When I was a child, my family used to haul a luggage bag to the library at Jurong Point every week. Armed with six library cards, we would spend a full hour for Papa to pick up his favourite Tin Tin comics, and the rest of us kids would pick 4 each, along with a couple extra courtesy of my youngest sister who was still a baby. I absolutely loved to read simply because I loved to play pretend. Because I had such bad eye health habits at this age, I started wearing glasses at age 6. Like a lot of my peers, I had a large collection of hardcover Enid Blyton books, which on hindsight I am very thankful to my parents for, as they really encouraged me to read so much that they were willing to spend good money on hardcover books for me.
As a teen, I took up a triple Science subject combination,
and my school did not offer literature to my class even though that was one of
my strongest subjects in Secondary Two. I was introduced to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,
influenced by my father’s love for all things Science Fiction. I absolutely loved
Douglas Adams’ brilliant humor, and the way he totally subverts the reader’s
expectations. I read plenty of Christian Literature as well: books with
teachings about youth, womanhood, and dating, and also The Pilgrim’s Progress, the Left
Behind series, and The Chronicles of
Narnia.
In university, I was so overwhelmed by reading academic papers
that I really put reading for leisure aside for a while. I did discover
Jonathan Safran Foer at this time, and Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close remains one of my favourite books, as very few
others have touched me as deeply. I also
took an introductory module of Literature in my first year, and read Toni
Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and
Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,
not without much confusion and a great fear of speaking up in class because I
felt like all my contributions were wrong and shallow. As the last time I
studied Literature was five years prior, I really did not do as well as I had
hoped to. You can imagine my surprise when I received my letter of appointment
from MOE stating that my second teaching subject was to be Literature.
When I started my teaching stint, I told my HOD that I was
not comfortable with teaching the subject, but she assigned me 4 classes of
lower secondary Literature anyway. Contract teaching Literature for the past
year really pushed me to read more than I usually do, in terms of both quantity
and scope. I discovered the beauty of the short story quite serendipitously by
googling “short story” in order to set comprehension papers during this time,
as I stumbled on the poetic writings of Osama
Alomar. I was also particularly convicted that as a Literature teacher, it
would be expected of me to have read some of the “must-read” books out there,
so I pushed myself to read 1984 and Brave New World in the Dystopia theme, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by
Jeanette Winterson and This Side of
Paradise by Fitzgerald in the coming-of-age genre. I've really come to love teaching Literature in the past year as I've personally learnt, along with my students, so much about why reading is so important, and how it makes us more human.
I’ve found that I
once again enjoy the simple act of reading once again, and am really looking forward to discussing teaching it in
this course.
I know what you mean regarding Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - I believe it was the first book that made me cry. It was also the first time I was introduced to a book that... wasn't a book? I guess you must remember the page with all the scribbles and writings in different coloured ink - saying hello, my name is, and this is red. It was one of the books that pushed me to thinking that a book could be different - that a story could be told differently.
ReplyDeleteOne of the books on my "to read" list is Foer's Tree of Codes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Codes). A friend of mine wrote her honors thesis about it, and it's basically art in the form of a book. That also reminds me of Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal, which I think will be fun to introduce to students!
DeleteHeya, what a lot of books to borrow from the library! I feel like such a stingy parent now, since I limit the borrowing to whatever I can carry - usually no more than 16 books! Glad to hear that you're enjoying teaching Literature, and I like that you remind us that we are indeed learning along with our students. I do think that teaching constantly teaches me to learn since I can't actually be a good teacher unless I am constantly learning new things :)
ReplyDeleteI have been wanting to read 1984 and Brave New World since forever!! How did you enjoy both of them? And have you read Murakami's 1Q84 too? Apparently it's rather similar and most people read them one after the other.
ReplyDeleteI'm so inspired by your childhood memories in the library! It feels like such a wonderful way to develop a love for reading and sinking into a fun world of pretend. I loved Safran Foer's novel as well, and I'm glad that it's received so much positive attention especially after the film adaptation was released.
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