· Identify a section or passage from
your memoir that would be worth analyzing through one of the lenses. Summarize
this section briefly, in a sentence or two.
· Then analyze this section or passage
through one of the lenses in a few sentences.
· Close your blog post with a lens
question related to your analysis, that any classmate—no matter which memoir
they are reading, can respond to. (Examples: Is anyone else starting to feel
that their memoirist’s memory is unreliable? Is anyone else’s memoirist
struggling with his/her performance of gender role norms? Is anyone else seeing
examples blurred lines between the “colonizer” and the “colonist”?)
· Respond to at least 2 of your peers’
posts.
In "About Alice," Calvin Trillin starts his book with a quotation: "...I can state publicly that my wife, Alice, has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day."
ReplyDeleteThrough the gender lens, it is clear that Trillin is painting a picture of a female-specific job of preparing meals throughout the day. It is a common conception that women are obligated to stay at home and prepare meals for the family, while men are supposed to be the breadwinner. In addition, Trillin is also describing Alice's personality as a strict individual in that she "limits" the number of meals her family has a day. This is a conception in our society that women (especially mothers) are strict.
My question for everyone is, do you guys see any gender-specific actions in your memoir?
I agree with your interpretation through the gender lens, in which cooking seems to be a very female-specific action. To answer your question, I do see gender specific actions in my memoir. I am reading "Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison" by Piper Kerman, and in the beginning of the memoir, Kerman describes her life up until the point when she was incarcerated. When she was describing her situation, she portrayed herself as helpless, something that people believe women should feel. I feel as if people believe that women are helpless and feel helpless because they don't know what to do in certain situations. Therefore, gender-specific actions are present.
DeleteYour interpretation of your quote through the gender lens is a representation of the stereotype that plagues both men and women in today's society. Women have been shamed to stay in the kitchen and fall back into the background while letting the men do all the work. At the same time, men are shamed from being in the kitchen themselves because society will shame them by saying they are taking a woman's role in life.
DeleteIn my memoir, "Brain on Fire", I see gender specific actions through the gender of the author's surgeons. All of her surgeons but one are male. All these surgeons are more famous than the female one. Throughout history, men has been the predominate force in the field of medicine while women was forced to stand back and let the males do all the important research. Even though it is not happening as much today, it nevertheless happening.
To answer your question, I do see gender-specific actions in my memoir "Girl, Interrupted". Similar to your example, Calvin, one of the patients, named Lisa, doesn't sleep much. Instead, she makes cocoa for the night staff at the mental hospital and sits in the hallway painting her nails while everyone is asleep. Her repetitive actions of making food/drinks for others and primping herself by painting her nails reinforce the gender-specific action, which is that women tend to spend time beautifying themselves and cook food to serve to others.
DeleteI agree that the stereotype that women are associated with cooking meals for the family is very common and many different cultures really believe that women should always remain home cooking and cleaning, while men have to go out there to look for the money to buy the food for the family. In my memoir "orange is the new black" Piper seems to be totally clueless of what to in her life in the beginning of the memoir and usually women are seen as beings that can't do anything on their own.
DeleteYes! Similar to Darelis and Cierra, in "Orange is the New Black", the memoirist is living life with essentially no purpose because she feels as though her life has no meaning at this point and she is dependent on her family. Women are sometimes portrayed as dependent on something, especially dependent on men.
DeleteYep! Gender plays a huge role in "The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong"! However, contrary to many other writers that I'm seeing other people are reading about, Lady Hyegyong wants to follow what was considered the norms in ancient Korea and she was greatly respected for her intelligent and lady-like manners.
DeleteI'm not sure actually since the hospital is for all females. I wonder if even though that it's only one gender is there still a separation within the gender.
DeleteYep! Gender plays a huge role in "The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong"! However, contrary to many other writers that I'm seeing other people are reading about, Lady Hyegyong wants to follow what was considered the norms in ancient Korea and she was greatly respected for her intelligent and lady-like manners.
