Matthew Lovett

ID# 20566522

Multimodal Literacy Narrative Reflections

 What links have you discovered between your identities and literacy practices?

From a young age, I had a very imaginative mind, I would constantly pretend to and dream about being a
certain character and conceptualize scenarios I had read about in novels and seen in films. This was
because, in retrospective, my childhood was sheltered in that I would hardly leave the house and I did not
experience much excitement in my day to day routine. So, I tended to gravitate more towards those kinds
of stories that were adventurous and full of fantastical elements. In many ways it was an escape for me,
anything that strayed as far as possible from my uneventful life was an outlet for me, which is why
growing up I never could relate to stories that were grounded in reality, I always sought a sense of
abnormality in whatever story I’d read. Naturally, when I was old enough to write, I wrote about these
dreams of mine and imaginative ideas of mine, which would be stories built upon themes of the media I
had consumed and loved to surround myself with. Strangely enough the ways I viewed other people were
not based on stereotypes or biases I had read and watch in said media. Because of my ethnic category of
being Hispanic, with my father being Anglo and my mother being Mexican, I had a very mix selection of
media which diversified the way I saw the world. My father would read these mythical stories of Vikings
sailing across vast oceans and space marines fighting extra-terrestrial insects in far off galaxies. While my
mother would often have watch a variety of Mexican cinema with my grandma and I would be captivated
by the Westerns and the story of a lone gunman aimlessly traveling across Mexico with nothing stopping
them or holding them them back. So my writing never has had a close-minded outlook on people, and I’m
not solely entrance in my fantastical world, I acknowledge real life can be just as interesting and
fascinating and I’ve come to understand that through being in between two cultures, you can unhinge
your creativity and truly create relatable stories that can be enjoyed by any person regardless of their
background or the genre of your story.

 Have you experienced moments of community, isolation, or confusion in your literacy history?

I remember in elementary from 2nd to 5th, we had a novel that the whole class would read collectively. It
was a great experience to be part of a collective of people who were reading and sharing the same
experience that I was and we were all enjoying the story, talking about the events that occurred within it,
and sharing our thoughts and theories. We would all be eager for the next day when we continued on to
the next chapter, it was a very early introduction to reading extensively for me but it was very enjoyable
and I would often find myself engaged in the worlds the books portrayed and I’d let my imagination run
wild as the letters flew off the page. Later in Middle school, I would fall out of reading entirely, most
likely because it was no longer required to read a whole novel to pass. Eventually I would discover my
passion for reding again, but now I was alone and isolated with no one to discuss my thoughts with. I
would read a lot of horror novels, which were looked down upon in middle school, with most of my
classmates reading more tame books in comparison. But I grew to accept this, and I eventually found
others who shared my love for horror novel as I grew up and I have not stopped reading since.

 What questions do you have about the relationship between literacy and identity?

I wonder if it is a nature vs nurture debate when it comes to someone’s identity and how they express
themselves through writing. I never really thought about how the childhood or upbringing of my favorite
authors affected what they wrote about and what they implemented in their stories. To me, the authors
also seemed to have a certain mindset from the beginning of how their mind worked but I never took into
consideration if that’s really the case and the events that shaped them beforehand would affect how they
 Matthew Lovett
ID# 20566522

imagined the world. I’d really would like to know how much an author incorporates aspects of their lives
in the stories they write.