Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field

Often times in life we go through things that we want to erase from our memory. The thought of a particular situation makes you cringe just to reflect on it. In this week's reading Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field by, Lillie Gayle Smith, we re-live her past life experiences that she wants to forget. In this process we also learn that anything no matter the circumstances, and everyone is capable of teaching you something new. Although the author, Lillie Gayle Smith, strongly dislikes looking back into her past because of the constant reminders of working in the cotton field, she confesses that those experiences have shaped and molded her. She can look past the hardships and appreciate what she went through because ultimately they taught her life lessons. Smith also connects her working in the cotton field to an everyday situation of encounter. For example, she describes how her graduate school professors valued male students' opinion over any of the female students' opinion. In retaliation, some of the women chose to drop the class which made Smith raise the question, "Why don't they resist this behavior?" Then she realized they did resist in their own way. Instead of staying in a space where their opinions were not appreciated, they went to a space where their voices could be heard. Smith then equates this to working in the fields. Picking cotton was something that both men and women could do and not raise an issue (Smith 39). As Smith continues to reflect on a past that she once condemned, she comes to realize that, that experience has "had a positive and profound impact" on her life, the lives of others, and they way she sees the world.