The contextual nature of literacy is a threshold concept that one must move through to better understand composition as a discipline. A nuanced understanding of this concept enables students to critique dominant literacy ideologies and appreciate the diverse literacies present in everyday life. The literacy narrative, a genre that sometimes reinforces reductionist views of literacy, can push students to move through this threshold concept when students are encouraged to think beyond reading and writing in their essays. This article presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative study of 111 first-year writing students' literacy narratives, composed in response to a multiliteracies-focused prompt. Students indicated their developing understanding of literacy's context-boundedness in the diverse topics they chose, the definitions of literacy present in their narratives, and their overall rejection of the "literacy myth." These results are reinforced by interviews with students about their experiences writing their literacy narratives.