The Literacy Myth in the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

One of the central endeavors in contemporary literacy studies is to interrogate traditional definitions of literacy and deconstruct literacy myths. The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), a publicly accessible online repository for literacy narratives, implicates itself in this effort. This essay examines instantiations of the literacy myth within literacy narratives and the archive itself. An analysis of the content and design of the DALN offers insight into how the archive provides contributors both subversive and traditional frameworks for understanding literacy and literacy narratives. Then an examination of three digital literacy narratives in the DALN demonstrates how a combination of narrative analytics can be directed towards revealing constructions of the literacy myth in the telling and meaning-making of individual lives.