The "understanding of past experiences and present perspectives"

In Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field by Lillie Smith, the reader obtains a clear understanding of the readers past experiences and how they transformed into lessons of the authours present perspectives. Smith gives the audience a whole hearted concise story of how her young adolescent days of picking cotton carried out into the women of who she is today. While Smith develops her story she asserts scholars to validate her point allowing the audience to be enriched with more than enough ingredients of Smiths story. As a reader Smith drew me in on several lines, “Before, having picked cotton was not an experience I would have wished to interrogate yet …I had perceived as a completely negative experience.”(Smith 38). The point that Smith makes in this quote is something that everyone can relate to. When people undergo experiences that they do not like, they do not see the essence and the effect that, that particular experience could have on their future right away.  

Smith drew me deeply into her passage when she cited scholars and used anecdotal stories to complete her message. The incorporation of these two methods evolved Smith’s piece, for it added more reasoning on top of what Smith was declaring. One in particular was when Smith was exemplifying "women’s resistance" in a graduate class that she had taken. “…women in the class complained about the instructor’s gender preference, but no one approached him about it.”(Smith 39).  This anecdote gave me an outlook on how women of different races are always overlooked, but all are not daring enough to address the issue.

Smith also made me realize some key learning methods. Smith taught me that lessons can and are developed from "nonacademic survival literacies" (Smith 40), and that taking risks to share a personal journey with others is helpful in motivating the self. Unearthing Hidden Literacy was Smith story and a helpful tool in my life. It made me think more about my life and how my experiences are developing into my characteristics. Smith story was inspiring and she is not the only one who viewed picking cotton as a negative image. I too thought picking cotton was negative, for it derives from the slavery times, yet Smith gave a positive perspective after she realized that picking cotton was helpful in the development of who she is. Although I have never picked cotton a day in my life, I could relate to how Smith’s picking cotton lessons related to my experiences and I profoundly appreciated hearing her story.

By: Megan Edmonds