Textual Poaching

One of the hardest questions mankind lives to answer is “Who am I?” It is not uncommon for young adults to leave home and travel in order to “discover themselves.” I had a difficult time picking an aspect of myself to focus this project on, because I often feel, like I’m sure others do, that there is very little of me that is that different or noteworthy. Even after listing some aspects of myself (white, German, well traveled, female, stubborn), it was very difficult for me to pick a media source to work with or think of how in the world I would alter it. It was actually in talking to my husband, who relates a lot with Calvin from the comics Calvin and Hobbs, that I realized how much I identified with Belle.

I have always been a reader. Growing up, I was never without a book in hand and a spare in my bag. I got in trouble in elementary school for reading in my English class instead of paying attention. I would read while I walked and never bumped into anything, and would love to share these stories with others. I can relate to Belle in a way that I can’t with any other movie character that I grew up with. This picture of her reading is one that totally reminds me of myself. Just as she is here, I would love to read to, or explain the story, to anyone who would listen, even my dog on occasion. I found a great joy in these books, and they were my life. I moved often and they were my constant friends and an escape from the everyday world.

I chose to recreate the picture using words. I used to draw in this style all the time growing up, using song lyrics, the Young Women theme, words from a book, or whatever was on my mind at the time. It’s relaxing. The lines tracing the picture of Belle are actually sentences from one of my favorite books, Terrier, by Tamara Pierce. It’s a story of another strong, quiet, young woman who overcomes difficult circumstances and expectations and becomes great. I gravitated to books and stories like these, because I felt quiet, odd, and yet strong and stubborn when I was young. I loved to read and put myself in these books. I read to “find myself.” I am a reader and I am what I read. Just as Jenkins said in How Texts Become Real, these books became real to me when I read and reread them until the covers fell off. I always laughed when the Bookshop owner gave Belle a book in disbelief because she had already “read it twice.” Of course. That love, and playing with the story, is what makes it so precious. I agree with Jenkins, as he says that reading a story once is consumption. Reading it twice is play. What I tried to represent in this project is that I am a reader and that my stories become my world.