The victim narrative is one that is often played and used in an inappropriate manner. Through the works and articles of Alexander, “Successes, Victims, and Prodigies” and Deborah Brandt “Sponsors of Literacy”, one is able to properly identify and code narratives to effectively establish the mold for a victim style narrative. Kara Poe Alexander defines a victim narrative as, “a victim of negative literacy experiences, in or out of school; casts blame for negative literacy experiences; discusses how someone took the fun out of reading and writing”. (Alexander 615)
This definition is often violated by the writer, as the text typically reveals much less sinister motives of whoever is being accused and blamed for this new found disdain towards reading or writing.
Despite being an overabundant number of narratives that falsely are placed within this category, there are plenty of examples that fall within the given guidelines for a proper victim narrative.
In order for a literacy narrative to fall into the provided parameters of a victim narrative, the paper has to include a clear and defined negative literacy experience inside or outside of school.
The experience then must also have an individual or group of individuals, that the writer can directly place upon and blame for their poor experience with reading and/or writing.
Many narratives that use the category of victim, often do not fall within the allotted boundaries of a victim narrative
In the literacy narrative titled, “Learning to Not Hate English” by Austin Scaglione, a clear example is shown of a narrative being incorrectly placed within the category of a victim narrative.
This narrative has the foundation of a student who feels that they were indeed victimized by his senior year English teacher. The student believes that they are a victim do to the lack of interest the pregnant teacher seemed to have, or in this case not have in their job. They feel that their teacher takes no interest in their class do to her pregnancy.
In this narrative, the student describes each day that they were with this teacher, and of how they did not learn nor aspire to learn anything at all. It’s a very interesting take, to quote Scaglione, “For the 42 minutes I was in that class, not a single thing was taught to me.”(Scaglione)
The writer takes the lack of ability that their pregnant teacher has, as a direct attack on them self, which is quite an absurd claim to make.
It is quite easy for someone to take a look at this narrative, and quantify it as indeed a victim narrative. Though if they are careful enough to look deeper within it, they will see that nothing about it allows it to be categorized into the victim narrative category. There is not any direct withholding of literacy taking place here, this qualifies as more of a passive barrier.
Since the victim narrative is such a commonly used base, it is easy for this to slip by unnoticed by the reader. “The popularity of the victim narrative in student texts indicates that students associate school-based literacy practices with oppression and even cruelty.”(Alexander 618)
Just because someone may have had a negative experience in school, doesn’t qualify them to use it in a victim narrative.
As the text from Alexander mentions, the victim approach is simply very popular among narratives that revolve around students in school. Though this can be easily categorized as a type of literary cruelty towards the student, nothing about this narrative has a direct correlation or connection to these events and the writer having a newly minted hatred for reading and writing.
A proper example of a narrative that correctly follows the given guidelines for a victim based narrative would be, “The Mean Teacher” by Noah Luccini. For the writer, they actually had an encounter, which resulted in them finding a distaste for the idea of, in this case, reading.
He writes of his mean teacher, who did not allow him to read the book of his choice for his book report. “I remember one time we were assigned a book report on our “book of choice”. But once I picked out my book which was the first Diary Of a Wimpy Kid, she said I couldn’t do my project on it because it was too childish, which I found confusing because I was only 10 years old and was a child.”(Luccini)
This teacher, is someone who is supposed to be a literacy sponsor, which is defined by Deborah Brandt as, “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress or withhold literacy and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt 166).
The writer is being forced to pass up on the opportunity to complete a book report of their personal choice, do to the assumption and opinion that the book was too childish.
This is for sure a solid example of a negative literacy experience that leads to a direct loss of interest in reading and writing.
One can make the argument that this falls into the subdivision of a teacher who is being wrongfully blamed for something, and was actually trying to push the writer to challenge themselves.
This does not fit within this narrative as the writer would go onto explain how this experience, though not driving a complete hatred for reading and writing, no longer has the desire to actively seek out anything that pushes the literary envelope or reading and writing.
One of the narratives we analyzed together in class, “Expect the Unexpected” by Hannah Merrill , is another narrative that can be falsely constituted as one that falls within the borders of a victim narrative.
This narrative gave us a look into the life of Hannah Merrill, a life that is sorrow filled, this stemming from the tragic loss of her brother who had suffered a seizure and unfortunately had drowned as a result of this happening.
A gripping quote from this narrative was, “My dad looked back at me and said, “when the kayak tipped there was no one close enough to save him, he didn’t make it.” I was in shock, tears filled my eyes, I didn’t understand how something so awful could happen to someone so full of life. In a blink of an eye, my whole life was changed, someone so meaningful was ripped away from me.”(Merrill)
Anyone who reads this story written by Hannah immediately feels the shock of her loss, and this in many minds would without question qualify this for a victim narrative. These events, and this section of the writing don’t even allow a consideration for a victim narrative. As harsh as that may sound.
She describes the time she opened up and wrote about this experience, and how it made her feel.
After receiving a grade below par of what she expected and anticipated, she sought out someone to blame. “When I finally got my paper back, all I felt was disappointment. I couldn’t believe what I saw, I looked at my paper and saw a B- minus circled in the top right corner. I did not understand. Everyone who previously read my paper thought it was amazing. I didn’t get how my teacher didn’t.”(Merrill)
Though her story, truly tragic and terrible in nature was written from the heart, she had not met the requirements of the grade she had hoped for.
This is the perfect storm to create a false victim narrative.
“They also might see victim narratives as constituting a critique more in line with the assignment expectations than other moves might be. In sum, the popularity of the victim cultural narrative is important because it allows us to understand that although students may view their literate futures in terms of success, they view their literate pasts in terms of victimhood.”(Alexander 618)
Just because a critique and edit of one’s paper may displease them, it does not allow the narrative to fall within the victim category. Hannah was very close to this paper, and was heavily invested emotionally.
For her, the emotional strain of it does not allow her to move past that part, allowing her to continue to see herself as a victim.
This is the case despite Alexander explaining that a critique and edit of a paper in no way constitutes a victim narrative.
People often misconstrue the concept of a literacy narrative. It is often used to mislabel narrative pieces, and almost discredit those that do actually fall within these prerequisites.
It is not difficult to identify those who are inappropriately labeled as victim narratives from those who clearly do qualify.
In this analyzing of four literacy narratives, I showed two examples of what I feel were perfect examples of those who don’t fit versus those who do, as well as those who have moments where they certainly teeter on the edge, which often leads to mistakes being made while coding narratives.
A deeper dive within the given texts of Alexander and Brandt certainly allows any reader to be able to identify and code these narratives properly. Maybe having the freedom to analyze more data would prove beneficial for myself and other writers, as it would allow mutual freedom to have a greater input of information in order to make a more professional and cordial claim on these narratives.
