The Power of Fiction to Represent Popular Themes of Autobiographies

Throughout last term we have discussed how autobiographies are used to represent trauma, marginalized people, and counter hegemonic stereotypes. We have focused on autobiographies, but fiction can also be used to represent the themes we have discussed.

Researching for my lit review, the article “Narrative and Narrative Strategies to Explore Trauma: ‘Up Close from Afar’ — An African Migrant’s Story” by Eugen Bacon, kept popping up. I did not use it for my lit review, but it got me thinking about autobiographical fiction. This essay is about the strategies used by the author to “come to catharsis”. The story he wrote, about an african who migrate to australia and then loses her sister to HIV, is directly correlated to his own history. In his essay, he focuses mostly on how writing his book Up Close from Afar, was a healing process for himself, not necessarily to represent a group of people. However, Bacon does discuss his cultural “hybridity” of being from Africa and then migrating to Australia. Therefore his suffers a lack of belonging as he is “between worlds” (Bacon). He also recognizes that his book is what he calls “autoethnography” a genre of writing that represents a group of people. Thus, Bacon’s book demonstrates the power of fiction in representing marginalized people and trauma.

Delving deeper into the possibility of fictional representation I will continue with our current theme of graphic storytelling by looking at Marvel Comics. Marvel Comics introduced the first mainstream African superhero, the Black Panther. According to an interview of Stan Lee (co creator of many of Marvel’s comics) by Huffington Post writer Joshua Ostroff, the Black Panther was created in response to the lack of black superheroes in comics in the 1966, when race was a more prevalent issue than it is today. Lee claims in the interview that the character was not created as a social enterprise, but, I do not doubt that his creation had an impact. In accordance with my claim, Lee was quoted saying “these new stories provided a medium for social commentary” (Ostroff), suggesting that his comics did indeed have an impact on social movements.

Wanting to “Get away from the common perception”, Lee made The Black Panther a “brilliant scientist” living in a very modern and advanced place, hidden underground beneath “thatched huts with ordinary ‘natives’” (Ostroff). Lee further states, “And he’s not letting the world know what’s really going on or how brilliant they really are” ( Ostroff). This further strengthens the idea that the Black Panther is more than just a superhero, meant for entertainment, but a counter hegemonic symbol for African Americans – a theme shared by many of the texts we have read in class.

A few other examples of Marvel Comics representation of marginalized people include Daredevil – a blind superhero, Hawkeye who is deaf, and the X-Men that was inspired by the civil rights movement and suffered from extreme racism for their “mutant” abilities (Ostroff). Recently Marvel has further pushed social ideas: “Ms. Marvel is now a Muslim teen” (Ostroff), the Hulk is Korean-American, Ice-man (a mutant character) is gay, and many of the more widely known characters like thor and wolverine are now women (Ostroff). These new comic heroes permeate a genre that was once widely dominated by white male figures symbolizing the need to recognize and represent marginalized groups.

Bacon’s essay, and Marvel Comics superheros, are a fictional representation of the themes we have discussed in class, demonstrating the power storytelling has to represent trauma, marginalized people, and counter hegemonic stereotypes.

Sources:

Bacon, Eugen. “Narrative and Narrative Strategies to Explore Trauma: ‘Up Close from Afar’ – An African Migrant’s Story.” Australasian Review of African Studies 37.2 (2016): 129-46. Academic Search Complete [EBSCO]. Web. 11 Jan. 2017.

Ostroff, Joshua. “Marvel Comics Icon Stan Lee Talks Superhero Diversity And Creating Black Panther.” The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 01 Sept. 2016. Web. 12 Jan. 2017.