Lessons From Down Under: Reflections on Meanings of Literacy and Knowledge From an African -American Female Growing Up in Rural Alabama by Bessie House-Soremekun

            In “Lessons From Down Under: Reflections on Meanings of Literacy and Knowledge Form an African-American Female Growing Up in Rural Alabama” by Bessie House-Soremekun, the author discussed the importance of both formal and informal literacy. The author begins the essay by giving a historical perspective on the acquisition of knowledge and then continues to give a personal account of how she acquired her literacy skills.

            House-Soremekun discussed how African Americans have heavily depended on various oral traditions of literacy throughout history (starting from slavery to present day).  For instance, she mentioned how she and her grandmother discussed numerous topics that she was not able to learn from her textbooks. “My grandmother and I discussed many topics, including religion, philosophy, the nature of human existence, politics, health issues, and economics” (pg.62).

This quote reminded me of how I have been able to learn about topics that I was not taught about through my formal education from my family members. I, like the author, came from a middle class family who placed a great amount of value on obtaining my education. While my parents wanted to make sure that I obtained a formal education, they also knew that there were some things about life and how to understand the world that I live in that the textbooks would not be able to teach me. My parents taught me about such things through the use of several techniques such as storytelling and old phrases. These techniques helped me to acquire my informal literacy. This essay left me with two questions.

While I agreed with her argument that oral traditions have been used to help African Americans to become literate, I disagreed with the statement that argument that she made about the lack of written texts about and by African Americans affecting black people’s self- esteem. I disagreed with this statement because I feel that it was too general. How does she know that every African American’s self- esteem was affected by the lack of written texts about and by black people.