In Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell , she creates a highly complex meta-narrative told from numerous perspectives, ultimately taking us into the life of her family’s past to reveal her deceased mother Diane’s extramarital affair and ultimately how she discovers the existence of her illegitimate father, Harry Gulkin. One of the many key considerations that I took away from the film was how different characters, namely Sarah and her two fathers, Michael and Harry, experienced exigence to tell this same story in very distinct ways. For each of these characters, they feel compelled to tell this story, a need for it to be heard by someone for some reason in some form. While their social motives to tell their story of Diane’s affair that led to Sarah’s existence are complex and perhaps not fully known even by the characters themselves, I will begin to unpack the exigencies experience by Sarah, Michael, and Harry to tell their version of the story.

Carolyn Miller reveals exigence as “a form of social knowledge – a mutual construing of objects, events, interests and purposes that not only links them but also makes them what they are: an objectified social need” (157). Furthermore, she suggests that it provides “an occasion, and thus a form, for making public our private version of things” (Miller 158). Sarah, Michael, and Harry experience distinct “social need[s]” that compel them to construe their understanding of what occurred, however each of their exigencies are very distinct and shape the way they share their story.

For Sarah, she experiences exigence to reveal her private family story to the public through the medium of film.  Polley reveals a key motivator that compelled the creation of the film is perhaps not only to “make public” and expose the truth of her secret, but to demonstrate how truth is not fixed or singular, but fragmented, flexible, and ambiguous. By telling the story through interviews with family and those who knew Diane during her affair in Montreal, Polley includes multiple points of view to demonstrate how “truth is difficult to pin down” (Polley). This is also revealed in an interview with Polley conducted by Interview Magazine. Sarah states:

“What made me originally think, ‘Wow, this actually would make an interesting subject for a film,’ was watching how we were all telling the story to the people in our lives. I started to notice embellishments on some peoples’ parts—or things that got omitted that were crucial [laughs]—as we all do in families when we’re hearing people talking about the past. It’s often not the past that we remember. So it was really interesting to see how the story was kind of mutating and how everybody was very committed to their version of what had happened.”

This reveals how Sarah experienced exigence to create an “interesting” documentary in which truth and memory is not fixed, but constantly changing or “mutating”. As Sarah is the only character in her film that is not actually interviewed, but instead is behind the camera, this interview provides further insight into what compelled the creation of her story as told from multiple perspectives.

Harry Gulkin, however, experiences a need to tell his version by writing a story that he intended to publish, to “make public” his “private version of things”. What compels Harry to write his version of his story, as revealed in his interviews contained in the film, is to fulfill a need to establish a singular, objective truth of what occurred. He suggests that this story is not one in which multiple perspectives should be given equal weight, but instead claims that this is his story with Sarah’s mother Diane and thus he should have the authority to tell it as it happened (Polley). Harry’s preoccupation with his version as an accurate “truth” perhaps speaks to his need to legitimize himself in both Sarah and Diane’s life. By publishing his version of the story to the public, Harry would thus legitimize his relationship with both his daughter and Diane, a woman whose tragic death prevents her from legitimizing a “truth” about what occurred and her relationship with Harry.

By contrast, Michael Polley, who was married to Diane and believed to be Sarah’s father throughout her childhood, experiences exigence to write his version of what occurred in a letter to Sarah. This letter, which is then read by Michael within the documentary, was written for Sarah following his discovery that he was not her father. Michael demonstrates how finding out the truth about who Sarah’s father allowed for his memories to be understood in a different perspective, thus creating new revelations about his relationship with Diane and Sarah’s childhood. The exigence Michael experience to write his own version thus does not aim to create an “objective” truth, but to create a new story based on this new found perspective of the events of his past. By writing to Sarah, Michael, too, works to legitimize his relationship with Sarah, perpetually alluding to the bond they shared and how this brought them closer.

It is evident that exigence can be experienced in very distinct ways to fulfill the “social needs” of each character. By including the documentary process in the film itself, Polley demonstrates how each version of the story is compelled by different motives and understandings, thus creating numerous evolving perspectives on the same events. As a result, a fascinating story of multiple, ambiguous truths is created, which Polley demonstrates is “the power of storytelling and how transformative it can be—for better or for worse”.

Works Cited

Miller, Carolyn R. Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1984. Print.

Polley Sarah. Stories We Tell. Lionsgate, 2013. Film.

“Sarah Polley.” Interview Magazine. Web. 21 Nov. 2014. <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/sarah-polley#_>.

