subject: Biographical Frame [print this page] Orlonia's household experiences offered her varied opportunities for making sense of and composing the world (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). As we read Orlonia's life history, we were struck by how quotidian household tasks, like care giving and cooking, left residues on Orlonia's literate engagement, giving shape to a repertoire of literacy practices that we call quotidian literacies.
Orlonia described how an important part of her childhood involved helping Charlotte care for her grandfather, Chet, who had experienced a stroke. She remembered her mother teaching her how to administer Chet's medicine and take his temperature and blood pressure. Orlonia also recalled helping Charlotte, a diabetic, manage her own health. She recounted how, through her mother's illness, she learned to read and interpret a glucose monitor, predict the impact of food choices on MBT Shoes On Sale glucose levels, and detect the physical symptoms of low glucose levels. Moreover, Orlonia accompanied Charlotte and Chet to the doctor's office, 40 miles away in Grey's Bend. From these visits, Orlonia learned how to communicate health symptoms effectively to a doctor, how to ask health-related questions, and how to interpret the doctor's advice and diagnoses. Orlonia's early experiences in learning how to give care have gained significance as her parents have grown older:
In 1995 [Mama] had two strokes and a minor heart attack. My daddy, he's up and about though. He's diabetic, too. Mama, she's diabetic, high blood pressure.... So I have to see about themtry to see about them, then come and work.
Orlonia's early experience with cooking is another significant aspect of her literacy legacy. Charlotte taught Orlonia how to cook and bake a variety of dishes and desserts, particularly red velvet cakes, col-lard greens, hoppin' John, and scuppernong [a variety of grape] jam. In the following excerpt, Orlonia recalled that Charlotte taught her how to cook using a variety of textual entities, including handwritten recipes, cookbooks, oral recipes, and demonstrations.
Amy: So, how did you learn how to bake?
Orlonia: My mama. She would show us how to do it. I can cook from scratch, you know, look at the recipe and cook it, and a box too.
Amy: Does your mom have a recipe book or did she just remember everything
Orlonia: She's got a recipe book and then some of it she just, you know, remembers. But she got an old-time book that's all faded and changing color now, the old recipe book. It's so old. The rest of it she just gets out of her head.
Orlonia recounted how she and her siblings observed Charlotte cooking all of the family's meals, using ingredients grown on their small family farm, acquired through Brigham's dairy work, or purchased at Pinesville's small market. Through such consistent modeling, Orlonia began to adopt her mother's cooking practices.
As Orlonia's parents have grown older, she has improvised upon these early experiences in care giving, cooking, and baking, and taken on a more prominent role within the family. Charlotte suffered a stroke over 10 years ago, leaving her left arm paralyzed and making it difficult for her to routinely prepare family meals on Sundays and holidays. This responsibility now falls on Orlonia, who rummages through her family's oral and printed recipes to prepare traditional family dishes and desserts. One evening in fall 2007, Amy observed Orlonia prepare scuppernong jam. After picking MBT Chapa a batch of scuppernongs from a vine that Meggs and Orlonia have cultivated along the side of their property, Orlonia whipped up a batch of jam using a family recipe that she "keeps in her head" and has seen her mother prepare countless times.
Likewise, as Orlonia has assumed a more prominent position within the community through her work at PCS, she increasingly draws on her repertoire of quotidian literacies to prepare desserts and other food for community events. Orlonia's reputation for making homemade desserts and ice cream is known by many of Pinesville's residents. She always carries her recipes with her in her mind and eagerly shares them with others. In this way, her quotidian literacy practices shape her legacy of literacy within Pinesville.
