The Fortunate Traveler: Shuttling between Communities and Literacies by Economy Class

Suresh Canagarajah is an associate professor in English at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He teaches postcolonial literature, Masterpieces of World Literature, ESL, and composition. His research interests span bilingualism, discourse analysis, academic writing, and critical pedagogy. He hails from the Tamil-speaking northern region of Sri Lanka, and taught in the University of Jaffna from 1984 to 1994. Among his publications are Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (1999), and research articles in the professional journals TESOL Quarterly, College Composition and Communication, Language in Society, Written Communication, World Englishes, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and Multilingua. His book Geopolitics of Academic Literacy and Knowledge Construction is to be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2001. He has worked with inner-city community service organizations in the South Bronx, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. He contributes to the literary and cultural activities of Tamil refugee groups in North America and Europe.

'You are so fortunate, you get to see the world –' Indeed, indeed, sirs, I have seen the world. Spray splashes the portholes and vision blurs. Derek Walcott, The Fortunate Traveller (1986)

While we are seated under the mango trees outside our house on a warm breezy afternoon in Jaffna chatting in Tamil, my Dad suddenly whispers something in English to my mother and they both sneak into the room inside, letting me play with the maid. They would emerge a couple of hours later seeming tired and exhausted, leaving me curious as to what they had uttered in English earlier. There are other occasions when we'll be talking about some wayward relatives, when my parents would switch to English to discuss some unpleasant episodes that shouldn't be understood by a four year-old like me. Or, while planning my upcoming birthday party, they would quickly switch to English to talk about a gift or invitee they'd like to keep hidden from me. These early experiences would leave a lasting impression on me of English as a language of secrecy, power, and mystery; a language owned by others, not belonging to me; a language that could put into disadvantage those who aren't proficient in it.

Many weeks and months later I would continue to put one and one together, understand with the help of context, guess the meaning, till I gradually began to break the code. Thus, even before I started attending school, I grew into some rudimentary levels of proficiency in English. My parents later learnt – much to their dismay – that they couldn't use English as a secret code any more between themselves. More dramatically, I joined the in-group now, sharing with them jokes, secrets, and gossip that we kept away from the monolinguals around us (like our maid). It was exhilarating to join the exclusive club of bilinguals (at least the two adults in my house) as we teamed up to put others into disadvantage. It would be much later in life that I would become politically sensitive enough to question the unfair power enjoyed by this language. It is after developing this sensitivity that I would understand the need to teach English critically and share its resources widely in my community to democratize its possibilities. But the strategies that helped me acquire proficiency in the language in my pre-school days would remain with me as I strove to become literate in English. These are the strategies: a curiosity towards the language, the ability to intuit linguistic rules from observation of actual usage, a metalinguistic awareness of the system behind languages, and the ability to creatively negotiate meaning in context. The characteristics of humility, wonder, and excitement over the power and complexity of language have also encouraged my coming into voice in English literacy. In an educational context where there was little explicit teaching of writing, and a social context that was predominantly oral in communicative tradition, such were the inner resources required to develop bilingual literacy. Perhaps these are the secrets of everyday learning – characterized by reflective understanding, strategic thinking, and contextual reasoning – that are at the heart of any educational experience. They sustain me as I negotiate the communicative traditions in Tamil and English – not to mention the hybrid discourses of diverse institutions and contexts – as I continue to develop a literate voice as a bilingual.

Childhood Literacy

I was born into a family that was already bilingual. In fact, both my parents were teachers of English, having done teacher training locally. Our relationship with the dual languages was complicated. We used Tamil for everyday oral communication. But the language of choice for literate activities for my parents was English. Literacy in our family involved more reading than writing. Moreover, we rarely indulged in academic or 'serious' reading and writing. Being literate meant the reading of the bible, newspapers, and some light fictional texts. As children, we were given simple books of nursery rhymes and stories that depicted the life of amiable pigs, ducks and sheep. I remember that these books had a gloss and...