“Metaliteracy Narrative” by Melissa Ianetta

Keywords: literacy, narrative, pedagogy, identity, professional development

Abstract: Melissa Ianetta shares her literacy of literacy narratives and reflects on her different experiences at DMAC originally as a PhD student and then as a tenured professor. Hers is a meta-literacy narrative in which she discusses and problematizes the genre by offering alternative perspectives to the scholarly treatment of literacy narratives.  

Ianetta: Rolling! 

Interviewer: Ready to go?

Ianetta: Okey dokey, karaoke. For the literacy narrative assignment, I am going to talk about my literacy of literacy narratives. Because as I was saying in the workshop today, I was really struck by the fact that I was sitting in the same place that I sat ten years ago when I was a brand new PhD student that I sat today as a tenured professor. And that just as the last time I was here, I was listening to an impressive woman at the front of the room explain literacy to me and the role of literacy and the literacy narratives that we would be dealing with. And as I sat there and reflected upon this, first I thought I’m awesome because everything worked out so much better than that girl who was sitting here the first time would have thought. Then, I was thinking to myself about the nature of a literacy narrative and the fact that when I first had to do this, they sent to my house the book Writing Lives, which was a collection of literacy narratives you taught with in the first-year writing program here, and this book called Starting Places that had sample literacy narratives by graduate students and undergraduates. And I read that thing like it was the Kabbalah. I read every page of that textbook. I read every literacy narrative, and I was really struck by the ways in which people presented themselves in literacy narratives, particularly the ones by graduate students as learned people who were blessed by books from day one. I was not blessed with books since day one. I actually came from a house with very few books, and all of them were kept in my mother’s bedside drawer if you know what I mean. So, I made a determination that I would not present myself in that way in my literacy narrative, and instead, I wrote it about working in retail. And it was a good time; a good time was had by all. And doing that assignment and thinking about it today in the ways in which I presented myself got me thinking about the ways in which literacy narratives are—in fact writing them and becoming aware of literacy as a narrative of course puts a frame on literacy itself that sort of tucks in all the corners and cuts off all the loose ends—and that you have to become literate in literacy narratives to succeed in this genre in graduate school and that it is its own ideology and has its own embedded set of gestures. 

Interviewer: Alrighty

Ianetta: And none of you can see the funny faces I’m making right now, you poor digital-literacy-narrative-archive people. Doing this kind of assignment for me is always sort of interesting because as a teacher I don’t really do a lot that elicits people’s personal experiences. So, when I do these assignments, and I can remember this from when I was a graduate student too, kind of getting—you know—tweaked, shall we say, by faculty because I would just always do something to dive to the side of an assignment. You know? I am naturally contrary. I understand this is my burden to bear. It was really interesting doing it the way we’re doing it today though because there’s three of us exchanging right now, and when I’m talking I so want to turn to the other people and say, “but doesn’t that remind you of when such-and-such happened, Michael,” or “Norah, is it still like this here?” And you can’t because it’s just this little oral display you’re putting on, but you’re audience, if they’re a good audience, is not interacting with you. And I think that is kind of lonely, and I also realized that I’m not so much about the narrative. I’m much more about the dialectic, the often violent dialectic, of clashing opinions and differing ideas. And I know that’s kind of not where the field is but doing this right now and listening to the sound of my own voice, looking at—I’d like to point out two former students! It’s just sort of lonely. And can I stop now?

Interviewer: You can stop now. 

Ianetta: Yay!