before You Read:

2. I have seen U.S. culture and my own local community encourage and emphasize reading in many different ways. Growing up, our teachers stress the importance of reading. In today’s world you can rarely get a job without knowing how to read. Teachers as well as parents stress to kids about the importance of reading.

AE:

1. My literacy history compared to those of Branch and Lopez were quite different. I would say I was somewhere in the middle of the two. Growing up in a middle class family I went to a public school and learned to read and write through school. I had early education, plenty of access to books and computers, and a lot of parental support. My primary literacy sources would have been the teachers that taught me to read and write. I think I definitely had an adequate amount of access provided by my sponsors, and I took advantage of that. I think I have had access to all the literacies I could even hope for growing up.

I really enjoyed Brandt’s article, I never really thought about all the advantages I have had when it comes to previous schooling. Unknowingly, literacy sponsors have a lot of effect on you as a person which is a topic most people don’t even usually acknowledge.