Annotation for “Literacy: A Lineage” by Melanie Luken    

      

·         The Author opens the narrative with a statement that not only tells the audience what she will be writing about, but also tells us how she will be delivering her story. (paragraph 1)

·         The story is not told in chronological order, but more an intermixing of past narratives and present analysis. (starting in paragraph 1)

·         Throughout the narrative, Luken explains her relationship with literature through her relationship with her father.

·         The way the author used quotes from different poems helped show us more of what specifically is important to her, and also gave us details to further carve out a good narrative. (paragraph 3)

·         Introduces the discussion about her purpose in a way that transitions very smoothly from the paragraph before, and logically so the retelling of stories before actually benefits our understanding of her purpose. (paragraph 6)

·         She now shifts into more of an analysis of her own experiences, why they are important to the overall message, and ties them into the future, or at least more recent past. (paragraph 9)

·         She gives the audience the definition of literacy, and then gives us her own definition which is clearly colored with the experiences she shared with her father and gives us a new understanding of why she included the stories about her and her father in the beginning of the narrative. (paragraph 9)

·         The author shifts into her conclusion, and ties her ending back into the first paragraphs, and also the title by describing her relationship with literature as a tradition. (paragraph 10)

·         She ends her essay with a conclusion rounding out what literacy is to her, and with a quote from a poem that is evocative, and once again, plays to her previous experiences and gives us a greater understanding of her relationship with literacy. (paragraph 10)