In January, Chris and I took my mom on a trip from my hometown in Anhui to Shenzhen. On this weekend trip, my mom met Nirong, Chris' student's mom and really opened up herself. I felt I have never really known my mom in the past 3 decades. Despite that she lack formal education, she upholds her way of being. For example, she treats my grandpa well by visiting him often, doing chores, bringing food for him, even though he and my grandma treat me like I was not worthy of their love.
She asked me to write her stories out, especially the one where her mom suicided because of a rumor. That's also the reason she had to quit school when she was in grade 2. She looked after the family, my grandpa went to work for the community, and my aunt who is 3 years younger can continue going to school.
The idea of teaching her read came to my mind since Chris and I were staying with my mom for about a month. A few months before that I just read the book where the crawdads sing in which Tete taught the marsh girl Kya to read. Kya therefore was able to contact publishers and supported herself through her publishing. What's more, my life has changed a lot because of education and writing, so I want to help my mom to achieve literacy. Then, she will be able to experience the world by reading and express herself through writing.
I am a Chinese teacher and have helped foreigners to learn my language, why don't I teach my mom too?
Oh, did I mention that my mom does not speak Mandarin Chinese? That's OK because I speak our dialect still so the teaching language is our local dialect. And I have tried some books to teach her individual characters which I found not as effective and fun for her. So in March, we started our first lesson using Chinese graded readers from Mandarin companion- In Search of Huama https://amzn.to/47ucnv8
It is amazing to see how she reacted to her very first book reading. I will write about this soon. How literacy has impacted your life?