DeleteIn "Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison", Piper Kerman describes how her and her family are different. She states, "[My family is] a clan of doctors and lawyers and teachers, with the odd nurse, poet, or judge thrown into the mix. After 4 years of study, I still felt like a dilettante, underqualified...".
ReplyDeleteThis passage can be analyzed through the post-colonial theory, more specifically under double-conciousness because Kerman describes herself as the colonizer and colonized, rather, she is the "other" but is still accepted. Kerman's family was engaged in highly-skilled professions while she majored in theatre and was incarcerated from a drug bust. She looked at herself as the "other" because she travelled on a different path from that of her family members, but she also knew that her family accepted her. It's a quite strange concept to be looked at as "different" but still accepted.
So, do you think that a person can truly play the role of both the colonizer and colonized?
I think that Piper's case is interesting because society played a role in being the "colonizer" and "colonized". Society expects a family of doctors and lawyers to continue that legacy. Piper, being a theatre major and incarcerated, does not fit into that role. Her parents follow society and think Piper is the other. I don't think that she is truly accepted into the family because "different" can never be "the same". There is still a hard boundary between those two; the family might treat her with love, but continue to think of her as different.
DeleteIn my memoir, "Brain on Fire", my narrator is both the colonizer and colonized because she is the "other" due to her illness. She is the colonizer because even though she is ill, she "other"s people who seem more ill on the outside. She does not want to be them, but them aka the sick people, is how outside people categorize her. She is further distancing herself from that group.
To answer your question, I think yes. In my memoir "About Alice", Alice is described as beautiful and gorgeous. Throughout the memoir, the author, Calvin Trillin, almost blames her for being so pretty. Although being beautiful is known to be a great thing, where Alice's life should be easier because she is pretty, might be harder. She must deal with the bombardment of men and the pettiness of other women who are jealous. In the terms of colonizer and colonized, Alice can be seen as both because her beauty can be a reason she is a colonizer-her beauty gives her power- but also may make her colonized because she is under constant scrutiny of the public eye.
DeleteYes because it's socially accepted of normal and by human nature people are different but people try to assimilate in society to be normal. So those who try to condition people to be normal are the colonizers and those being conditioned are the colonized.
DeleteGiven the fine line between that distinction (of a colonizer or colonized), it is naturally possible to fall under either category fairly easily. There is no stability with that status because it is highly dependent on circumstances, which are always transient and are prone to change.
DeleteIn "Brain on Fire" by Susannah Cahalan, the author's dad recalled his experience with remembering the difficult time that the author went through during her sickness. The author said that he "doesn't remember what happened...although it's more likely that he has consciously chosen to forget."
ReplyDeleteRelating back to Freud's theory, this shows that memories can affect experiences; in this case, the experience was so traumatic for the dad that his brain provided a safety mechanism by deleting that memory in order to prevent the dad from recalling certain memories and thus, reliving the pain. This can be an obstacle when it comes to prove the validity of the author's shared experiences because she relives her experiences through other people, which includes her dad.
Does anyone have a memoir in where they are skeptical of the author's validity of his or her memories?
YES ME. "Girl, Interrupted" takes place in a mental hospital that Susanna, the narrator and author, was admitted into when she was a teenager. The book was written years after she was released from the hospital. I find myself, as well as my group, questioning whether or not what the narrator is saying is actually accurate/valid. She is writing about a time when she was insane after all, and we know that people's minds are all sorts of messed up if they are insane and in an insane environment. Therefore, she might have believed and written that x,y, and z happened when in reality, a, b, and c actually happened.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIn "Girl, Interrupted" by Susanna Kaysen, Janet was a fellow patient of Susanna (the narrator) who was admitted into the psychiatric ward because she was anorexic. She was apparently "scheduled for force feedings the moment she dropped below seventy-five." She was already seventy-eight pounds and said that seventy-eight was "the perfect weight" even though she said the "same about eighty-three and seventy-nine."
