Deborah Brandt is right that we take literacy for granted but until this book I simply hadn't considered the innate differences between learning to write and learning to read. It wasn't until my early adulthood that I realized exactly how a person could read a foreign language without speaking it and it naturally follows that a person could learn to read without being able to write effectively. I found the chapter "The Sacred and the Profane" illuminating in the small-p politics of conflict surrounding them.
But indicative of my internal issues with race, "The Power of It" profoundly annoyed me with its emphasis on civil rights and church. Brandt was documenting people as she saw them, so she can't be faulted for working with what she found, but it's annoying that the black image hasn't gone past this yet. The reminders of injustice and exclusion of the not-so-old South always make my blood boil but the non-believer in me abhors the extensive use of the Bible as a reading primer and dominance of the church in black life. Were I a former slave, or the son of slaves, who took the time to consider which religion to choose, I hope I would refuse the one of my masters and tormentors. Use of artifacts, like that three year old who loved a particular pen, were touching anecdotes but nearly the entire chapter had racism and slavery looming in the corner. I enjoy feeling angry but only about certain things which are arguable.
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