Memory, like truth, is too often perceived in society as fixed, static, and unchanging. It is comforting or reassuring to consider memory as such, to think that our memory is fool-proof and accurately captures our experiences exactly as they happen. This perception is carried over to expectations in the field of autobiography and memoir, perhaps explaining the preoccupation with authenticity and factual truth in the genre. While autobiography is often confronted with expectations of being “true” or “accurate”, the expanding parameters of the genre have largely challenged these expectations, revealing how memory is highly flexible and contextual in time and circumstance.

In what ways do autobiographical works challenge these traditional perceptions of memory? How does the act of memory function in autobiographical texts?

Two very different autobiographical texts, Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus and Dany Laferriere’s memoir The World is Moving Around Me, explore memory in surprisingly similar ways. While they differ vastly  in both content and form, these texts both reveal how memory is highly interested, constructed, fluid, and flexible. In considering a key passage from each text, I will demonstrate the way in which memory functions in these ways, revealing how autobiography is an effective genre in exposing the social construction of memory.

For Spiegelman, the fluid and constructed nature of memory is exposed when Vladek is explaining and visualizing to Art how war prisoners in Auschwitz were evaluated to determine their capacity to work in the camp or be sent to die. This powerful scene features four frames, three of which Vladek is re-enacting the scene with his Art and the last frame shifting to the image of Vladek’s frail, naked figure in Auschwitz being examined not by his son, but a Nazi guard. In this scene, the memory is reconstructed not only by Vladek’s experience that he recounts, but also by Art in producing the story in comic form. The way in which Spiegelman connects these two distinct recollections of memory brilliantly reveals how memory is not static, but fluid even intergenerationally. Erin McGlothlin suggests that this passage illustrates the way in which “the past and the present are intimately interconnected and difficult to separate from one another”, resulting in a sort of “temporal blurring” (179-80). By blurring the memory that Vladek has of the event and Art’s re-membering of Vladek’s memory (post-memory), the present and past become integrated, revealing how the construction of memory is highly fluid and ambiguous.

The “temporal blurring” that McGlothlin identifies in Maus is also present in Laferriere’s memoir on the earthquake in Haiti. This is particularly evident in the passage “Morning Conversation”, in which Laferriere overhears a grandmother and grandson singing and laughing as they all sleep on a tennis court following the earthquake. As Lafarriere reflects on the ability of the grandmother to “spare her grandson the horror of the day” that is the earthquake, he compares this to his own experiences with his grandmother (68). He suggests, “my grandmother tore me from the claws of the dictator by teaching me something other than hatred and vengeance” (68). Just as Art Spiegelman blurs his own post-memory with his father’s memory, Laferriere’s perception of the grandmother and grandchild’s interaction is contextualized in his own memories and past experiences. As a result, his past and present memories are blurred and connected in a meaningful way, revealing how memory making is never fixed or objective.

Memory and the act of remembering play a key role in the production of memoirs, as evident in both Spiegelman and Laferriere’s works. As autobiography is intrinsically linked to memory, it is particularly important to consider the way in which memory functions in these texts not as objective truths, but as social constructions that evolve in both time and circumstance.

Works Cited

Laferriere, Dany. The World Is Moving Around Me. Vancouver: Aresenal Pulp, 2013. Print.

Mcglothlin, Erin Heather. “No Time Like the Present: Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.” Narrative: 177-98. Print.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale : And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991. Print.

In Wally Oppal’s “Forsaken” report on the Missing Women, he identifies that “a disproportionate number of the missing and murdered women were Aboriginal: while 3% of BC’s population consists of Aboriginal women, they comprise approximately 33% of the missing and murdered women from the DTES” (94). With an over-represented proportion of Aboriginal women involved in the sex industry, Oppal addresses a number of important questions regarding the broader colonial process that must be factored in to understanding this imbalance, which is often not addressed in the dominant narratives portrayed in the media.

What social and historical circumstances have led to this over-representation? Furthermore, do life narratives offer a means of counter-framing these dominant narratives to speak to the broader colonial process at work? The intersection of Oppal’s commission inquiry report and life narrative offer important considerations in examining this broader historical context.

Oppal addresses the conditions that led many aboriginal women to the Downtown Eastside as part of the broader colonial legacy in Canada. Specifically, the Indian Residential School Policy that systematically removed Aboriginal children from their homes as a means of attempting to assimilate them into Canadian society has had lasting devastating impacts on First Nations communities. Even though most of the aboriginal women involved in sex work did not directly attend residential schools, the inter-generational impacts are widespread and largely misunderstood.

