Embodied Moments of Literacy Learning
It was a typical Sunday afternoon, post-dinner that had been abundant with cousins and aunts and uncles alike. Dinners could regularly be found with twenty or so people, with the majority being kids my age. I was seven years old and was exhausted from the hour of play with my cousins, all who happened to be boys and have a passion for wrestling and other physicalexertions my twiggy body couldn’t sustain for long. When I couldn’t keep up with the boys, Iturned to reading.
Since I could remember, I had always loved animals. When I lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, my Dad would take me to the zoo every day, where I would be fascinated by the creatures surrounding me. The purr of the cheetah. The snort of the antelopes. The shuffle of zebra hooves. The cacophony surrounding me, particularly the coos and howls of the monkeys, filled my young heart with exuberant delight. I would cheerfully walk and skip throughout theentire zoo, singing and pointing out every animal that excited me. When I wasn’t at the zoo, Iwould look through the Zoobooks Magazine in admiration. It became a passion nearing obsession with the zoo animals. I took any and every opportunity to look at the vibrant pictures that filled the magazine. At this age, I was only focused on the captivating images strewnthroughout the pages, as I hadn’t learned to read quite yet.
Fast forward to Juneau, and my seven-year-old self turned back to the magazine that had fascinated me years prior. When I was younger, I would simply sit and enjoy the pictures presented to me by my Dad. But now, being left to entertain myself without my cousins, I decided to turn to another option. I picked up the worn, well-loved magazines that had been kept for years and began to read about the monkeys. And then the zebras. And then the antelopes and so on and so forth until I had read every book on the shelf. I had been sitting on the living room floor for so long that red indentations were beginning to pop up along where the carpet had been rubbing against my legs, similarly to how skin looks after a nice nap. The already clouded sunhad set further and nightfall had begun. An absence of the sun’s rays had brought out the lightpitter-patter of rain against the rooftop, eerily similar to the shuffling of zebra hooves. The howling of nightly winds began to transform to the familiar coos and howls of the monkeys that I had adored so long ago. These magazines brought me back to another time, and once again I was back in New Orleans, smiling in adoration at the creatures surrounding me. From this point onwards, I gained an appreciation of the power of literacy. Reading about the animals brought about a sense of nostalgia from the time in my life where I would spend nearly every day with my Dad, as he allowed me to view the animals to my heart’s content. It had been my Dad that introduced the astonishing nature of animals to me from a young age, and it had been my Dad to encourage and nourish my literacy from then on.