Mousepads and Memoirs

This study, the result of two and a half years of ethnographic research, explores literacy development at the end of the life span among white middle-class women at a senior center in New York City. The participants, all in their eighties, learned how to use the internet and also took part in a memoir- writing workshop. The Mousepads and Memoirs website joins these two activities together, featuring the memoirs of two of the participants. Dr. Counihan analyses the participants' experiences in terms of educational gerontology, the impact of leisure time, issues of class and race, and generational attitudes and differences in understanding and learning new literacies. She also discusses her own experience working with the participants since this study became more than mere research in understanding late life literacy: it became a lesson in learning how to grow old.