ReplyDeleteEven though Susanna never clarified how Janet's eating disorder started, we can assume that it was partially triggered by cultural pressures and what society believes "beauty" is, based on the language of the text. Janet specifically uses the word "perfect" to describe her weight. It is safe to assume that what she thinks is "perfect" is influenced by what society thinks is "perfect". This relates back to Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity. Because society generally sees that the ideal body type is skinny and the idea is repetitively reinforced in media, magazines, etc. (keep in mind that this book was written in the 60's), we can see that gender stereotypes aren't only degrading, but they can also be dangerous.
Is there anyone else who sees evidence of gender stereotypes having a severe negative impact on a person or group of people in their memoirs?
In orange is the new black, Piper decides to take the wrong path by dealing with drug lords in order to get money. In Pipers family both women and men are expected to become some type of professional and Piper just didn't know what she enjoyed doing so she decided to attempt to be successful like her family members by doing something illegal and instead she ended up in jail.Therefore other peoples expectations for you can have a negative effect.
DeleteThere is one instance in "About Alice," where Alice was not allowed to join the cheerleading club because she was popular as the intelligent student rather than the pretty one. However, she wasn't negatively affected.
Deleten the memoir “Orange is the new Black” there’s a section in which the memoirist mentions how she felt “under qualified” in her family of doctors, teachers, and lawyers. Piper felt like she was the only one in her family that didn’t have a goal set for her life. She was just experimenting different things and not setting her mind to a having career and building a family. If we view this passage through the post colonial lens, we can observe how Piper is othering herself from her family. She describes her family as the successful, committed, and professional type of people. In Piper’s family becoming a professional and having a stable career is part of the norm and she feels like a “dilettante” which is not the ideal way to be in this case. Is anybody else reading a memoir in which the memoirist considers themselves to be the different one in their own family?
ReplyDeleteYes! In my memoir the author constantly "others" herself due to her disease which nobody seems to be able to diagnose. She constantly compares her "old" self to her "new" self and starts to think that her family is also othering her as she starts to hallucinate and imagine that people are talking about her and attacking her when in reality they are not.
DeleteYep! In "The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong", she felt as if she was treated differently by her parents and she thought it was perhaps because they knew she was going to be crown princess of the nation one day. She received a lot of affection from her parents when she was young, while her brothers were disciplined in a more strict manner. However, this can also be because of gender expectations.
DeleteThis is an interesting question. In my memoir, the memoirist is not really seeing himself as the other but inferring, I feel like his kids will be seen as the other when they grow up and will have a phase where they categorize themselves over something that they can't control or change. Also, I wonder how his wife will take it when he finally dies and whether or not shell be exposed to a new categorization or be excluded from certain things.
DeleteYep! In "The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong", she felt as if she was treated differently by her parents and she thought it was perhaps because they knew she was going to be crown princess of the nation one day. She received a lot of affection from her parents when she was young, while her brothers were disciplined in a more strict manner. However, this can also be because of gender expectations.
DeleteIn Susannah Cahalan's memoir "Brain on Fire" the author is forced to place an authors note before the book starts where she states, "Because of the nature of my illness, and its effect on my brain, I remember only flashes of actual events, and brief but vivid hallucinations, from the months in which the story takes place. The vast majority of that time remains blank or capriciously hazy."
ReplyDeleteIn relation to Freud's Theory, this introduces the concept that disease and physical or mental illness can have an impact on memory. As if the memory of a healthy individual weren't unreliable enough the author of this book wrote the entire memoir off of the memories of her loved ones and any documentation of that time because she cannot rely on her memory or experiences at all. This completely makes the reader wonder how the memoir was written and how she told her story when she can't even remember it.
Does anyone have a memoir that is based on a true story and is written by an author whose memory is completely unreliable?
