As Simple as A Knife and Fork

“Lessons From Down Under: Reflections on Meanings of Literacy and Knowledge from an African-American Female Growing Up In Rural Alabama” is an essay by Bessie House-Soremekun that explains how she viewed literacy growing up in Alabama. In this essay she describes why literacy among African-Americans is important, the informal and formal literacies of the American South and how each have impacted her. She explains that literacy is a big part of her life because everyone in her family is literate and promoted it. Her mother, grandmother and uncle were all school teachers and her father was a military man. They all went to college and wanted their children to do the same. She talks about coming from a large close knit family and explains that African-American literacies begin at home with oral storytelling (informal literacy). She also goes on to explain how the informal literacy she learned at home helped her to understand the “formal” literacy that led to the unwritten rules of the south.

House-Soremekun spends a lot of time with her grandmother who is also named Bessie. Her grandmother was born and raised in the late 1800’s. In her essay she re-tells multiple stories that her grandmother has told her, but the one that stood out to me the most was the one her great grandfather. After being emancipated the first thing House-Soremekun’s great grandfather did was go out and by himself a knife and fork; something that he was deprived of because he was a slave. He and the other slaves were forced to eat from troughs with the pigs with no utensils. By not giving them utensils the slave owners were enforcing the fact African-Americans were barbarians. This made me think about my life today. Many of my friends tease me because I eat just about everything with a knife and fork. They call me “proper” and make jokes like “afraid to get your hands a little dirty?” I used to get upset, but after reading this I will not because my ancestors did not have any utensils at all. I feel truly blessed because I have the choice to use a knife and fork. It may seem silly but, this was something African-Americans were unable to do before.