Tag Archives: life narrative

A Western Perspective

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I found this video, BNV 2013 Finals Round #2 – Albuquerque, to be very interesting for a variety of reasons. I obviously liked it because it was well written, preformed, and topical. But more importantly, it made me think about a concept that has continually been a part of our study in life narratives. This concept being the ‘Western perspective’. The video’s statements about privilege reminded me of aspects of reading foreign life narrative from a western perspective. One of these aspects is ignorance. Until this term, I had not previously realized how authors have to write their story while also giving the reader background information, context, and knowledge about the subject due to their ignorance. Also interesting, how this isn’t done so that the story makes more sense. Depending on the audience, the author may not have to include this background information at all because he or she knows that the reader is already aware of it. However, for a western audience, the author must fill this knowledge gap before they can begin to tell the story they initially intended to. The way this was done in Persepolis, using the child’s perspective, was very interesting and clever. As the young character learns about the world, so does the reader. I thought this was a very smart way to integrate the background knowledge into the story without it seeming out of place.

Additionally, I thought it was very interesting how life narratives are marketed for a western audience. In regards to “What Is The What”, many people in class spoke about how they disliked the cover because the boy appeared to be very anonymous and unidentifiable. Furthermore, the quote on the front of the book is more about the quality of the writing than the story itself. Many of my peers pointed out that someone would have no idea what the book is about unless they read the back and even then the summery is fairly vague. In some ways, this also brings up questions I asked in my last blog post, on whether the modifying of traumatic life narratives is acceptable because it helps to reach a larger audience or whether it is harmful because it doesn’t tell the true story to the best of its ability.

Lastly, I found it interesting to read the comments on the video. Mostly, it is people arguing. While I obviously do not except the comments to be filled with scholarly discussion, I was a little bit surprised with the response. I expected at least some people to write comments about how it was well preformed and captured a large issue very well. I thought this because that is what the people who shared this video with me were saying. However, the comments are mostly filled with presumably white people defending themselves in a sarcastic manner. There are a few comments restating what the video was saying, and a small amount of just blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia. The latter form can generally be found on any YouTube video regardless of its contents. To me these comments only seemed to further enforce the existence ignorance in a western perspective.

I wonder what can be done to better educate the privileged, western audience? Are authors already doing it very well by integrating it smoothly into their writing? Is there a better method? Moreover, are people marketing these life narratives in way that is beneficial or detrimental?

Debating Authenticity of Life Narrative

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In a portion of my literature review, The child’s perspective of trauma within life narrative, I summarized a few scholar’s concepts of authenticity within this context. I had three scholars, Alexandra Lloyd, Gill Rye, and Hillary Chute discuss whether or not the child’s viewpoint can be authentic at all and what characteristics made it more or less so. The complex relationship between the adult author and the child narrator, effects of an overtly emotional narration on it’s own authenticity, and preservation of memory were all called into question.

As I was reading the articles, I never questioned the authority of these scholars to analyze the authenticity of these life narratives. Due to the author (writing trauma as seen by a child) no longer being a child, I believed it was understandable and logical to question the authenticity of the story. However, today in class (Nov.5th), Laurie made me re-think the concept of authenticity in life narrative. Who has the authority to determine what is authentic? When an author is telling someone else’s story, for example David Eggers in What is the What, there will always be issues of translation and mediation. Even if both contributors, the author and the real-life protagonist, speak the same language they may still run into problems with interpreting meaning. Mediation will naturally be an issue because life narratives are often edited in ways that will supposedly help them reach a larger audience. Even when an author is recounting their own experiences, their memory will never be 100% reliable. The authenticity of life narrative could be debated forever because there is no valid way to determine how truly authentic it is.

Are there any effective ways of measuring authenticity within life narrative? My belief is that unless someone is recounting their own experiences as they are happening and is being completely truthful, no other life narrative could be considered completely authentic. Even in that case, some aspects could be called into question. So, what is the point of debating authenticity at all? Perhaps it aids us in engaging with our critical thinking skills? On the opposite end of the spectrum, if we do not think critically about what we are reading, we are not actually doing our job as a reader. We should never take things at face value and blindly consume. Therefore, perhaps that best technique is to try to stand somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

Take everything with a grain of salt, know that it may not be authentic, and consider the reasons as to why it may have purposely or accidentally been presented in that way. However do not scrutinize it to the point that you miss the bigger picture entirely. Questioning the authenticity of life narrative can have benefits for the reader but if taken too far will do more harm than good.