Minor Re-visions

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To break the literacy tensions between the “racially others” (minority) and the dominant American culture (majority), Morris Young in his “Minor Re/Visions” speaks out the need for literacy narratives to correct the existing ideological constructions on literacy and race. As part of the minority, Young shared his own stories of being prejudiced based on his color and accent despite his U.S. citizenship and high literacy credentials.
Young proposes “minor re/vision” as the answer to this struggle. As the term itself suggests, minor re/vision is an irony to the “major revisions” in the American culture, specifically the way the White race must change their view toward the colored people’s literacy, culture, and citizenship (Young, 7). It is the process of using literacy narratives to make its way to the dominant discourses of literacy and race to start a political action and to establish a set of expectations about the minority by exposing their collective literacy narratives.
For Young, literacy narratives play important roles for the minority to navigate the relationships between literacy, culture, and citizenship as they live in the mainstream culture. According to Harvey Graff, acquiring literacy validates one in the American culture because of the latter values the rags-to-riches stories. Through Young’s proposal of minor personal and public re/visions, the minority have the means to define who they are and what they…