The Value of Literacy- Essay #1

English 101

Sammie Kluch

The Value of Literacy to Me

Joan Didion values literacy because it allowed her to explore her experiences of certain

impressions she saw to better understand her own mind and be able to share her thoughts with

others. In her essay “Why I Write”, she explains the scene with the woman at the Panama airport

and describes to her audience what she is seeing with the sense of touch. I agree with Joan

Didion about the value of literacy because without it, we won’t be able to have the ability to

share our thoughts and feelings about a certain experience we had to someone or to future

generations. This valuable information about literacy made me remember a memory I had when I

was senior in high school in a senior English class. The memory that I remember was when my

teacher Ms. Svarz told us one day in class that she wanted us to write a story, either fictional or

nonfictional. She began the class with her normal morning greeting in her low raspy voice of,

“Good Morning my lovely students, today we are going to be learning how to write stories based

on creativity.” When she said this, I got nervous and partially excited because one, we got to

write anything we wanted and two, I wasn’t a very good writer. With that thought of maybe

being a horrible writer stuck in the back of my brain, I shook it off and basically told myself not

to worry and just try it, which I did. The story that I created consisted of two teenage girls who

became orphan friends who met in a rundown orphanage back in the late 1960’s. The names of

the girls I created were Grace and LilyAnne. The features that I gave the girls to help understand

the story better was Grace had brown eyes, wore glasses, had short hair and was tall, while
 LilyAnne had blue eyes, wore glasses but was shorter and had long hair. The orphanage that

they lived at was called Bright United and the public school that they also went to was called

Saint Alexis High. Long story short, they have been through thick and thin together since they

didn’t know their parents and did everything together like play with dolls, play games with each

other and went on adventures like every other teenage kid did with their friends. When I got to

this part in my story, I felt a wave of emotion come over me and it was happiness. The reason I

felt happy was because I was writing something from my own mind and imagination and seeing

it come to life before my eyes. When I completed my story days after, Ms. Svarz wanted us to

share our stories to the class, which of course made me nervous because I didn’t like the fact that

all the attention would be on me when it was my turn. When it became my turn, I took a deep

breath of air, stood up from my desk and made my way to the front of the class. While I was

reading, I occasionally looked up and would expect to see my classmates on their phones and

maybe zoning off but to my surprise, they were all watching me with a look of amazement and

were so intrigued with my story. When I finished my story, they all started clapping which made

me very happy. Ms. Svarz asked the class to comment on my piece of writing. I listened to all

my classmates’ comments which were positive but I listened very close to my one of my

classmates whose name was Frashaundra. Her comment was probably my most favorite. Her

comment was,” Is your story true? I am asking that because it sounded so real and I could

visualize everything you were saying, I loved it! Please make it into a book!” After hearing that,

I was very surprised that someone wanted me to make my story into a book. Due to this

experience from senior year, it made me feel good about my writing skills and that I have the

capabilities to create a story by just using my imagination and thoughts just like Joan Didion did

with her experience with the airport and the woman at the casino.