The pair of scholarly and non scholarly readings I enjoyed most this year in ASTU were Couser’s article, Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir, paired with “Cockeyed” by Ryan Knighton. Couser’s article covered different rhetorics of disability and how they are presented in autobiographies. I found this very interesting as it allowed me to think more about the disabled in the community. My education had not exposed me to much information about the disabled, which may be due to the fact that, “people with disabilities have been excluded from educational institutions and thus from economic opportunity….[ and…] they will be less likely to produce… [a] success story” that would lead to them writing an autobiography (Couser 31). Retrospectively, I found the fact that they were “excluded” in the educational sphere to be somewhat true in my elementary and middle school experience as any kids with any form of noteable disability were placed into a separate class and segregated from the rest of the children. Therefore, reading Couser’s journal article and then reading “Cockeyed”, a story of a man slowly going blind, was really enlightening for me. The fact that “Cockeyed” was the first autobiography I had read written by a person labeled as “disabled” was very concerning and intriguing for me. Couser asserts that there is a lack of life narratives in this category, perhaps due to the fact that “disability may disqualify people from living the sorts of lives that have traditionally been considered worthy of autobiography” (Couser 31). Reading this quote really unsettled me and made me reflect on both what I spend my time reading, and the meaning of  this injustice. The disabled are clearly marginalized within society and Couser makes it clear that they have a difficult time producing their narratives and making their voice be heard. “Cockeyed” did an exemplary job of expressing Knighton’s feelings while going blind as well as presenting what he thought of society’s way of dealing with his newfound difference. These two pieces of writing were thought-provoking for me and widened my lens in terms of scholarly knowledge and perspective on disability. In the future I hope not only to educate myself more on the topic of disability and their representation in society and the literary world but also to find more scholarly work on the narratives’ significance and issues.

Works Cited

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies : Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. University of

Michigan Press, 2009. Web. 8 Apr. 2017.

Knighton, Ryan . Cockeyed . 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs , 2006. Print.

I would like to tie Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir about “his time in residential school, writing candidly about the sexual abuse he suffered and the long-lasting ramifications of that trauma”(Arthur Bear Chief… ) to Carter’s journal article about “silences” or “gaps” in archives, hypothesizing that the memoir could fill such a gap.(Carter 217). Arthur Bear Chief is an aboriginal, belonging to an indigenous group of people who were (and can be argued still are) being oppressed by the powerful in society. Carter points out that the “powerful,” can be defined by being “aligned with the state and its apparatus… includ[ing] certain racial, ethnic, and religious groups, the wealthy and [the]educated” (Carter 217). In this case, the government of Canada, as well as the rest of its predominantly white population, comprise the “powerful,” who have attempted to “erase” the aboriginal societies, and perhaps persist. This “erasure” created what Carter calls an “unnatural silence”, [a “gap”] which “occur[s] when the individual or group is silenced, through the use of power, both overt and covert” (Carter 228). Arthur Bear Chief attempts to challenge this “silence” by recounting the struggles that he had to endure in the residential school in his memoir, My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell (Carter 228). Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir, though it may not intentionally fill a “gap” in the archives, can be used as a document for that purpose (Carter 217).

Arthur Bear Chief says that he wrote this memoir because, “I wanted people to hear about residential schools from an individual who actually went to one. I was talking for those I went to residential school with who did not survive; those who met their early demise in some way” (Arthur Bear Chief ….). I argue that this perspective of Arthur Bear Chief illustrates Carter’s point that “archives are ‘how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies” and that “identity is extremely important … particularly [for] the marginalized who feel the need to assert a strong identity in the face of the power structures that attempt to stamp them out” (Carter 221). Arthur Bear Chief  has put his stories on paper to represent not only his own story, but the story of others, allowing them to be heard, and creating a work with which his people can identify and relate.