A key example of this is the assault on the family unit that resulted from removing children from their homes. Because many residential school students failed to grow up in a nurturing familial environment as they were forcibly removed from their homes and families, “as adults, many of them lack adequate parenting skills and, having only experienced abuse, in turn abuse their children and family members” (Indigenous foundations). This has led to cyclical physical, sexual and emotional abuse within First Nations families, and subsequently unstable familial environments for future generations.

This example illustrates that even if efforts like the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have exposed the vast human rights abuses that residential school students faced, these effects have perpetuated inter-generationally as well. Therefore, misinformed Canadians or media representations often fail to make the connection of this past oppressive policy of the previous century to the current issues that face Aboriginals, one being prostitution.

As a result of this disconnect, the portrayal of Aboriginal women in sex work by the media and members of the uninformed public place the blame on the women, often portraying them as childlike and dependent on the state. Jiwani and Young’s work illustrates this, indicating that media often portrays “aboriginals who are sex workers as deserving of violence” and “degenerate bodies” that society views as disposable (900). By portraying these women as victims or as deserving of their fate, this places the burden on the sex workers, rather than the historical, colonial circumstances that have led to issues of isolation, abuse, and the destruction of their families.

While these dominant narratives are often misinformed, I think life narrative writing offers great potential in counter-framing some of these representations. As Maggie de Vries has done with Missing Sarah, by drawing attention to the media’s portrayal of issues like sex work and by telling stories that are often marginalized or simply not told, life narrative has the potential to change the conversation or at least counter the dominant discourse. While I do think these life narratives require the right historical moment or potentially the cultural capital for people to listen, there is certainly potential to change people’s attitudes towards sex workers, both in general and in relation to aboriginal women.

Works Cited

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication  31 (2006): 895. Print.

Oppal, Wally. “Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry Volume I.” .. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2014. <http://www.ag.gov.bc.ca/public_inquiries/docs/Forsaken-ES.pdf>.

“The Residential School System.” Indigenous Foundations UBC . N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-residential-school-system.html>.

“What part of our “hyphenated identity” are we going to assume; why pick a particular aspect of this identity as opposed to the other?”

Francis Toselli’s questions present highly relevant points of navigation regarding living in hyphenated space. Many of the life narrative blogs this week engage in this cultural negotiation, focusing on the themes of the hyphen and hybridity. This is explored not only in the context of Fred Wah’s experiences in Diamond Grill, but also through the form of his biotext and through our classmates own experiences of mixed-identity.

Wah’s navigation of living on the hyphen is not only the content of Diamond Grill, but also in the form in which the biotext is written. In the way that form is largely disjointed, rhythmic, and non-chronological, this speaks to the disjointed and confused identity that Wah grapples with through this hyphenated space. Both Stephanie Wood and Jennifer Palfery allude to this unconventional structure as a way of perhaps accepting and resisting hybridization. Stephanie’s work  “Show, Don’t Tell in Life Narratives” suggests that Diamond Grill “encourages engagement and confusion in the reader simultaneously”, just as the hyphen is a space of engagement and confusion. In Jennifer “The Hybridity of Sound Prose”, she also suggests how Wah’s writing style creates a “sound prose” that defies traditional structure. She says, “just as Wah focuses on cultural and racial hybridity in Diamond Grill, he ultimately translates these notions into the structure of his bio-textual prose through musical and literary hybridization”. Wah’s hyphenated or hybridized space is manifested in both content and form throughout the biotext.

The notion of the hyphen has also been extended to personal experiences of many individuals who can relate with Wah’s hybridized identity. Both Jane Shi and Sunny Chen‘s posts connect with Wah’s struggle to be neither fully Chinese or fully Canadian. For Sunny, she alludes to her sense of Chinese culture through food just as Wah does, stating how her grandmother’s cooking “shucks off my acculturated mask” . Furthermore, Jane’s post reveals how she, too, has a “jarring relationship with Chinese-ness, belonging, place, and nationality”, revealing her connection to how Wah both resists and reclaims the hyphenated space.

On the other hand, Ed Koo’s post reveals perhaps a greater connection with Fred Wah Sr., who is able to move seamlessly between two cultural realms. Ed’s post “Standing in My Doorways” suggests that his Canadian and Korean cultural identities are both complete and liberating, rather than limiting. Unlike Wah, Ed’s hybridized cultural identity does not exclude him from being either Canadian or Korean, but instead includes him in both cultural realms.

