Cao 1

Douglas Cao
UWRT 1101-024
Mrs. Thomas
22 September 2014
I am not sure if this is what the assignment asked for, but I pretty much wrote about how
english made me want to read. I feel that when I was writing thing that some of the things I said
were irrelevant and it is probably because there is no planing that goes on. I just type and my
thoughts carry me through the rest of the paper. There are probably some grammatical errors
and phrases that do not make sense but thats why this is a rough draft. There is also a lots of
humor and rhetorical questions. I tried to make this narrative funny because of my bad
childhood experience. I was abused as a child and that has affected me in ways where I just loo
at the bright side of things. I make everything funny.Which explains all the weird humor that I
think is funny. This is my story of stories of how I came to be who I am. So with that being said I
hope that this narrative is somewhat enjoyable and funny.
With this second draft there was one part that really stood out that I wanted to
incorporate within the intro or somewhere in the beginning or in the end, I dont know. This is
my story of stories of how I came to be who I am. I really enjoyed the peer editing and I took in
a lot of the suggestions to improve my draft. This one hopefully became better. It was also easier
to fix and revise especially because there was so much feedback. With feedback from everyone in
the conference room I really didnt notice how my writing flows in a way that they said it did. I
never noticed how my writing just had its own story. I tried to fix some grammatical errors and
spelling of some words. I hope that this second draft is better, even though there are some things
wrong with it.
Reading with Broken English
For as long as I can remember, I am super Asian. Like really really Asian. I have to be
Asian, not B-sian, I have to study every second of everyday, and all the other stereotypical things
you can think of. I would like to think of myself as lucky because I dont have a stereotypical
Asian accent and I am not forced to be a doctor. I dont even act like an Asian, but if you really
knew me you would think I am.
Going back to the accent thing, sometimes I wish I had the accent, to be honest, it would
make me feel authentic. Which segues into the topic of this little tale of mine. Being authentic is

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part of being a good leader, according to the essays and selections Ive read in UNCC UWRT
1101 class. This first narrative is about ME and my experiences with literature.
Now learning Vietnamese and English at the same time would have been torture, but as a
kid I had no idea what was going on. My mom use to tell me that there was an old white lady
who taught me now to speak English, sort of like a nanny. I do not have a clue of who she was so
her name is Mrs. NoName. I hear stories from my mom telling be about me learning how to
speak and how old fashioned Mrs. NoName was. She would smack my hands with a ruler if I did
something wrong, as if I was in church school and she was one of the nuns. When Mrs. NoName
left my life as I started school, my mom became my teacher.
Now that I look back on the old days, I have no idea how my English is better than my
familys, especially because my mom taught me. You remember back in kindergarten when we
were suppose to take a book home and read with our parents? I was that one kid who took five
books home because there was nothing written in English language at my house. I would lay in
bed next to my mom while we read books like The Hungry Caterpillar or There Once Was
an Old Lady Who Swallow a Fly, these were my childhood favorites. I remember my mom
trying to pronounce the words to me as if she knew what the word was, I mean her english was
more broker than mine. Till this day I will always remember laying in bed reading and my mom
telling me the pronunciation go the word the. I could never get it to register in my brain. Every
time I would come across that word I would look up at my mom and I could see the frustration in
her face. It got to the point where I just stopped asking about the.
After reading countless books and frustrating the crap out of my mom with how to say
this word? questions, I came to the conclusion that my mother was my number one inspiration
to start reading and learn more about books. She also gave me my first discovery of myself,

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creativity. She use to take me to work with her at her nail salon, and while I was being that
annoying little youngster crying in the corner, she would give me a coloring book and crayons
for the day. Whenever there were no customers, she would come to me and show my how to
color inside the lines, and voil my creativity popped out and is still growing.
Reading books was something I wanted to do as a kid, but that wasnt always the case.
Around the third grade when we had reading logs, I hated to read so I would sit in a pedicure
chair, look at the page and pretend to read, and sign my own log. But now that I have grown a
tad bit older, I would like to say that I enjoy reading, but it has to be something that is interesting
and attention grabbing.
Some of my favorite books of all times were The Magic Treehouse series by Mary
Pope Osborne. Growing up with these books made a kids life like mine so easy. Having the
books read to me gave me hope that one day my english would be fixed and I could read it
myself. That was The Dream. When Jack and Annie went on their first adventure in time with
the dinosaurs, I started liking dinosaurs. All the things they did made me want to do them too.
My creative little mind wanted to do everything fun, that makes me so vulnerable to peer
pressure, huh? Charlottes Web by E. B. White was one of those books that taught me about
being bullied, and there still is sunshine even when times are dark. This helped me when I was a
young because of my abusive childhood. Books that teach lessons are my favorite because they
do more than engage us as readers, they teach us and make us think. When Wilbur was about to
get killed for being the runt of the liter, that made me sad, even though I was like the giant of the
family.
A couple year ago I read the most books I think I have ever read in my life. The Twilight
Saga by Stephanie Meyer was one of those proud books I read because it was over 500 pages. I

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felt so accomplished. Although it is a sappy love story, I enjoyed the books, because these books
also engaged my aunt and cousin. It was like we had our own book club and we could discuss
our thoughts about books and what we liked about it. Thats how book clubs work right? Ive
never been in one.
Engagement is what makes a good book phenomenal. Adventure, suspense, and
determination are what captivates me in books such as Homers The Odyssey and Percy
Jackson. These were books that I really enjoyed because of the mythological world. I will
admit it, I am a geek. I love made up science fiction crap, and I wish they were real. These books
captured me in a sense that I was in my own world, and I was a mythical creature. I remember
reading these books and going through a mythical creature phase. I would research all that there
is to mythology to where it became an obsession. The power of a good book will do this.
Books that made me think about life and our social world are The Hunger Games
Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The story about the Capitol (rich people) hosting a television show
about teenagers fighting to the death really made me think about the society and the world we
live in. It brings up the phrase The rich get richer. A social class that is so overpowered that
they wipe out the rest of the world, and the only way to survive is to get likes. We live in a
world where we value how many likes we get on something and it takes away from the
enjoyment of reading and learning. This is probably a tangent from the book, but that is what I
think about when I read. Its a jumbled mess up here in the ole noggin.
There are so many books out there that influenced my life and I havent even touched the
surface. But all the books listed are non-fiction. They were all made up. There was a sense of
creativity that went into each story and it shaped my kind of literature. My imagination grows
even bigger as I read. As I said I am a creative person and that is all my moms fault. I am not

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saying it is a bad thing, I am glad she just threw me in the corner and gave me crayons and a
coloring book in my early years, and eventually showed me how to read. If it wasnt for her I
would not have learned what the was or what I was saying. I read today with success and
pronouncing words that my mom probably couldnt be able to say even if I said it one hundred
times. She was the one who gave me the words to put together to tell this story of stories of my
life that made me who I am today. Now that my english is fixed, to an extent, I can turn around
and fix someone elses. I just have to turn another page and find that broken english that needs to
be read.