by Sam Zattera

In his investigation into how disability narrative is portrayed, Couser divides the pieces he analyzes into five different forms of rhetoric. He ends by discussing Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer and Steven B. Kaplan’s I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes. Ruth, a woman with severe cerebral palsy, is misdiagnosed and implemented into a state hospital where her intelligence is ignored and neglected by the staff (Couser 43). In comparing her story to slave narrative and testimonios, Couser emphasizes how it challenges the institutionalization of the disabled through using Sienkiewicz-Mercer’s individual narrative to address the plight of the “disabled” group as a whole. The focus here is not on disability within the individual, but disability within society.

What Couser is employing here, without naming it as such, is something that sociologist C Wright Mills calls the sociological imagination. In The Sociological Imagination Mills highlights the need for sociologists, as well as scholars of other fields, to understand the relationship between personal troubles and public issues (Mills 1). Where Couser’s and Mills’ work intersect is in this relationship. A personal trouble, as Mills defines it, is a product of the individual and does not provide an accurate representation of or have an effect on society as a whole (Mills 1). A public issue, on the other hand, arises from society itself and manifests in the form of the private troubles for many individuals (Mills 1). Where a single man’s unemployment is a personal trouble on its own, if put into a larger context it may become clear that that man’s unemployment is the direct result of the larger economic system failing him, therefore making what could have been a personal trouble into a public issue.

Without stating it, Couser employs this mentality to the rhetoric of disability narrative. I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes differs from the other texts he investigates in that it focuses on disability as a public issue and not as a personal trouble. In explaining what exactly the rhetoric of emancipation is, Couser states this:

                 “The comic resolution [of Sienkiewicz-Mercer’s story] is not a function of removing or correcting her impairments, but of getting the world to accommodate them–of removing the physical, social, and cultural obstacles to her integration into the “mainstream”” (Couser 44).

The counterhegemonic potential of the rhetoric of emancipation lies in its use of the sociological imagination and in its redrawing of the line separating private trouble and public issue when it comes to disability. Couser argues that understanding the social construction around disability is what sets some recent disability narrative apart from what has come before it (Couser 44). If understanding disability as a social construct proves as helpful as Couser’s writing suggests in producing change than connecting that world of literature to that of the sociologist could quicken the pace of that change. Sociology may not be a commonplace topic in discussion among the public, but it certainly is more abundant than discussion of autobiography. If, as Couser argues, the primary reason for a lack of counterhegemonic disability autobiography is cultural constraints (Couser 47), then portraying his work through a more overtly sociological perspective may more effectively help to loosen those constraints.

 

Works Cited:

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 2009. Print.

Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford UP, 1959. Print.

Sam Zattera

With 1,865,050 reviews on www.goodreads.com, Anne Frank’s, The Diary of a Young Girl, boasts an overall rating of a 4.09 out of 5. The reviews posted on Goodreads are part of what Gerard Genette (as described by Whitlock) would classify as epitext (i.e. elements from outside of the text that pertain to it). The benefit of analyzing this epitext is that it allows for us as scholars to better understand how readers of The Diary of a Young Girl approach the text as a life narrative.

A common trait among positive reviews is the distinction of The Diary of a Young Girl as a diary and not a novel. This is largely due to the medium of the review website. To elaborate: in a review submitted by reviewer Varsha, she claims,

 “My intention of writing a review for this book is to tell all the negative reviewers to SHUT UP! I am all for everyone’s right to express their opinion but I read a few of the ‘1 star’ reviews and I was shocked to read what a few people had to say about this book. Before making an opinion I suggest people to keep a few things in mind:”.

Varsha’s review highlights an important division within the readership of The Diary of a Young Girl. This excerpt does not, however, successfully capture where precisely that division lies. That form of clarification is better found in her next point.

“This is someone’s DIARY not a book meant to entertain people”

This statement is where the main division seemed to lie. The primary reason given by those reviewers who rated the text poorly was that it was too boring. The counter argument to this as provided by Varsha (a representative of a larger group of reviewers) is that the text was not intended to be a piece of entertainment and as such cannot be judged like one. Some readers, it would seem, fail to see the value of Frank’s story as a life narrative in their desire for a more dramatized genre approach.

However, the reviews on Goodreads would suggest that other readers gave Frank’s narrative a significance in its relation to the larger events of the Holocaust and the war. Nilesh Kashyap’s review gives an excellent example of this creation of meaning, highlighted below.

“This is not a book to enjoy much; we read it to gain the insight of hardships that people had to go through during this holocaust. Through this book she give us best view of the worst of the world. No one has ever benefitted from war; all it gives is pain and misery.
All this being said there is nothing to review the book, but accept it as written account of the vices of the war.”

Kashyap’s review suggests several things. For one, it shows us that readers are looking beyond the realm of entertainment that they may use to gauge the quality of a fictional piece such as a novel. Kashyap, like Varsha, recognizes that this is a Diary representative of a piece of history. That being said, his review focuses less on Anne’s particular story and more on how it reflects on the greater historical context as a whole. Kashyap’s emphasis on the importance of Frank’s story as a window into the context of the war suggests that he may understand it more as a testimonio is traditionally understood; with the intertwining of the individual’s narrative and that of a greater political or societal cause. However, Frank’s diary was not written to support a cause. Rather, Kashyap, a representative of the “common” reader, has given it that meaning. In doing so, however, part of what life narrative is is lost. In simplifying the life narrative of Frank to simply an “account of the vices of the war” (Kashyap), readers are ignoring the story of Frank’s life in and of itself.

A third review, submitted by user Pollopicu, confirms this idea.

“Whoever thinks this books is boring is because they simply fail to realize, or even imagine the conditions in which this diary was written under. To think how this young girl’s personal life continued beyond the details of the war is rather remarkable.”

Pollopicu, like Kashyap, seems to be focused on the idea of Frank’s diary as a product of the war and the holocaust. Frank tended to be seen by those who gave the text a high rating as primarily either a Jew under Nazi controlled Netherlands or as a little girl during war time. Frank happens to be both of these. The importance of understanding this, however, is that it implies that to readers Frank’s identity, and with it the identity of her diaries, is inseparable from this greater context. Those who gave the text negative reviews, according to Pollopicu, failed to appreciate that context in relation to Frank’s work. Therefore it would seem that to the majority of everyday readers The Diary of a Young Girl is primarily a testament to war time and its author, Anne Frank, is recognized first as a representative of the Jewish people, and not as an individual simply writing out her life.

 

References:

Whitlock, Gillian. “Introduction: Word Made Flesh.” Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2007. N. pag. Print

 

Varsha, “A Review of The Diary of a Young Girl” Anne Frank, Goodreads, N.P. 26, Sep. 2013. Web. 06, Oct. 2016. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/100302406?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

 

Kashyap, Nilesh, “A Review of The Diary of a Young Girl” Anne Frank, Goodreads, N.P. 05, Apr. 2012. Web. 06, Oct. 2016.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/226507617?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

 

Pollopicu, “A Review of The Diary of a Young Girl” Anne Frank, Goodreads, N.P. 08, Jun. 2015. Web. 06, Oct. 2016.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78979175?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1