Literacy and the Black Woman

Literacy and the Black Woman by Sharon Darling

"What does it mean to be a black woman?"

 Black women's literacy is more than just learning to read and write. This question, what does it mean to be a black woman, struck me the most being that it brings up so many diverse subjects with all types of answers. With generations of black women, this answer can alter as time unravels. This chapter introduces the meaning and perception of black women's literacy by posing the historical problems, the need to become more literate as a gender and race, a solution to the problem, and what is being done to solve it. The statistics Darling provides makes the present issue more surreal. I strongly agree with the fact that black women who got married did not formally use the educations they obtained and generally fed into the stereotype of the housewife woman with the working husband. The subject also concerning women with children before the age of twenty leads to so many subjects concerning blacks womens image and education. For example, the topic of welfare can be associated with young mothers and uneducated mothers working low class jobs because of their lack of ability to get ahead in society. I appreciate how Darling incorporated the positive literacies black women have obtained. For example, the ability for women to manage households financially means they have financially literacy. the different literacies remind me of the essay assignment in class based on our definition of literacy. The is so much more than just reading and writing and many black women have always had those other skills.
-Courtney Sykes

"Home literacy, American literacy"

To Be Black, Female, and Literate: A personal Journey in Education by Leonie C.R. Smith

"My education, whatever shape it took, would be a life-process and would become a tool with which I could do the necessary activist work in my community". -Leonie Smith

Leonie Smith, deriving from a family with little education, made it a life-long goal to become educated. Being a black woman from Antigue and then travelling to America forced her to face the struggles of forming a literacy as a Black American women, yet she did not get discouraged. Instead she worked hard to get to a point in her life were she felt her literacy was satisfactory to herself and at the potential she knew she had. The quote above reflects not only her transition from one form of education to another, but her willingness to view education as process that has no boundaries. Viewing literacy as a life-long process creates a continuing literacy of black women. Your literacy does not end once you learn how to read and write, but when you continue to learn and advance your knowledge. We should all view literacy as a life-long process.
In order for Smith to overcome the lack of knowledge in her family back in the carribean and the discouragement she felt in junior high and college, Smith had to know that as a black she women she had to become literate. Referring to the introduction by Kilgour Dowdy, as black women we represent our community. As Smith states in this quote, "..with which I can do the necessary activist work in my community". Becoming  a black literate women should essentially be a benefit to our community.
                                                                                              -Courtney Sykes

Transforming the Way We Think and Learn

In the article "Transformative College Literacy of Literate Black Women Peer Counselors" by Robin Wisniewski, the word perception was used throughout to describe literacy.  This article is a study of perception and the transformation teachers and students make throughout their growth in literacy. 

Perception is donated as " the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding."  This article went into detail about the way we as learners perceive.  We all have a different way of understanding the things we are taught.  Also, the way the teacher perceives the lesson is the way students learn.  However, it is up to the teacher and the student to work together to transform the way we think and learn.

The way we think and learn?  Well, we all are taught different ways to learn throughout elementary and secondary school.  As an adult, we sometimes choose the way we want to learn and develop different habits of practice and studying.  Moreover, everyone thinks differently.  However, we change the way we think all of the time.  Without change, there is no growth.  

The more we learn the more we think!

-Keiwana Glover