In my memoir "About Alice" the author, Calvin Trillin, does have moments where he relies on his wife Alice to remember little things even though he is the one writing the book, not Alice. He gives a lot of credit to Alice as there is a sort of dependence on memories. At the same time, I'd have to hope for the most part his memory is reliable. With that, Trillin is writing the memoir after Alice had passed away, so he obviously doesn't have her to run his work by. I'm unsure if that changes the validity of his memories, but he is more general than fixating on little details of an event.
DeleteOne passage that stood out to my group while reading the memoir “Orange is the New Black” is when the memoirist, Piper, states that she felt as if she was ‘the other’ in her family because she had no idea what she was doing with her life, whereas her family was made up of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other successful occupations. We chose the post-colonial lens because Piper was putting herself in this box and categorizing herself as different and strange because she is under qualified in the Kerman family. Is anyone else starting to feel as though their memoirist is isolating themselves from the rest of the world, or feel as though their memoirist is ‘different” from other people they interact with?
ReplyDeleteThis is a great question Christina. In "About Alice," Trillin was definitely affected by his wife's death. Moreover, he feels various feelings toward the letters that he received. Although he might feel deppressed by this situation, he didn't feel different from other people he interacted with. He accepted the fact that his wife died and moved on.
DeleteThis is a very insightful question Christina? The author of my memoir does in fact isolate herself fro the rest of the word and her family as if she is different because she in fact is different. After her first behavioral change the author has not been able to be the woman she once was and is therefor different. She is not "normal" she is ill. Although everyone should be treated as equal to each other there is no fine line between a person who is healthy and a person who isn't. I believe that the fine line only exists when people isolate themselves based on physical appearances, culture, e.t.c. However, is one more right than the other?
DeleteThe author of my memoir feels as if she is 'different' from others that she interacts with once she tells people about her disease and her daily routine. The reason she starts to as though she is 'different' is when she starts to get bullied at school because everyone is now looking at her like she is abnormal for having HIV and they think that if they are anywhere near her they might catch it too causing her to feel like the pariah amongst her peers.
DeleteThe author of my memoir goes against social norms, I'm not really sure if the author really classifies himself as being different. He wears his mother's dress, so to us he definitely seems different but maybe in his view he thinks it's normal.
DeleteVery nice response! I Iike how you used the post-colonial lens, it's very well-thought out. My memoirist isn't trying to isolate himself, to answer your question. As a matter of fact, he tries to share his story to a full lecture hall, having it recorded, and even having a book written about him.
Delete-Omar Romero
This is a good question and it seems to be occurring in a lot of our memoirs. In my memoir "The last Lecture" the memoirist is not necessarily isolating himself or feeling isolated but he is isolated and is considered different by everyone. This is because he is going to die soon and he acts like nothing is going on that changed his everyday life.
DeleteIn “About Alice” Calvin Trillin has a moment where he remembers something differently than his wife, Alice. When Trillin refers to the time before he and Alice were dating, he remembers men confronting her and trying to get her number. He remembers those men to have been smoking pipes. However, Alice says that the men did not have pipes. This leads to Freud’s analysis of memory and how reliable it may be. Even though they both remember Alice being bombarded by men interested in her beauty, the little details get lost as they both remember them differently. This is significant as even though they remember the event in broader terms, they can’t seem to agree upon details. My question is: How reliable are the memories of the memoirist of your memoir and are there any instances where their memories are challenged by another person?
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started reading my memoir "Brain on Fire", I could help but constinuosly question the reliability of the memoir because of the lack of mental stability the author shows throughout the story. I mean, how reliable can the memory of a person be when they are experiences an unusual disease were she is constantly undergoing seizures, hallucinations, insomnia, malnutrition, among other things. However, she does eventually explains how her memoir is mainly based on the recollections of informations from her loved ones, hospital, and all of those who surrounded her or were affected by her unusual disease.
DeleteI think the memories of the memoirist of my book are reliable to a certain point because she tends to only talk about the memories that she might recall a little bit more better than another others. For example, she recalls when her mother was always at her side until it was time for to go Middle School. For me, I thinks memory is reliable because we tend always remember the people who were there for us and the ones who were not because the people who were present and the ones that were missing in action tend to impact our lives and how we interact with people.