Arthur Bear Chief’s memoir has been discussed in the context of filling a “gap”, as defined in Carter’s work, which is essential to recognize its power. But his work is, in a way, similar to what our ASTU class is currently doing for our archive projects. The memoir, My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell, by its publication, has made Arthur Bear Chief’s memories and personal experience, once hidden, available to a wider audience than simply by placing it in an archive.  I would argue that this dissemination of information is also the goal of most of the groups in our class: to make unique works found in the Rare Books and Special Collections section of Vancouver’s UBC library (comparable to his memories and personal experience) more accessible, thus filling a “gap” in the knowledge of the more extensive community (Carter 217).

Works Cited

“Arthur Bear Chief on the devastating experience of writing about being a residential school

student.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 07 Feb. 2017. Web. 19 Mar. 2017. <http://www.cbc.ca/books/2017/01/arthur-bear-chief-how-i-wrote-it.html>.

Carter, Rodney. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.”

Archivaria [Online], 61 (2006): n. pag. Web. 19 Mar. 2017

Archives are an accumulation of stories and artifacts taken from a period of time, and can affect the “history, memory, and identity” of that period (Carter 221). If the archives are fully representative, they may even be able to “address past injustices and [can be] fill[ed] … with a polyphony of voices” (Carter 233). The article The Hundreds of Life Stories Found in Coroner’s Reports From the 19th-Century South by Rebecca Onion introduces a “digital history site.. [that]  holds 1,582 digitized coroner’s reports from six counties in 19th-century South Carolina” (Onion). In this article Onion brings to light an extraordinary example of an African-American woman, a possible slave, who was murdered for defending a young boy who was being physically harmed. The most enraging and disappointing part of this account, in my opinion, was that, in the end, the man who bludgeoned the woman, physically harmed and possibly emotionally scarred the young boy was let go because the jury decided that the murderous actions were “what most men would have done in such a case” (Onion). Onion briefly mentions at the beginning of the article that those in charge of the case against the man’s reprehensible acts were “not interested…  in justice… they were interested in something more supple—a satisfactory conclusion.” This opinion included in the archive aligns with Rodney Carter’s main point “that archives are spaces of power … the power to allow voices to be heard”(16). In view of this case and its outcome, I claim that it is necessary to consider the issue which both Carter and Onion recognize, that those in power control not only the outcomes of some situations, but also what events and histories are to be recounted pertaining to them. In the case of the African-American woman, the prevailing social environment at the time affected the outcome of her killer’s trial and public opinion of her,  while the archive provided a revised view of the situation, apart from prejudices that had once existed. The voice of this woman and the events that occurred around her death were effectively silenced at the time because this brutality was made to seem reasonable and acceptable in the prevailing social context; but as the documents were exposed to a wider audience beyond such a context,the wrongdoings of those in charge, and therefore responsible for justice, were exposed. I would like to argue that the curator of this archive, Stephen Berry, chose to create this archive to illustrate the struggles of marginalized people and bring the plight of such people who have suffered wrongdoings to light, thus bringing justice to those who were left with no defenses after their passing and were subsequently forgotten with time (Carter 217). Stephen Berry found what Carter calls a “gap” which, through the use of archives, can be filled to give mistreated and forgotten people who would have been erased out of history and memory “a voice” and influence how groups of people are remembered (Carter 216-17). Onion only focuses on this one murder case in his article; however, there are thousands of other stories that are just as important to explore and analyze, potentially leading to fundamental shifts in understanding of the past.

Works Cited

Carter, Rodney. Archivaria: Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in

Silence. Association of Canadian Archivists, 04/01/2006. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Onion, Rebecca. “The Hundreds of Life Stories Found in Coroner’s Reports From the

19th-Century South.” Slate Magazine. N.p., 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 25 Feb. 2017.

