Abstract
This is the narrative about struggling with reading and writing to realizing the reason to my disinterest in reading and writing and how I have overcome those obstacles.
Overcoming A Struggle of Literacy
From a young age, I have always struggled with reading and writing. When I attended school in Bangladesh, school used to be a nightmare because of the amount of reading and writing a student had to do every day. Since reading and writing was one of the requirements in school there, I had to do it even though I hated every moment of it. I remember one time, in 5th grade, which is the end of primary school and after which high school starts there, there was a required test all students must take which is almost like the SHSAT test here to get admission into the city’s specialized schools.
With all the given pressure and family’s expectations, I was overwhelmed. I remember having to wake up every day at 6am to go to the mosque, learning to read the Quran, following up with a home tutor after, going to school and then finally coming back home in the afternoon, then again getting ready to go to another tutor; reading and studying all for the standardized test. With the help of my mother, I was able to do everything according to the schedule but what my parents failed to understand was if I was going to get A+ on the test because my mental health wasn’t supporting me. Though, I didn’t give up and I kept studying all the 5-6 subjects which included Math, Science, Social Studies, English, Bangla and history of my religion. Yes, learning about your own religion, that kind of subject is one of the main courses in Bangladesh. As far as I remember I would always score the 3rd or the 4th highest in my grade.
Education over there required a lot of reading and memorizing the most which means you would have to spend hours and hours studying every day. The pressure and the tension were high level 101 as the testing day was approaching. The nervousness and anxiety of failing after all this hard work, sleepless nights and most importantly disappointing my parents overwhelmed me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it. When the testing week arrived, I managed to do really well on all the subjects except one which was religion; studying and learning the stories of Islam. This subject required most of the reading, writing and memorizing which I wasn’t passionate about. My parents were very disappointed and family relatives were almost embarrassed of me for doing bad on a subject that is about my own religion.
I somehow coped with all their judgements and criticisms then finally I came to America. Adjusting and assimilating was the hardest I thought, at least at the time, until I was told again by my parents about the similar kind of standardized test here which was the SHSAT. I wasn’t ready to fail again because my last experience with a similar kind of test didn’t meet my family’s expectations and mine either. I was already discouraged but I didn’t say no to it. I stepped in for the test and joined a tutorial class for the test in 7th grade summer still hoping to make my parents proud this time, as they really wanted me to get into a specialized high school. However, there was this new barrier I encountered here: the language. I lived in a country for 10 years speaking a whole different language which was Bengali and then suddenly coming to America where everything is English. I knew how to read and write in English and speak too but not as fluent as the American students. For example, when a teacher would ask us a question, I wouldn’t understand it as quickly as my other classmates which often had frustrated me because the accent my teachers and classmates had was very fast. They would speak English differently than me, for example, the pronunciations of the letters and etc. and that was one of the many challenges of me moving here.
In Bangladesh, I never touched books to read unless it was one of those required textbooks for schools. Being here and not knowing how to communicate properly was very frustrating. Then one day I had told my dad to take me to the public library here and picked up a few books to read because my ELA teacher said it would improve my reading and writing skills as well as my English. I hated reading and even writing because I had no passion for it. I had always fooled myself whenever I had to read back in Bangladesh; skipping pages of books, getting lost in other thoughts because I was never able to relate to what I was reading. But I knew this time I could fool myself with reading because SHSAT test in the 8th grade required you to read passages and short stories, then to write summaries about them. My reading and writing skills were very weak from the beginning and so I knew I had to immediately find a solution. I listened to my ELA teacher’s philosophies on learning to read and write. She was one of the very few teachers I admired because of the way she carried herself. She was very passionate about reading and writing unlike me. She told me maybe the way I started reading first was not the way I was supposed to which I now believe was right because I was given textbooks and history books to read, which were always boring. However, one of the books that I had picked up for myself was called the gift days by Kari-Lynn winters and Stephen Taylor. As far as I could remember it was about this girl who loved reading and writing but due to circumstances, she had responsibilities to look after her siblings and take care of them. This book was intriguing to me because what she was going through with the responsibilities of her siblings was similar to what my elder sister also had to do. When I was young, she had to take care of me when my mom used to be busy with house chores because we lived in a joint family. These books that I had picked up myself, for the first time, helped me to enjoy reading—which fascinated me because all my life I had believed reading was boring and it doesn’t give us knowledge as people said it did. I also started to write in a diary everyday like she suggested because she believed I was always told to follow a certain type of structure for writing which might be the reason I hated writing. She had suggested me to free write in a personal diary about anything I feel like which got me into writing about what happens in my daily life and eventually, I started to enjoy it. When I asked my teacher why I found myself continuously doing this, she told me it was “because you chose it yourself.”
The challenge of being able to read and write; learning something from it and most importantly enjoying it, was possible since I ruled what I wanted to read and write about where I didn’t have to follow any structure. I obviously didn’t become master at reading and writing but now I don’t hate reading nor writing because it became much easier than it used to be. It helped me study for the SHSAT exam even though I didn’t pass it and didn’t feel miserable for the time I spent studying for it. Not having passion for reading or writing not only separated me socially from getting along with some of my classmates but also made me feel left out from all the things they would enjoy and discuss with each other. Hence, finding interest in reading and writing became significant more in order to assimilate with the other classmates because I had to challenge myself.
