It is debated if certain characters in literacy narratives are literacy sponsors or extras. Characters that do contribute to the narrative, but their actual involvement in the learner’s journey to literacy is cloudy. In Deborah Brandt’s paper, she defines a sponsor as, “any agents local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, suppress, or withhold literacy and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt 556). In Brandt’s paper she is saying that a sponsor is anyone who influences how a learner learns within literacy and gains something from this act. Someone who helps the learner become more capable in literacy, and gains from helping. In Williams’ article, she states that when annotating and analyzing a literacy narrative, it is a good start to identify these sponsors. Identifying them will help one better understand the narrative. Williams says one should, “characterize the people in their narratives… , who is the hero, the villain, most powerful person, and the least powerful person” (Williams 344). Understanding and being able to characterize the literacy sponsors in a literacy narrative helps someone better understand the narrative. Both authors show that literacy sponsors are important. Identifying them can further help one understand what the narrative is about. But this can’t be done if one doesn’t know what a sponsor is.

 

When investigating what is a sponsor, it is important to be able to distinguish in certain narratives if a character is a sponsor or not. In the case of a character that provides learner tools, are they automatically a sponsor? In Brandt’s article, she addresses literacy resources and what they mean to sponsors. “[Sponsors] lend there resources or credibility to the sponsored but also stand to gain benefits” (Brandt 557). Brandt is saying that sponsors qualify if they lend the learner resources. Resources that help the learner obtain literacy. In the literacy narrative, The North Wayne Library by. Dustin Tripp, the author mentions his grandmother. She owned a library that he, in his youth, visited a lot to read books in, that made him love reading. He said that, “I’d read the books I found in my grandmother’s library… , [and to be] able to pick out any book at my own leisure was not only comforting but made me continue to pick out more and more books” (1). Even though the authors grandmother did own a the library where he read the books that influenced him, she is not a literacy sponsor. She did provide resources, but she did so indirectly to the narrative and had no personal benefits gained.

 

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