JOE ERICKSON transcript
05/08/11

>>JOE: Basically we just started talking about how I became literate and stuff like that. 

>>INTERVIEWER: Tell the story you want to tell us.

>>JOE: Let me see. When I was born, I had significant problems with eye sight. I was legally blind for the first two years of my life or so and then I had some operation and was able to see further with glasses, that when I began school, I had a lot of trouble reading quickly or gaining reading skills very easily. When I learned to read in elementary school, in middle school, and in high school, of course, I don't really ever consider myself having become a reader, as in a person who takes up a book because they necessarily want to read it or have interest in reading, until I got into college when I took some courses in English. One of them being a course simply called "The Novel" and I sort of learned to move past just the basic act of deciphering words on the page and learning more about what it meant to be a reader, as a person who actually wants to pick up something and read it just for the sake of reading it. And that's interesting because that kind of spelled out into me becoming an English major and eventually getting into an English PHD program.

>>WIFE: Also meeting me.

>>JOE: Also meeting my wife, and meeting a lot of wonderful people on the way and getting a lot of wonderful experiences on the way. So, now I've been in the business, starting a little slow, but now I'm in the business of pushing literacy, you might say, as an English teacher and scholar.

That's my story.

>>INTERVIEWER: That's great. Thank you very much.

>>JOE: You want to go?

>>WIFE: Okay. 

>>JOE: Do you need to stop it?

>>INTERVIEWER: Actually, it would help if I stopped it. You can both still sit there.