DeleteIn the memoir, "Brain on Fire" by Susannah Cahalan,the author explains, "Reading these entries now is like peering into a stranger's stream of consciousness. I don't recognize the person on the end of the screen as me." This idea that is portrayed in this quote can be analyzed through Lacan' lens regarding the self. This can be interpreted in a sense were the self can't recognize their own actions, almost denying the existence as part of themselves. Therefore in her eyes, as she is writing about this psychotic occurances, it doesn't connect with the image she has of her "normal" self, and therefore denying that part of her, even though it is true.
ReplyDeleteHas there been an instance when the author of the memoir questions their actions, as to almost denying that 'memory' as part of them?
So far, within the boundaries of what I've read of my memoir so far, the author seems to be embracive of all the embarrassing moments that could be potentially prone to criticism by readers and society. He seems pretty open about his 'memories', reflecting on them with a humorous lens rather than a dramatic and tragic one.
DeleteTrauma can affect how an individual takes in a memory. Sometimes an individual can create an image or memory to replace the trauma they received, thus denying the real memory to be a part of them. So far, in my memoir, I haven't reached the part of the crown prince's death but I predict that his wife will deny many of the things that's happening around her and possibly even denying the fact that her husband died to relieve the pain.
DeleteThat is all my memoirist does in order to escape the reality of her being bullied for being vorn with HIV.She remembers the memory very clearly but attempts to morph the meaning of each memory.
DeleteIn "Positive" Paige recalls the things that she did when she was younger before her mother gave her medicine to drink. She remembers that she used to sit patiently with her legs crisscrossed-applesauce style for her medicine. This relates back to Freud's theory because this is a memory from when she was very young and it shows that our memories never leave our minds. Basically, all the memories that we make in life are never erased but always have new memories being layered on top of the older memories. But I don't Paige ever sat in a crisscrossed-applesauce style every time she had to wait for her mother to prepare her medicine for her. So this leads me to ask: Is Paige's recollection of the times when she was younger waiting for her medicine accurate or could there have been times when she didn't behave the way that she did but does not recall that moment?
ReplyDeleteReading the same book, I think that they are relatively accurate. Her description of waiting for her mother, in that specific detail, may not be entirely true for every single day, but I think that it reflects the overall scene that occurred when her mother gave her medicine. Even if she does recall slightly different moments, I think that they are relatively all similar since she was young and innocent to not have done anything drastically different.
DeleteWell, I can analyze this question through my memoir "Brain on Fire", as I previously stated on my post, the author mentions that as she is writing the book she can't believe the things that she is writing about her unusual behavior due to the fact that is describe a version of her that is completely different from her true self and the fact that as the unusual disease progressed her memory about the events deteriorated.
DeleteIn "The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong", Lady Hyegyong constantly mentioned that "by not following her husband in death, she left her conjugal duty unfulfilled", but she had to continue "living on in shame" because she had to "protect the Grand Heir", her son. In ancient Korea, when the male dies, the wife should follow her spouse to the underground; that was one of her jobs as a wife. Lady Hyegyong was also a mother, so another job was to protect her child. This brings in Judith Butler's Gender Performativity Theory because it shows that Lady Hyegyong valued and wanted to follow the tradition that was already set in society. She was expected to follow her husband to death (which she chose to not do, despite great self-degradation throughout all of her life) and she was expected to take care of her child that was the future king. These were her jobs as a female, wife, and mother.
ReplyDeleteSo my question is: Is it possible to completely meet society's expectations of you based on gender?
This is a great question Jenny. I don't think that we can completely meet society's expectations based on gender because there are so many standards that we have to reach. For example, in my memoir, Piper Kerman's family consists of successful people in advanced occupations while she is still trying to figure out life. She is of course a woman, so I feel as though it's going to be even more challenging for her because society has this bar set for women that they have to be great at everything yet she's still trying to get her own life together.
