I could not read

I know this sounds completely weird for a person who is now a writer, but I could not read. Unlike my brother who taught himself to read by the time he was three, I could not read. Sure I knew my alphabet but I could not put letters together to form words nor could I string words together to form a sentence. And in a family where reading and literacy has held in very high regard, there was no faster way to get dunce cap firmly placed on my head for it.

But in actual fact, I could memorise whole sentences my mum would read to me and recite it perfectly back to her to prove to her I could read. I would hold a book up and parrot out words with a great deal of flair and drama. But the shite hit the fan when  I got to grade school and could not fudge my way through life.

To add to my frustration, I loved stories. Always have and always will. I loved the textures and images that words could create. The feeling on being a part of a world that was safe and secure. The melody and rhyme of poetry. It frustrated me to no end that I could not read the words and make the pictures for myself. So, the year of my ninth birthday, I swore I would learn to read or else (can’t quite remember what the “or else”  involved, but it had all the elements of the melodrama heard in a Sri Lankan radio drama).

The key for me was phonics. My previous educators perspective that reading could be taught by memorising endless lists of word spellings had not worked for me. I could often remember the beginning and the ending of words but would completely botch up the middle. So when my English teacher linked letters to sounds to me, I caught onto the game and my whole world opened.

I went from reading nothing to reading chapter books within weeks. So I skipped many of the children’s classics like “Where the Wild Things Are” and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and went straight to “Anne of Green Gables”, “Pollyanna” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

And I can almost punctuate every major event in my life with the anthology of what I was reading at the time.

During the 1983 riots in Colombo, I was reading “The Far Away Tree” by Enid Blyton. When my father had his first heart attack in 1988 and when we rushed to his bedside in intensive care, I had five copies of contraband “Sweet Dreams” romance books stashed in my bag.  I read Georgette Heyer’s “Regency Buck” on my flight over from Singapore to Australia. When I was struggling with so many things in Year 12, I found so much comfort in Sally Morgan’s “My Place”. And when I was pregnant with my son, I devoured Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, though in hindsight I wonder whether the overwhelming feeling of nausea was entirely related to my pregnancy.

The Indigenous Literacy Foundation of Australia works to provide access to books and literacy resources to over 200 remote Indigenous communities in Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. This is important work. Being able to read is not just a life skill. It is a life saving skill. And I don’t just mean being able to read danger signs.

See because it was through my reading that I have been able to make sense of so many things that happened in this world. By reading “The Art of Happiness” by the Da Lai Lama, I was able to make sense of the overwhelming feeling of anxiety that grips me sometimes. And the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey helped me teach myself the discipline required of a writer.

The fact that children in remote Indigenous communities may not access to all the tools and resources needed to help them read is simply not right. You can help these children by donating directing to The Indigenous Literacy Foundation of Australia or by simply following @indigenousX on twitter. For every person who follows @indigenousX from now until Thursday, Luke Pearson will donate 1cent. It is a great way to start 2013. And I personally pledge $50 by Thursday regardless of whether the 10,000 followers on twitter is reached or not.

Reading is not a privilege. It is a necessity of life.