By placing the hyphen in the broader context of form and others experiences, this demonstrates how malleable and vast this in-between space is. As I see many of my classmates negotiating this in-between space, it is interesting to ponder whether this in between identity is what unites us as Canadians? Ashoke Dasgupta’s work “Hyphenated Canadians” indicates that with many Canadians clinging onto our “earlier ethnic underpinnings”, it allows us to affiliate in some ways with many different groups, which may be to our advantage. This complex display of mixed cultures and ethnicities is a mechanism to unite us and ignite greater cultural interaction.

As Fred Wah states “The hyphen always seems to demand negotiation.” Perhaps we are better off negotiating on the hyphen.

Works Cited

Chen, Sunny. “Throughout High School, My Grandmother Packed Warm Chinese Food in Thermos for my Lunch.” The Word Processor. UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 26 Sept, 2014.

Dasgupta, Ashoke. “Hyphenated Canadians.” New Canadian. 27 Sept, 2014. http://www.newcanadian.com/images/summer05/pdf/10-13.pdf

Koo, Ed. “Standing In My Doorways.” Ed Koo’s Amazing Blog. UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 27 Sept, 2014.

Palfery, Jennifer. “The Hybridity of Sound Prose.” Contemporary Literature (English 474). UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 26 Sept, 2014.

Shi, Jane. “Reclaiming the Hyphen, Resisting Hyphenation.” Jane Shi’s 474F Blog. UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 26 Sept, 2014.

So, Leona. “To Be Chinese-Canadian.” Speak. UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 27 Sept, 2014.

Toselli, Francis. “Hyphenated Identities: Past and Present.” WisdombyFrancis. UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 27 Sept, 2014.

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2006. Print.

Wood, Stephanie. “Show, Don’t Tell in Life Narratives.” Autobiography as Social Action. UBC Blogs. 25 Sept, 2014. Web. 26 Sept, 2014.

As Marshall McLuhan, a cornerstone figure in media theory, discussed in his 1964 work on the evolution of media forms, “the medium is the massage”. While this work predates the creation of the Internet and Facebook by nearly three decades, his predictions regarding the way in which the media form, rather than content, has the ability to generate meaning is highly relevant in today’s web-driven society. By examining Facebook as a media form, it is evident how the rules that govern that media tailor the way in which we conduct and present our online selves, shaping the messages that develop our Facebook identities and life narratives.

Facebook’s platform is highly socially constructed. As discussed by Marianne Leonardi’s work on “Narrative as Self Performance: The Rhetorical Construction of Identities on Facebook Profiles,” she suggests that, “the structure of Facebook constrains and enables the communication of messages and as a result, content is either included or excluded” (28). A key characteristic of Facebook’s web platform that illustrates this is the timeline feature, which steers users into answering personal questions in a highly tailored manor, as well as favouring certain types of information over others. For example, the concept of the “like” button largely compels users into presenting information about themselves that is like-worthy and that will spur further engagement from other Facebook users. As a result, the moments or stories presented on our profiles constrain our lives narratives to these extraordinary life moments or positive endeavours, neglecting the authentic realities that may occur in our day-to-day lives.

In the context of Carolyn Miller’s work “Genre as Social Action,” the rules that govern Facebook create exigencies amongst users in which we feel socially compelled to write about certain ideas or in ways that fulfill specific expectations or needs related to the media form. This is demonstrated in the “work and education” section of timeline, in which Facebook asks you to fill in where you went to university, studied abroad, and past jobs you’ve had. These questions largely reinforce specific values of a western, elite, wealthy society, further limiting the information that is being presented. Yochai Benkler in his work theoretical work, Wealth of Networks, demonstrates that these limits are largely informed by the “sociocultural business context into which they were introduced,” causing communications media to “take on certain social roles” and “structures of control” (369). As Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg and a group of white, privileged, highly educated individuals, the values of Facebook are manifested in its form, which, in turn, shape the messages that users create. Therefore, by narrowing our life narratives online to these “cultural scripts of success”, the medium itself is fundamentally shaping the messages we are relaying to our audience.

As we move into an age in which we govern much of our lives over cyberspace, the creation of our life narratives online becomes increasingly prevalent. Facebook’s platform demonstrates how our stories largely interact with the media itself, shaping and constraining our own life narratives in significant ways. Perhaps McLuhan was right all along.

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