DeleteI agree with you Christina and to answer your question, it isn't possible to meet society's gender expectations. In OITNB, Piper doesn't meet society's expectations of being a lady-like, sweet, and innocent woman with a clean record. In real life, people go against gender norms all of the time. For examples, girls can like skateboarding and playing sports and guys can like wearing pink and doing makeup.
DeleteIn "Running with Scissors", the author admits to "wearing the dress [his] mother didn't wear" and emphasizes that he would "wear her dress and her shoes and [would] be her."
ReplyDeleteThis action speaks to Judith Butler's theory on gender performativity in that the protagonist expresses himself in a way that contradicts social norms. The author, being biologically male, doesn't behave in a way that would be expected from a "man" and especially the societal expectation of one's uprising since he seems to lack that "masculinity". I think this is the case with many children of developmental ages. Due to the lack of exposure to the "punishments" of contradicting the gender's expected behavior, they are more carefree when it comes to expression and doing things like playing with dolls or action figures, which would be normally restrictive to one gender.
Do the memoirists in your stories undergo similar situations of subverting social norms? Do their ages reflect a developmental period?
Opposite to your character, the narrator of our memoir, Positive, growing up embraces her femininity by participating in beauty pageants. However, unlike yours, she does this unintentionally, since she was only looking for something entertaining to do. If anything, our memoirist goes completely with the social norms publicly, while secretly hiding her HIV, which would exclude her and make her different from the social norms.
DeleteThe narrator of my memoir went against social norms and even though he had a terminal illness still talked to people and was outgoing, going against the norm of staying home all day
DeleteIn our book, "Girl, Interrupted", the setting is a mental hospital and those patients are deemed mentally ill; different from the norm. They are constantly watched and supervised by the nurses who are fit to look over them. When the mentally ill demonstrate unusual behavior, they undergo treatment or they're given drugs. This, most nearly, reflects the concept of post colonial lens in which the colonizers are the nurses and the colonized are the patients. Also, the conditioning the of the patients exemplifies what the post colonial concept is.
ReplyDeleteIn the world that the patients are in, are there still this idea of the colonized and colonizers amongst the patients only?
DeleteI think your question is interesting. I think the idea of colonized and colonizers does exist in this world because the patients are basically controlled by the doctors in which they give patients pills and things of this matter to try to manipulate their well-being.
DeleteI like your question, but you can also think about as the people in the hospital as the "I" and the people in society as the "other" because all the people in the hospital have a sickness so they might all feel as if they're all in the same position.
DeleteThis really sounds like a book I would love to read. Mental illness, my action plan topic, is a topic that is somewhat never discussed in our society. Everyone is busy identifying the otherness or "colonizing" individuals afflicted with such circumstances that they missed the bigger picture.
DeleteIn the memoir “Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs, the author was making a trip to Dr.Finch's home. Augusten had many expectations about the doctor's home. He believed that his house was going to be extravagant. When he arrived “[he] saw one house that did not belong. Instead of being white and pristine like all the others, this was pink and seemed to sag… it seemed abandoned.” The authors expectation was that he was going to see a lavish house but in actuality he saw a house that was not appealing. I think this relates to the post-colonial theory because we can see that the doctor’s house or the doctor himself can be seen as “other” through Augusten’s eyes. This doctor deviates from a norm that doctors are supposed to have a rather suitable home since they have a job that requires someone to be proficient.We know that doctors get paid an immense amount of money for their work so why is it that Dr.Finch’s house looks abandoned.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone have a character in your memoir in which you wouldn't expect the character to be the way he/she is?
I really like your question and it does relate to my story "Orange is the New Black." in my book the protagonist Piper starts off as a smart girl in college and has her life together and all of a sudden she's introduced to the drug industry which was very unexpected.
