Remembering Writing, Remembering Reading

Abstract

woman born in a Wisconsin mill town in 1968 said her earliest memory of writing ?A was making marks and scratches on the door of a bedroom she shared with four sisters. She did it, she said, Because I wanted my mom's attention. She was constantly reading, and I think I wanted her to see my writing. Another young Wisconsin woman, raised as an adopted daughter on a small and sometimes struggling dairy farm, recalled picking up the evening newspaper to read and finding her father's budget calculations penciled all over the margins. A third woman of similar age, raised in the suburbs of Chicago, remembered during a visit to an aunt's house secretly taking from her mother's purse an envelope on which her mother's signature was written. Alone, she began to copy the signature, trying desperately not to get caught. She was, in fact, discovered by family members. But, she said, Instead of being punished for practicing my art of forgery, my beautiful and skillful penmanship was celebrated.

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