The Rise of Writing 2/19

Brandt describes in the Rise of Writing how the declination of reading and how that has changed the culture of writing. Brandt uses each chapter to discuss factors of writing that have shifted such as status or occupation. For this post I will be focusing on the third chapter titled, “Occupation: author.” Brandt states, “Learning to read is an expectation and a rite of passage for children… But the idea of being or becoming a writer has more profound aspirational power” (98). Brandt then details different interviews of young adults were most describe the prestige of becoming a writer. Many described how they always dreamed of becoming a writer or how writing runs in their family and explained how awesome it would be to be an author. One thing interesting Brandt recognized throughout this chapter that young adults were more inspired by writing masters than they were by their parents. For example, a student had written to Nikki Giovanni and was incredibly honored and amazed when they saw that she wrote back. Brandt makes note that the parent passing along writing skills or being the iconic figure within this culture remains mostly hidden and students are more inspired by famous writers than their family. Nearing the end of the chapter Brandt notes that writing promotes self-improvement by having students choose to write, perspective-talking students try to rationalize with their audience and social uplift by bringing everyone together. Brandt ends the chapter with, “the dependency of writing upon reading is not assumed” (133). The most interesting part of this chapter to me is that we can no longer say that reading is more important than writing because writing is now equal if not more empowering than reading. I find this interesting because for so long reading was pushed as the best skill and benefit to learning. I personally was not great at reading. My mom had to sit with me each day and go through picture books and chapter books to make sure that I was staying on pace with my peers. I also was put in remedial reading in middle school because I simply could not keep up with the average student. However, my writing was always above on test scores and classroom assignments. This makes me think that my love for writing has always been greater than my motivation for reading. This begs the question that when did this “rise” in writing truly begin?