ABSTRACT
This essay contributes to the current understanding of voice and its construction by discussing how a novice writer learns to construct voice. To do so, this chapter explores the author’s literacy development through her literacy narrative, as autobiographical narratives can provide rich details about how people experience their language learning and identity representation. More specifically, the author’s literacy history explicates how her voice in writing results from (re)constructing and negotiating her multiple identities: a woman who was once “shushed” out, a daughter of immigrant parents, an international graduate student, and an ESL teacher in the US. In addition, she describes in detail how her progressive understanding of writing influenced the awareness and construction of her written voice. She concludes by discussing the implications of her development of writing to the theorization of voice.
