In the field of rhetoric and composition, literacy narratives are sometimes framed through the idea of "inventing the university"; this, unfortunately, creates a trope of literacy as success. I argue that the success trope limits student expression of "outlaw" emotions in literacy narratives--like loss, pain, and anxiety--and as a result, flattens conceptions of literacy and glosses over complex student life experiences and positionalities (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.). This short pedagogical piece provides composition teachers with strategies that encourage students to identify a range of affective responses to the process of literacy acquisition.