DeleteIn the memoir Positive by Paige Rawl. Our memoirist begins the book by recounting how ever since she was younger, she has always remembered taking medicine. To her, the medicine, which she calls her yucky, has always been a part of her life, and isn't something different and strange. She says that while other kids her age had asthma, freckles, or sometimes the flu, she says that her thing is just having HIV. Paige's memory of her "yucky" as a repeated routine is very relevant to Freud's Magic Slate Toy Theory. This theory, in relation to this important memory, is relevant because unlike other memories that are written on the surface and slowly fade to irrelevancy, because this routine is repeated, it is deeply ingrained and imprinted in her memory and life. This changes her perspective on her deadly disease, as something that she just always had. This puts to into question, while memories are important, do you think that your memoirist's memories, because of their nature, influence the way that the book is worded and does it change the way that we, the readers, are interpreting the books?
ReplyDeleteThe memories in our memoirs do influence the way the book is worded and change the way we interpret the book. Through our memoirist's eyes, we see their lives and understand their perspectives in which we might have never considered before. At the same time, we are only exposed to the memories the memoirist remembers, therefore the memories are worded to whatever the memoirist can describe and feel.
Delete-Rangon Islam
Absolutely. In my book, the husband is writing about his dead wife. I belief that the experience of her death lead and his need to perhaps hold on to her makes him write things that are extremely detailed and personalized. In this way, the experience of the the relationship he had with her heavily and inevitably influences the way he writes the book.
DeleteLady Hyegyong outlines the course of her life in "The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong." She describes how "in her own life, she was repeatedly confronted by events beyond her wildest imaginations" and "life generally seemed chaotic and random." Therefore, whenever Lady Hyegyong thinks about her childhood, she encounters "a vision of harmony and order" but "that vision was irretrievably lost." Based on Sigmund Freud's Memory Theory, Lady Hyegyong's memory of her childhood is blurry and mostly lost because of her vast memories she made in the palace, which took up more than half her lifetime. Her memories in the palace changed her more drastically than her childhood, which she was never to look back at because of her palace duties.
ReplyDeleteDoes how much time you spend some where or with some one vary how much your mind remembers those moments? In other words, f you spend a lot of time somewhere or with someone, would you remember those moments more clearly than the moments you created with someone you barely hung out with or a place you wouldn't often visit?
-Rangon Islam
This is a really creative question Rangon and personally,I have no clue,but I believe Freud would say that one would tend to remember the moments created with the same person at the same location because it is constantly being repeated on their celluloid and storaged in their wax slab.
DeleteIt depends. In The Last Lecture Randy's kids will probably not remember a lot about him since they are very young, but they still spent 4-5 years with him.Thats a long time but they still wound't remember
DeleteThis is a good question, but I really can't say personally, but the protagonist in my memoir is able to remember how she would take the medicine when she was younger but that was because it was a daily routine for her that is why she is able to remember that moment in her life so well.
DeleteBased on a section from my memoir, “Orange is The New Black,” Piper feels like the “other” when relating herself to her family members. Many people in her family have jobs such as, being lawyers so they pretty much have their lives figured out except Piper when she’s still on the road of figuring herself out. The post colonial theory is demonstrated as Piper being the “other” since she’s in a different position from her family. Piper position isn’t considered the “norm.” Is anyone have a struggling protagonist that considers themselves as the “other”?
ReplyDeleteI like your question! I think memoirs are more interesting when the protagonist is considered the other, but that's my opinion. Anyway, my memoir has a protagonist that my group considers 'other.'
Delete-Omar Romero
I think the protagonist in my memoir, starts to consider herself the 'other' when she goes to Middle School and the whole school finds out about her disease and starts treating like the outsider. But before that experience she didn't consider herself as the 'other'
DeleteIn my memoir, "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch, the memoirist desperately wants to give his lecture, much to the dismay of his wife, Jai (pronounced 'Jay). Pausch describes his yearning to give this lecture as 'an injured lion wanting to know if he could still roar.' Me and my group came up with the idea that Pausch's pancreatic cancer is an othering agent, and he feels as though this lecture can make him seem like less of an other - if he speaks about living, people would see him not as some guy with cancer, but just some guy. My question is, will this lecture give Pausch the catharsis he needs? I think so.
