Tayari's Blog: Do You Take Reading For Granted?

Mercy Learning Center is housed in a former school building in the heart of Bridgeport, Connecticut. It’s is run by a group of women who share both passion and compassion for the women of the Bridgeport community. Over four hundred women make use of the center which offers classes in basic ESL all the way up to G.E.D. prep. There are computer classes, food pantry, sewing lessons, cooking instruction, and more.

I was invited to Mercy because my novel, The Untelling, is set at a literacy center like Mercy. The greatest honor any writer can receive is the appreciation of the people whose lives are depicted in her books. The appreciation of the people who sit on prestigious committees is what gets a person ahead in her career, but the people at Mercy Learning Center are the folks who keep me honest; they are the people who remind me what it as stake.

Imagine, if you will, a woman walking six miles to her ESL classes, pushing a stroller. She can’t read the street signs yet, she just moves from memory. She has never been away from her baby before, but she will entrust the child to the daycare at Mercy so that she can attend her ESL class for five hours a day, five days a week. Imagine another woman who speaks English as her first language but never learned to read it. She goes to Mercy to learn to read well enough to earn her G.E.D., but walks away in a year with a love of literature and the desire to write her own book.

Those of us who call ourselves writers, must become activists for literacy. How can we devote ourselves to this craft knowing that so many people— 40-44 million people in this country alone—function at the lowest level of literacy? What can you do? You can, of course, donate to Mercy. You can find a literacy program in your area and sign up as a volunteer. Most importantly, you can find the person in your life who is functionally illiterate.

With 40-44 million people in this country living with illiteracy I will bet that each of us knows someone in the situation. And it may be closer than you think. Many people who have reading trouble live in quiet shame. Pay attention. Reach out. You could change the life of someone you love.