<http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2016/02/19/history_of_the_19th_century_south_

digitized_coroners_reports_tell_stories.html>

Graphic narratives have, over time, become increasingly more respected in today’s society and have made for many interesting conversations in the scholarly world. Marjane Satrapi’s graphic narrative or graphic autobiography, Persepolis, is a story of an Iranian woman, Satrapi, recounting the events of her past and working through the traumatic experiences that happened to her and to the people of Iran during the Iranian revolution. Satrapi writes this book primarily from the perspective of herself as a child, though, throughout the book there is overlap between narratives of herself as an adult and herself as a child. This overlap appears particularly in the panels that depict torture scenes. This overlap exists, I believe, to signify the parts of her memory and imagination that still cannot be completely captured or processed because of the horrific violence that would have to be accepted, indicating the significance of such violation and the struggle of a human being to accept it.

Hillary Chute, “a renowned expert on graphic narratives and comics”, does significant work in analyzing many parts of Persepolis and manages to identify three “different Satrapis” encountered in the work  (Hillary). She identifies the personas of Satrapi, the “author”, Marjane, “the narrator [of] the text”, and Marji, as “the child protagonist” (Chute, 97). Chute also draws attention to a panel on page 52 of Satrapi’s graphic autobiography that depicts a man who was drawn and quartered as a form of torture and punishment (Satrapi, 52). Chute begins her analysis by drawing attention to the size and simplicity of the childlike depiction and the power it gives to the drawing. However, she does not mention the parts which seem to contradict the child perception. The drawing is indeed of a man quartered, but instead of only Marji’s perception, there are also elements of Marjane’s interpretation of this dead man. On one hand, Marji’s perspective can be seen with the clean cuts and the speedo covering the man’s privates; on the other there are the sunken cheeks and the defined ribs and clavicle showing signs of death or starvation as seen by Marjane. This panel is Satrapi trying to fill in the imagination of her younger self’s, Marji’s, imagination. This is critical as it shows the blending of two different imaginations of what a man quartered would look like and how even those together don’t come close to reality. This is because the reality is too harsh to be shown in its fullness – too real to be real. As Chute puts it, “no perspective, however informed, can fully represent trauma”; this point being so important she repeats, “it can not be adequately expressed by words or by pictures” (Chute, 102). The harshness and reality of violence is something that is extremely hard to process or conceive which is shown through the inability of the panel to capture this horrific moment.

The fact that the blend of the imaginations of Satrapi and Marji don’t offer anything close to what this scene would look like is an important moment in the graphic autobiography which signals the unimaginable horror of death and torture by the “inadequacy” of the panels to capture it. To be able to witness human struggles and the human condition through the work of graphic autobiographies is remarkable and should be recognized as such.

Works cited

Chute, Hillary. Women’s Studies Quarterly: The Textures of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s

Persepolis. 36 Vol. Feminist Press, 03/22/2008. Web. 12 Jan. 2017.

“Hillary Chute.” Department of English. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2017.

<https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/english/spotlight/hillary-chute/>.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon , 2003. Print.

 For my last and final blog for this semester I have decided to do a self portrait. I was intrigued by the option because I enjoy drawing, even though I am not at all an artist. I chose to take a somewhat loose interpretation of what a self portrait is supposed to be because, instead of drawing only my features, I added some of my families’ features as well. I did this because I believe I have become who I am due to the influence of the different people in my family.

From my father, I have a strong jaw line and steady eyes, as he is strong and determined. From my mother, I have taken her blue eyes to replace my brown and have added curls to my brown hair and placed a cross around my neck. I feel that, in a way, I have inherited something of these features. I am determined in what I do and, though I am not as strong as my father, I have learned by example how to do things even when they are hard. The blue eyes that I have always wanted are the way my mother looks at the world: clearly and always with kindness. I would like to think that I have some of that. The curls I think represent the ability for her to share what she cares about. The cross is her never-wavering faith that I envy so much.

