The Sacred, the Profane, and the Distant Pen-Pal

Brandt says in Chapter 5 "The Sacred and the Profane" that "[w]riting [as represented in the interviews] appeared to develop in situations and out of psychological motivations that were saliently, jarringly different from those surrounding reading. . . . Writing was more often recalled in the context of humiliation and anxiety. Compared to reading, writing seemed to have a less coherent status in collective family life, and much early writing was remember as occurring in lonely, secret, or rebellious circumstances" (154). In contrast, reading was often communal, shared, and enjoyed by the interview subjects. They spoke of being read to by parents and grandparents. They spoke of sharing texts with families. The memories seemed more pleasant and inclusive.

The chapter then proceeds to discuss interviewees' experiences with writing, and the reported results are quite interesting. Writing for the interviewees was often associated with work and day-to-day business of bills and correspondence. Johnny Ames, the participant we encountered in an earlier chapter, speaks of his grandmother's use of writing as a necessity. She wrote down figures about workers, about how much cotton was picked, etc, but Johnny, who closely observed her do this work, was not encouraged to write. He repeats: "...there was no encouragement for me to do that." Most of the interviewees report similiar responses--that they were not encouraged and, in some cases, were actively discouraged from writing. There are a few exceptions, of course, but the stories of writing are more ambivalent.

A number of the interviewees hid their writing, concealing it from others. Oneinterviewee kept her diary in a secret place: "There was an old dilapidated garage in the back of one of the houses we lived in and the ceiling was coming down, I used to keep my diary up there. I'd write in there and keep it up there so nobody would see it" (Krauss qtd in Brandt 162). A number of interviewees wrote down their thoughts and feelings about negative experiences, then destroyed them so no one could punish them or retalitate for what they said. Brandt notes that men and women of color and white women often poured out their feelings on the page and then destroyed them. "Using writing as a 'a purge' or 'vent' (frequently used expressions) was especially common among white and black women and among black men that I interviewed. This writing tended to occur at times of crisis: death, divorce, romantic loss, incarceration, war" (162). Writing is done in secret to relieve tension, work out thoughts and feelings, and to say what cannot be said in verbal discourse.

And guess what: "Judgments about one's writing, generally rendered by teachers, stayed in the memory as sore points or keen accomplishments" (166). Teachers figure prominently as sponsors of literacy. School literacies produced memories of writing that underscored an "ambivalence about writing" (163). Younger interviewees remember more experiences with creative writing, while older interviewees remembered expository reports (163-64). Writing assignments were often subjugated to reading assignments in the school setting. As Brandt puts it, citing Shirley Brice Heath," Linking writing to reading was a way to curtail or control writing, not necessarily to develop it on its own terms" (166). In other words, much writing in school settings is in service of reading.

While reading is avidly sponsored by schools, literacy campaigns, and families, [w]riting enjoys no such broad sponsorship" (167). So by Brandt's account, reading is sacred: "The sacred status of reading--established through the once commanding influence of religion--still winds its way into family relationships, gift buying, and secular literacy campaigns" (167).

Writing is consigned to the profane status: "The profane status of writing, with its origins in the same hierarchical structures, survives even as writing has been absorbed steadily into the interests of the economy, sanctioned more regularly in school, and with the mass acquistion of computers that was just beginning at the end of the twentieth century, practiced as a form of information gathering and entertainment" (168). This last part of the quotation made me wonder about writing in an era of blogging, web pages, IM, email? The everyday writing that many of us do is digital writing.

I also wonder if writing is really profane. Part of me agrees with Brandt's metaphor, but I also want to reject it and substitute another. I do see how writing is not as valued and more ambivalently performed and judged I see how the status of writing programs--places that sponsor writing--is seen as lesser than that of others (remember our discussions of Miller, Crowley, Holbrook, and Connors). But there is also a way in which writing, too, is sacred in others ways if one operates within a particular epistemology of writing where writing is viewed as knowledge-creation, exploration, inquiry, etc. So I guess I'd like to see writing not as sacred or profane, but perhaps as a form of action and enactment.

Brandt urges us to consider how understandings of writing are conditioned by people's complex histories with writing: "We must understand better the histories that are compelling literacy as it is lived" (168). What are our histories in 601?

Writing seemed essential to me from a very young age. I viewed reading that way, too (5 books a week from the public libraray every week), but writing had a special status for me. It seemed to me to be a way of reaching out beyond my world to that of others. As a rural kid in a small town with few opportunities for travel (my family rarely took vacations), I became an avid seeker of pen-pals. I sent letters to schools all over the country when I was in the fifth grade. I looked up the names of cities in distant states, sought out their populations and zip codes and wrote letters to schools seeking pen pals in the fifth grade. I acquired several pen pals from these open-ended query letters. Some wrote for a few months and other for a few years. One pen pal (from West Concord, Mass) and I wrote for thirteen years before lapsing into silence. I sent her stories and poetry. At one point, she sent me her travel journal. Not only were we writing each other, but we were sharing our other writings. I moved and she moved and we lost touch. I've tried to look her up since on the internet, but I can't find her.

I was compelled to writing, to correspondence by a desire to address others outside my own community. I wanted to hear about other kid's lives. I wanted to tell my stories and have an audience for my writing. I also was curious about the eastcoast. Right as I started writing Kirstin (her name), we were on the cusp of the bicenntenial year (1976). I was interested in all the newscasts about the Boston area. I wrote to West Concord, Mass to find a pen-pal because I wanted to correspond with someone who was living in the midst of all the historical markers of the east: Lexington (the shot heard round the world), Boston, Plymouth Rock, etc. Writing seemed a form of travel and teleporation. It got me somewhere else for awhile.