Unearthing Hidden Literacy (Lillie Gayle Smith)

Unearthing Hidden Literacy by Lillie Gaye Smith was about Smith realizing that her past is what helped her become the literate woman she is today. Coming from a retched past of picking cotton, she rarely wanted to talk about it. Smith thought of her picking cotton as embarrassing especially since it was closely associated with slavery so she decided to keep that part of her past a secret. She only used her past of picking cotton as for a story of how she grew tremendously, however, once she enrolled in a "Black Woman's Literacy" class she began to notice how her past of picking cotton helped her literacy build and grow into something powerful.Smith concluded her passage with saying that all the experiences that you have will serve as a stepping block to your life as well as your literacy.


I totally agree with Smith in many ways. I do understand how it feels to run from you past and not want to relive it again but the circumstances that was presented to you will always benefit you in the future. Just as telling a story, we all learn from past experiences, whether it is ours or someone else's, these past experiences teaches us in extraordinary ways. It enhances us as we grow into a new form and a new life and it plants roots in us so that we never forget where we came from. As black women, we all have some experience, bad or good, that we know of. These things builds up our literacy because we are able to recall them and manipulate them in many ways. I know my past helped my literacy blossom beautifully and with out my dilemmas, I am not sure of where I might be physically and with literacy. I know that the past is the past and does not want to be revisited again but as the great Maya Angelou says, "History, despite it's wrenching pain, cannot be unlived...But if faced with COURAGE, need not be LIVED again!"