My Story
Walker-Parker, Kiietti (2010-11-19)

>>KIIETTI WALKER-PARKER: Hello, my name is Kiietti Walker-Parker. I am a part of the Alabama A&M writing project at Alabama A&M University located in Normal, Alabama.  My digital literacy story I guess begins, I believe, in the second grade.  I was in class, my teacher Miss Smallwood. I felt like I was an excellent reader and writer and it actually took Mrs. Smallwood to really be honest about it but not directly.  I reme- I recall her bringing a set of books to my mother, my mother was actually a teacher, a kindergarten teacher at the elementary school that I attended.  She brought this set of books, they were brand new, they knew how to reach me.  I loved just opening up brand new books.  And she brought these books to my mother, and just kind of whispered in her ear.  And what I could catch was basically to have Kiietti read these books. And when she finishes reading them, read them again, and again, and again.  And that was pretty much it, basically, I realized later that I was not reading at the level that I should have been reading, or that they felt that I could have been reading.  And I really do appreciate that from Mrs. Smallwood because I like to say that in the second grade Mrs. Smallwood taught me how to read. And that's the kind of, I guess, teacher or person that I would like to be as far as to not necessarily directly tell a person where he or she is deficient at, but, in some kind of way, to indirectly give them the help and assistance that they need.  I come from a family of storytellers, a family of people who, just through their expressions on their faces and sometimes with their hands and even their voices, they're just excellent storytellers.  My father is from a small town located in Georgia, Eddington, Georgia.  And between my father as well as one of my aunts, my Auntie Rue, I remember them, they would tell me the stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and I guess what we finally know them as [inaudible] Uncle Reamus stories.  So I was introduced to those stories at a very, very early age.
	Another thing that helped me, I believe, with my reading of literacy was that, both my parents, they didn't mind or care about really what I read.  And some people may say, "Really?" But my father was an avid collector, a lover, of comic books.  And so comic books were always all over our house.  Of course, I loved the, what is it, the Archie and Veronica and Betty, those type of comic books.  But my father, he would pick those up, and he actually knew, he knew the characters but also he had a lot of the action oriented, the- I guess they weren't as violent as maybe they are now, but he had those type of, I guess, quote-unquote, "the male", those that maybe some boys or men would kind of gravitate to.  But anyway, comic books. And I read comic books and as I got older I became interested in the romance novels, and that's where my mother came in because they would sell them, I believe, at the grocery stores.  And so that's what I read, I read romance novels.  And after I read one romance novel, maybe two or three times my mother would kind of get the hint that, "Maybe I need to get her some more," or, "Kiietti have you finished that stack of books that we just purchased the other day at the grocery store?" And I would say, "Yes, I have." I did, so she would go and get me some more.  So basically, also between the both of them, reading was important, but they really didn't kind of censor me or just tell me exactly what I had to read.  Now of course I did have to read my school assignments and I was interested in other books.  Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry is one of my favorite books.  Rebecca is one of my favorite books.  The Color Purple is one of my favorite books.  So as I got older I read all of the hottest series, the Lord of the Rings. So it varies, but my family between the storytelling, and just the love of reading, and my teacher in the second grade Mrs. Smallwood, that's how I've come to really love and appreciate reading.