From my siblings I didn’t add so much to my face but instead I found existing features that represented them. The freckle on my left cheek closest to my eye has always reminded me of my brother because of its relation to theatre in my mind. My brother has a passion for theatre and is majoring in acting here at UBC. My younger sisters are both represented in the drawn details of my eyes. The shading of the irises from dark to light at the center reminds me of the oldest sister. I have connected this feature with her personality because of her fighting, hard-shelled spirit that she presents on the outside, and the softness that she hides. From the youngest I have taken the expression of her wide, innocent eyes always looking with four-year-old curiosity and joy at what is in front of her.

Even though I have described these features in terms of how they relate to my family, I believe every bit of what I have drawn is inside of me as well, to varying degrees. These features as I have depicted them reveal how I define myself in the world, and disclose the influences that make me who I am today.

As a student originally from the United States, I have already been made aware of the injustices in the difference of news portrayals between criminal incidents involving different races. From the occasional blog post on Facebook to the countless articles that pop up telling us about the murders that have taken place that day, I see rampant injustice.

The moment I first remember seeing this stark contrast contrast between the media portrayal of whites and blacks was when the Stanford rape case of Brock Turner came out and the picture and article that was released was compared with that of a person of a different race who had been convicted of, what I would call, a much lesser crime (O’Neil).

The article “When the Media Treats White Suspects Better than Black Victims” really drove these points home in my mind (Wing).The article points out that “too many -news articles- focused on blaming the victims for previous unrelated criminal behavior” (Wing) Specifically, it points out how news titles often blame the black victim for his death by reference to an event or events that had nothing to do with his murder, while white people’s deaths are portrayed as tragic events. Even if they have done something wrong, their culpability is portrayed as inconceivable because they were such a good person. Wing shows this injustice for both victims and perpetrators by sharing multiple headlines which exemplify the harsh contrast, saying that, “headlines seem to suggest that black victims are to blame for their own deaths… a form of character assassination” while “news outlets often… run headlines that exhibit an air of disbelief at an alleged white killer’s supposed actions” (Wing). These differences are revolting, but crucial to acknowledge because without recognizing the problematic inconsistencies, they cannot be addressed and remedied. That the media systematically or purposefully seeks to justify police violence against blacks by, what Wing calls “character assassination”can be seen in the numerous headlines they provide. One example that particularly stuck out to me was the article title about a black victim of a murder: “Trayvon Martin was suspended three times from school” (Wing). The article title reduces the value of his life, almost excusing or certainly lessening the culpability of his murderer through the use of a completely unrelated fault.

It is essential for society, especially in the USA, to recognize this bias in the media and understand how it is impacting a new generation of readers. The effect of article titles suggesting that if the person in question, victim or perpetrator, is black, they are to blame most certainly is a direct promotion of racism, and a justification of violence against blacks. This issue is crucial in the US right now, as racial tension is escalating as seen by recent rioting. (Durden)

Works Cited

Durden, Tyler. “Thousands Protest Police Violence Across US Cities; Tear Gas Used In Phoenix “Black Lives Matter” Rally.” Zero Hedge. N.p., 9 July 2016. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.

O’Neil, Lauren. “Status and Race in the Stanford Rape Case: Why Brock Turner Mug Shot Matters.” CBC News. CBC News, 11 June 2016. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

Wing, Nick. “When the Media Treats White Suspects Better than Black Victims.” The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 14 Aug. 2014. Web. 5 Nov. 2016.

In this blog I will be relating two passages written for different fields of study on the topic of social responsibility for individual problems. Mills’s excerpt “The Promise [of Sociology]” from The Sociological Imagination was published in the field of sociology, while Couser’s passage on disability is a life narrative . Before we are able to understand how they connect, there must be an understanding of what happens in both Mill’s and Couser’s writings.

In “The Promise”, Mills focuses on “public issues versus private troubles”; “Public issues” would be a direct result of a problem within a society, and a “Private trouble” would be a problem that occurred as a result of a flaw in a person’s character (Mills, 3). He finds that most individuals attribute their problems to their own personal failure, when they are in fact a social issue. He calls this relationship between the ordinary everyday lives of people and their surrounding society the sociological imagination.

