My paper situates literacy in the pre-symbolic implications of the maternal relation. Turning to child psychoanalysis, particularly Melanie Klein's theories of infancy and symbolization, my paper discusses the role the child's inner life plays in her engagements with literacy. Citing cases of second language learning, I pose literacy as an emotional situation. I insist that educators begin to acknowledge and attend to the inner life of children in their practices of literacy. Reorienting literacy toward its emotional, relational, and maternal wellspring might develop within us new orientations to literacy as psychosocial experience and practice.