My Literacy Story
Tatum II, Richard (2009-04-22)

>>RICHARD: Alright, well I'm Richard Tatum and this is my story of literacy. When I was younger, whenever I got in trouble my parents would make me read books as kind of a punishment as opposed to getting a spanking or having things taken away from me. So they would make me read books and they were pretty long books. I was in about third grade or so and they would make me read these books that were chapter books that were probably recommended for high school students or possibly junior high students. 

And it really bothered me because i had trouble following along and couldn't keep up. And so I kind of started to resent reading and I didn't know it at the time, but I had a slight battle with ADD and kind of dyslexia too, so it's really bad for a reader.
But nonetheless I kind of progressed through the reading and it kind of made me develop a resentment for reading until I didn't really like reading for a long time and it would come back to haunt me in high school and of course in college because that's pretty much all you do is reading, but on a positive note it kind of pushed me more towards writing.

Writing was sort of an escape whenever I felt bummed because I had to read a long book and missed a good day to go outside and play. I'd kind of curl up with a pad and pen and write. I started off writing short stories, little pieces of this and that wherever I could find anything in my mind I'd just sort of write it down. And writing stories kind of lead me to writing poetry. 

And poetry, as I found when I got into junior high, kind of expresses who you are a little bit inside. You can take the things that are happening around you and kind of disguise them in these words and tell your story without pointing out that you're the one that the story is about. Or you can tell a story about someone else without actually mentioning their names and being sued for royalties or whatever.

But poetry was a great expression and I still do it to this day. And poetry lead me to write music. And music has always been a great passion of mine. I've loved music since the day I was born. I came out dancing. And I started to write music and it was a wonderful relationship between myself and whatever I would write. I'd listen to someone and be inspired by someone, sort of like a poet inspires other poets to write. I think the music I listened to inspired me to write more music. I mean anything that I could listen to, from old hip hop to hard rock to country. 

And I found that there was a great connection between the poetry that I wrote and the music that I wrote in that basically the poetry was just a rhymed and metered version of the stories I would tell and the music I would write were just even more rhythmic versions of the poems. So it all kind of came together for me and in the end I think it all started with my parents and their tendency to make me read which kind of pushed me towards writing and writing which pushed me towards music, and here I am, a literary machine. I'm Richard Tatum and that's my story.