In Couser’s short epilogue, Rhetoric and Self Representation in Disability Memoir, he suggests and critiques five rhetorics that the disabled use to represent their disability in life narratives; these are the rhetoric of triumph, gothic/horror, spiritual compensation, nostalgia, and emancipation. For the purposes of comparison we will focus solely on the rhetorics of triumph and emancipation.

Couser describes the rhetoric of triumph as when the “narrator removes him- or herself from the category of disabled or.. Denies that his or her impairment need be restrictive”, which he critiques because “disability is a “problem” that individuals must overcome (Couser, 34). Couser and Mill both seem to agree that it is wrong to make disability appear to be something that must be overcome by the individual rather than accepted by the society. Mill would argue that the fact that even though disability might be viewed as a personal problem, it is in fact a social issue that should be confronted as such.

The next rhetoric is that of emancipation, which Couser states, “represents disability not as a flaw in her but as the prejudicial construct of a normative culture” (Couser, 37). Couser seems to applaud this rhetoric because it is very close to viewing disability as a “political issue” rather than an individual one. This connects to Mills’ point of view in that it makes disability a “public issue” (Mills, 3).

These two pieces, though written for different fields of study, life narratives and sociology, unite in a common message. Couser and Mill both challenge the idea that a “private trouble” is not that of the individual alone, but rather that of the society in which they live (Mills, 3).

Sources

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. Illustrated ed. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 2009. Print. 31-48.

Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford UP, 1959. Print. 1-3.

In her novel, Malala, a young Pakistani girl shares her story of life and fight for education under the Taliban and describes her story in the context of the history of her society. Malala Yousafzai’s memoir brought about both love for her character and criticism for its generalizations of the culture and religion of Pakistan, which can be observed in the form of reviews.

One review by Summer gives Malala Yousafzai’s memoir two stars because of the way the book was written, describing it as a “an odd jumble of Pakistani history, politics, and personal experience that never quite comes together into a cohesive narrative.” (Summer) Summer takes the stance that what Malala is writing about is important; however, she felt the memoir was rushed and was in “serious need for editing.” (Summer)

The review by Limau Nipis, a Muslim, gives the memoir two point five stars because she felt that it was poorly written and too influenced by the co-author Christian Lamb. Nipis states that “Christina Lamb painted that all Pakistanis are violent”, which draws attention to the fact that Malala was not the only one writing this memoir, and readers might not be aware of the extent of Lamb’s influence. (Nipis) However, Nipis points out that she did appreciate Malala recounting the events of her childhood and her fight for education, giving this section “ 3 stars …  because Malala’s voice has become more prominent later in the book” (Nipis)

L.J. Smith , as a contrast to Summer and Nipis, gave the memoir five stars. Smith is quite taken by Malala’s struggle and ability to overcome the obstacles she had to face. She identifies the parts she enjoyed the most as “the beginning and end, where Malala speaks about her home, the Swat Valley, and everything that she loved and was proud about there.” (Smith) However, she also recognised that, in the middle of the book, “Malala describes many political events in her homeland”, which took away from the connection between herself and Malala. (Smith)

While both Summer and Nipis dislike the book for different reasons, they both point to the fact that the memoir gives a jumbled account of history. Nipis attributes this to the fact that the “co-author put on dates and tragedies and events”(Nipis), while Summer states that the book “sounds more like a collection of memories or family stories interspersed with factual information about Pakistan and the history of the Swat valley,” (Summer) Smith also points to this briefly by stating that “Malala’s voice was obscured and I rather quickly got lost in the details”(Smith). While Smith notices the loss of “Malala’s voice”, Nipis specifically attributes this exuberant amount of detail to Lamb, the co-author. In this case, the excess of factual information widened the gap of connection that all three reviewers felt between themselves and the author, Malala.

