third year baily reese

There comes a time when schools reward

COMPLIANCE over culture.

You were probably told to write or speak or sit or read or THINK

A certain way that standardized your personality

There’s nothing about you that’s standard, breaking the standards with your existence.

They tell anyone that will listen that literacy is linear and measurable and determines your life path.

But little do we know that literacy is the blood pumping in your veins.

Literacy is seen in the recipes your Grandma passed down your family tree.

Literacy is like the long list of street signs you memorized as a kid, marking the boundaries where you called home.

Literacy includes rap lyrics, every ounce of them saturated with a culture too rich to restrict

Literacy includes drawing pictures instead of writing. Did you know that doodles are just as valuable?

Literacy is a sheet of music, similarly decoded like a foreign language.

Literacy includes everything that Standard American English rejects.

Literacy is a culmination of all of your identities that come together and shake you awake.

Literacy answers the question: What and how do you communicate? How did this begin?

It’s an origin story of who you are and how you communicate: You’re welcome.

An eclectic collection of you, BY you! Nothing gets more original than that.

Words are power, and with power comes control.

Whether school repressed your identity or emboldened it -- think about why.

So why is there this value held in the systems that standardize and dilute these multiple variations of literacy?

Because it was never about literacy in the first place, rather controlling the power and suppressing other voices.

If no one ever told you that your voice matters, more specifically your words, I hope you know your power.

Voices Are Not Homogenous