ReplyDelete-Omar Romero
In my memoir,Positive, the memoirist,Paige, begins to develop feelings for a boy named Ethan and gains a new friend named Amber. Applying the gender binary lens to the text, Paige begins to show basic stereotypes between the sexes. She describes Ethan as athletic and strong because he is a boy,but when her friend Amber seems to have similar hobbies as Ethan(basketball), she doesnt believe that "a girl like her" could actually have a position on a cheerleading team. Basketball is percieved as a boys sport while cheerleading is more for girls to act like their preppy self and support the strong boys running up and down the court.Paige indirectly labeled Amber as a tomboy. A girl who "acts" like a boy in society's term. Before Paige reached middle school, she did not completly show signs of gender stereotypes.This leads me to wonder as anyone else notice their memoirist developing and absorbing basic stereotypes from society as they continued to age throughout the story?
ReplyDeleteIn the memoir About Alice, there is a particular scene that reminds me of Lacan's mirror stage theory. In the scene, the couple are sharing differences about a memory they both have. While Calvin, the husband, thinks that Alice attracted men with "smoking pipes," Alice, the wife did not think so. She thought these men were not as her husband paints them out to look. This reminded me of Lacan's theory because it suggest that we do see our self image through the other, other people might see that self in their own perspective just like calvin. Even though both are seeing Alice in relation to these men, their visions are completely different. I wonder if anyone else has observed such an example in their book of choice?
ReplyDeleteThe mirror theory is just super cool for all of what it can be applied to! I too noticed some hints of Lacan in my book of choice lol.. The protagonist seems to not only have a sort of innate temperment, but also chooses to reflect, or even deflect, what others see him to be; his intrinsic characteristics are shaped by external conceptions. I'd say my memoir is a kinda modified version of Lacan's theory.
DeleteIn the memoir "The Last Lecture" Randy, a man with pancreatic cancer that has a few months to live, talks about his therapy session with his wife and the argument between them whether or not he should continue his lecture. She wanted him to spend more time with the her and the kids while he wanted to say goodbye to his work family and maintain his dignity and self esteem.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good example of post-colonialism because the whole reason he wants to do this lecture is to defy the idea that just because he is terminally ill doesn't mean he is weak or needs to stay home all day. The norm for terminally ill people is to stay home and recede from society and he wants to go against that, becoming the other.
When comparing the norm from the other, is being one better than the other?
In "Positive", Paige talks about how her classmates and the rest of the school treated her when they found out that she was HIV positive and what her experience was like when she was being bullied. In this part of the book, Paige is considered to be the 'other' because she had a disease that nobody else in her school had and many of her peers saw that as abnormal. It was to the point that Paige realized that she was different from everyone else. She felt what it was like to be an outcast because people on her soccer team did not want to touch or kick the ball if she was the last to have it. So my question is: Are there certain points in your memoir, when the memoirist is considered to be the 'other'?
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ReplyDeleteWell in my memoir, it was kind of the opposite. The protagonist didn't necessarily feel othered at all, atleast he didn't nention it. But, what I found strange was that instead of feeling othered, in a section of the memoir, he explicitly announces his desires to be other, I guess in the sense of exoticness and all <--- I don't think that's a word, but you know what I mean lol
DeleteIn the memoir, "Running with Scissors", the protagonist finds great comfort in pretending/dressing as his mother.. Wearing her close and makeup when she leaves the house..
ReplyDeleteIt's almost obvious to notice the infatuation Augusten (the protagonist) has toward imitating his mothers mannerisms, taking on her own behaviors. He seems to relate more to his mother than his father, so it would only make sense that his gender performitivity leaned more towards his mother's "feminine" tendencies.
Do you guys see similarities in behaviors when you read your own memoirs? Or is this just an Augusten thing?