There was also a key difference in the way Smith and Nipis interpreted the memoir due to their own heritages. While Smith felt that Malala played a “role in making people of different cultures understand each other”, Nipis felt that “Christina Lamb painted that all Pakistanis are violent.” (Smith, Nipis) This is a key difference because while Smith feels enlightened for the educative portion of the memoir, Nipis, as a Muslim, feels she is placed in a misrepresented category.

When readers felt that they were hearing Malala’s words and emotions, they were more apt to enjoy the book. All of the reviewers described some difficulty in reading the middle section of the memoir because of the historical facts presented that were not all connected back to Malala and her story. Would this imply that making the memoir more cohesive would have greatly influenced the perception of Malala’s story and its readers responses?  

Citations

Nipis, Limau. Review of I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, written and co-authored by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb, GoodReads, 5 Dec. 2013

Smith, L.J.. Review of I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, written and co-authored by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb, GoodReads, 8 Nov. 2013

Summer. Review of I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, written and co-authored by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb, GoodReads, 20 Dec. 2013

To truly understand the reason for the shooting of a young girl in Pakistan and the book “I am Malala” one must first look at the historical context.

The group that is in power in Mingora, a town in the Swat district of north-west in, Pakistan where Malala was born, is an Islamic extremist group called the Taliban, which gained regional control in the aftermath of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the government in Afghanistan was strongly influenced and backed by the Soviet Union between 1979-89. When the Cold war ended the Soviets left. Due to lack of support, the existing government easily lost control of the country. Eastern territories that border Pakistan were seized by the Mujahideen, a group of “holy warriors or freedom fighters,” of which the Taliban are a part(Hayes). Subsequently, “the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan”(Who Are the Taliban). For overview of the political rule of the Taliban see the timeline (Hayes)

The next step is to look at the ideals and rules that the Taliban follow, and to understand how their people live. After the Soviets left there was a lot of conflict in the region and the “Taliban‘s promise” to the people “in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan – was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power”(Who Are the Taliban). Restoring peace seems commendable, however “the implementation of sharia laws leads people to question the compatibility of Islam and human rights”(Ahmed). Islamic law “forbids girls to go to school” and prohibits them “from leaving their home without a male relative” (Hayes). These laws not only oppress women under Taliban control but leave them in fear, knowing that if they deviate they would be subject to “public executions and punishments”(Hayes).

“Malala was born on 12 July 1997”(The Malala Fund). Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, was and still is an avid supporter of school education, and therefore became “an outspoken opponent of Taliban efforts to restrict education and stop girls from going to school”(The Malala Fund). Malala, following in the footsteps of her father, began to speak out against the Taliban at an early age. She did this by not only appearing on TV, but also starting an anonymous blog in which “she wrote about life in the Swat Valley under Taliban rule”(Malala Yousafzai – Biographical). As she and her father slowly became more visible in their society, they became more of a threat to the Taliban, which ultimately lead to her being shot and relocated to England where she continues her fight (Kettler)

There is little doubt that Malala’s story has gained worldwide attention and is heroic, but how can we evaluate her story’s effect? Will women living under sharia law be encouraged or discouraged to tell their stories based on what happened? Can we view Malala’s story as a true victory against the Taliban?

Sources

Ahmed, Houriya. “The Taliban’s Perversion of Sharia Law | Houriya Ahmed.” The Guardian.

Guardian News and Media, 2009. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.

Hayes, Laura, Borgna Brunner, and Beth Rowen. “Who Are the Taliban? Their History and

Their Resurgence.” Infoplease. Infoplease, n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2016.

Hayes, Laura, and Borgna Brunner. “Timeline: The Taliban Key Dates in the History of the

Taliban and Contemporary Afghanistan.” Infoplease. Infoplease, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.

Kettler, Sara. “Malala Yousafzai Biography.” Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 1 July 2016.

Web. 17 Sept. 2016.

“Malala Yousafzai – Biographical.” Nobelprize.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.

“The Malala Fund.” The Malala Fund. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.

“Who Are the Taliban?” BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.

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