As the school year wraps up, I am grateful for the insightful pieces we read as a class in ASTU 100. I will now look at life narratives as the type of literature that can accomplish many great things in terms of spreading awareness and removing biases and prejudices against people and groups of people.

When I think of literature that does work within this category, I think of Moon at Nine by Deborah Ellis. At the age of 14, I had the pleasure of reading this book and writing a review for the National Post, and have always remembered this novel as being one of my favourites because of its incredibly touching story.

Moon at Nine tells the story of a young girl, named Farrin, who lives in Iran, and who is forbidden from being who she is due to homosexuality being illegal in Iran. This novel can be considered a biography, and most certainly a life narrative, as it depicts a true story of a young person’s life when faced with hardship.

Through the ASTU 100 course, my interests in life narratives as political resistance, the concepts of public and private memory, and trauma, and life narratives as an outlet for coping with trauma have peaked.

This biography of a

young girl’s experiences help shed light on the powers of political hegemony and how the rule of a group can have detrimental impacts on one’s life. This biography allows its audiences to construct further knowledge on the power of life narratives as being able to (potentially) change and challenge authority in various ways. Whether that be figures within government, family, or the general public, all as captured in Moon at Nine.

This biography also captures the elements of authority and ethics when telling a story. As we have analyzed in Missing Sarah by Maggie de Vries, questions such as who has the right to tell a story, who has authority,

how legitimacy is communicated, etc can also be examined within Moon at Nine. In order to ensure the safety of those in the story, names have been changed, and certain details have been altered. Does this change Farrin’s story?  Does this remove Farrin’s authority to tell this story? How did Ellis’ position as a white woman from Canada influence her ability to tell Farrin’s story, and how did this change certain elements of the narrative? It is worth noting that in the narrative, Ellis explains “This story is essentially hers” (Ellis, 2016). How does 

Ellis’ acknowledgement through the use of this modal change her relationship with the readers, and how does this change their reception of Farrin’s story?

This biography would be an excellent addition to the life narratives ASTU 100 class, as it speaks to many elements of the Global Citizens’ stream of CAP. How does society deal with those who are deviant? How is the crime of homosexuality treated in Iran and how does this impact lives? How does a life narrative about trauma, struggle, and power work to educate its audiences about political and social relations on one’s authority and agency? Geographically, how has the globalization of ideologies, practices and beliefs changed or reinforced the experiences of those similar to Farrin’s?

Works Cited

Ellis, Deborah. Moon at Nine. Pajama Press, 2016.

Found in the Chung Collection at RBSC at UBC’s Vancouver campus, is this piece of history in the form of a photograph and what seems to be a section of a newspaper describing the scene, in French. This photo depicts the departure of the King George VI from Portsmouth, England in 1939 for an unknown location in Canada. The genre of a photo, especially found in the setting of an archive, usually lacks context. Thankfully, being accompanied by this excerpt from a newspaper, as the audience, we are able to understand a larger fraction of the story.

Because the newspaper excerpt describes what is in the photo, one could only assume that the photo was included in said newspaper, although one can not be fully certain. The medium of a newspaper attracts those who are interested in being up to date on current events, and particularly in the early 20th century, this group would encompass more of the population compared to the popular and social media capabilities of today that can reach an extended audience. The genre of a newspaper serves the purpose of informing its readers about current events, but it can also encourage its readers to engage in their communities, whether local or abroad. This is evident due to the nature of this newspaper in particular, being of French origin, documenting events that occurred in England, and soon Canada.

The medium of a newspaper contributes largely to public identity and memory, in the way that it is a relatively simple and straightforward way of documenting an event to the public. Having said that, by its nature of contributing to public memory and identity, a newspaper thus also produces a gap in what is known private memory and identity of the event being documented, a perspective from the individual. Furthermore, by choosing to document this experience through this public domain, the writer of this newspaper column is choosing to contribute to the public’s experience of this event. Namely, in the expert that was found with the photo, all that is included is an objective account of what occurred. Illustrating and capturing this public event in this domain allows for this experience in history to be the only narrative of this event.

Analyzing this piece of history as a common news source, one should question any biases that might exist from the perspective of a news source. A few important questions that could be asked about any potential biases include how the events might have been portrayed differently had this not been a public news source, how this source contributed to the public’s knowledge of the events, and if this kind of source can be a trustworthy account of the events, as discussed in UBC’s ASTU 100 class about the ‘Documenting Ferguson’ archive website and if solely coverage from news sources of those events can be reliable.

archiveimage

Works Cited

Photographic postcard. 1939. CC-PH-03619. Chung Collection. University of British Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver, Canada.

When the topic of disability is brought up, we tend to imagine a certain kind of person. We never think of the multitude of people who might not align with the typical idea of disabled. What is the ‘typical‘ idea of disabled, and what does it mean to only imagine disability in this way?

With the emergence of disability life narratives, the popular marketplace of memoirs has been introduced to different kinds of disability; not one that is new, but one that has not been paid attention to. Under this newly introduced umbrella, the not so ideally disabled person might be found. With authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other professionals who are given the label “disabled”, audiences of traditional disability memoirs are encouraged to consider other types of disability and disabled people, and why they might not have as much room in the marketplace.

Influential people such as Susan Robinson and Jason Da Silva, and authors studied throughout ASTU 100 such as Couser and Schaffer & Smith, we are encouraged to question why there is a certain type of disabled person whose story is more successful.

In Susan Robinson’s insightful and entertaining TedTalk, she explains how she fails at being disabled, in the views of others, and how this strikes her as particularly funny.

She introduces this idea that many people, including herself, “…hate the word disabled when it’s used to describe people” (Robinson). Yet at the same time, she feels entitled to it. This can be seen as how she and others have, in Couser’s words “…a high degree of control over their own images.” (Cousrer, 31). In essence, Susan Robinson explains how she is taking back the term “disabled” and redefining it in her own terms, and encourages others to do the same.

The “five tips to fail at being disabled” that Robinson introduces forces audiences to recognize that there might be an ideal disabled person that is more appealing in the marketplace, and to consider why this might be (Robinson). In her first tip, she tells the audience to know their superpowers. She explains how through being partially sighted, she discovered where her talents were and put them to use in her career. She explains how through relying on her best strengths, her and her colleagues “…achieved tremendous outcomes.” (Robinson). This example is reflective of Couser’s ideas that authors of stories of disability “…represent their former condition as grotesque…” (Couser, 34).

Presenting her strengths and disability as a positive thing allowed her to find and appreciation of her disability. By doing this, and by encouraging audiences of disability narratives to do this, she is changing the narrative from others feeling pity for those who are disabled to allowing them to take their disability under their own definitions and representation.

Works Cited

“Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir.” Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing, by G. T. Couser, University of Michigan Press, 2010, pp. 31–41.

Robinson, Susan. How I Fail at Being Disabled. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Dec. 2016, www.ted.com/talks/susan_robinson_how_i_fail_at_being_disabled?utm_campaign=tedspread-a&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare#t-156218.