“I Read a Book One Day and My Whole Life was Changed”by Orhan Pamuk

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Literacy Narrative
“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” This quote by Orhan Pamuk is very true in relation to the literacy experiences I have had in my life. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that such as day would come when I would appreciate the very act of reading. Throughout the years, I have developed a very unbreakable relationship with books considering the fact that they literally saved my life at a time when nothing else could.
My most memorable and life changing experience with reading happened when I was about 11 years old. Ever since I learnt how to read and write, I was a bookworm but became more of it when my aunt Susan was diagnosed with a liver disease. From childhood, my imagination had always been strong, weird and wild and due to this, I loved books that moved me from reality and into an imaginary world. The reality of aunt’s sickness made me yearn for the imaginary world where reality could be controlled. The diagnosis was made in that same year and since she was my favorite aunt, I was really shaken by this. At this point, I should mention that she played a big role towards who I am today because she helped me during the years I was learning to read and write. We would spend most evenings going through the alphabets and trying to form simple words using letters. Soon I graduated to forming sentences and before long, I was somewhat ahead of most of my classmates in the early years of primary. Even before she fell sick, she would often remind me that the greatest secrets of the world were hidden in the books and that I should make a habit of reading one any chance I got. I took the opportunity to explore stories of different genres always marveling at how characters were brought to life and went through common situations. Aunt Susan was the kind of person that believed in practicing what she preached. Often, you could find her huddled in her favorite corner in the house, her big spectacles hiding her ageing eyes and a shawl over her shoulders deeply engrossed in one book or another. She read everything including real life experiences, fiction and fantasies. She was a teacher and the praises she got from her students were a testimony that indeed, a great richness was hidden in the books. To say the least, she was a real inspiration and therefore the realization that she had a chronic illness slowly eating up her flesh hit me very hard.
I spent most of my days reading stories to her as she lay on her bed listening intently as if every single word contained life in itself. A few times, she would comment on the stories but as time went by and her energy seemed to be failing her, she remained speechless with only a tiny glimpse of a smile struggling to crack through her pain. As my entire world seemed to crash before my eyes,...