Given the work I've been doing on readers, sometimes struggling reading, I took note of words from Toni Morrison, someone on the other end of the spectrum.
Years ago, I noticed Morrison stating in interviews, “I’m a pretty good reader” in one instance and, elsewhere, “I’m a very good reader.” In her book On Morrison, Namwali Serpell reflects on Morrison and herself, writing: “Over the years, through my work and experience as a literature professor and fiction writer, I’ve learned a lot about the Black cultural traditions that ground her aesthetics. And I am, as she often said of herself, a very good reader” (20).
I love these public declarations, from Morrison and now Serpell, about being very good readers. They also raise questions: What distinguishes a good reader from a very good one? How does someone move from good reader to better reader to very good reader? And under what circumstances does one feel compelled to mention it aloud?
Maybe calling oneself a very good reader is less a claim about talent and more an acknowledgment of years spent building the habits and interpretive range that serious reading demands.
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