AMS 001C Midterm

Live Audience Influence on Autobiographies

Determines the inclusion of certain identity contents and the exclusion of others - narrator may choose based on the audiences reactions.

Harper High School Student who shot his brother

Devonte

"When I Was Puerto Rican" Identity Quest

Did Santiago lose her Puerto Rican purity when she moved to the U.S.? Was she ever purely Puerto Rican to begin with? Did she become a hybrid by moving to the States?

"Homecoming King" (2017)

Discusses the experiences of his family after 9/11 - generational gap between him and his father. His father believes that their treatment is the price they must pay for living in American. A show that is both funny and, at times, serious.

Oral Performed Autobiographies

Distance between narrator and narratee, and implied audience and consumer is minimized when the story is addressed to a live audience that immediately and audibly responds.

"Bread Givers" Themes

Diversity, Identity Construction, Americanization, Boundaries between: - Self and the World - Old World vs. New World values - Jewishness vs. Americanness

"Sleep Story" (1987) dance description

Dorfman jogs in one place while reciting a story about a San Francisco sculpture, his family, Holocaust victims, contemporary deaths (some from AIDS). Tension is set up between his efforts to speak coherently and clearly enough to be understood while is breathing becomes more labored from the jogging.

"When I Was Puerto Rican" Author

Esmeralda Santiago

Master of None: "Parents" Themes

Families and secrets, relationship dynamics, generational divides, parents living vicariously through their children, stereotyping and experiences with racism (both overt and microaggressions).

"Don't Let Me Get Me" (2002)

Follows Pink's life from school days to LA career. Aggressive tone, centered around the self. Credible personal pain, Break free from image-making industry demands (comparing her to Brittany Spears)

Anzia Yezierska's Rhetoric

juxtaposition of ghetto with Anglo-world. Exposes brutal reality of capitalist class-ridden urban society of early 20th century America. Lays the ground for socio-cultural identity Sara (main character) envisions and enacts

Core of story in Mom and Me and Mom

Maternal Absence/Abuse

Story of Detection

A narrative of filiation in which the son or daughter conducts a journey to discover the story of the lost or abandoning parent.

Hurston's criticisms

Accused of racist dialects given to characters in her stories. Accused of painting a black life as "quaint", which causes pity from the white audience. Hurston called "America's favorite black conservative".

Charlayne Woodard

Actor, Playwright, teaches at USC, recieved multiple awards.

Psychology-of-discovery Motive

A self-authorizing and empowering journey.

Memoir

A specific, concentrated period within a life. Illustrates the influence of world-wide events and movements upon individual personal destinies.

Multiple Acculturation

A term that suggests that the U.S. common culture is a product of the intersection of diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic elements within U.S. society. When immigrants acculturate to mainstream American society, they bring some of their own cultural practices into mainstream society.

"Sleep Story" Author

David Dorfman

Debate over American National Identity

"What is an American?" The public debate about whether immigrants amalgamated successfully into one American "race" Nativist movement and Cultural Pluralism, Melting pot theory

Education Today: "I Am Malala"

123 million young people worldwide still lack basic reading and writing skills. Girls compose of 61% of this number.

"The Promised Land" (1912)

Adopted the myth of the American Dream, showed how America ran counter to the economic, political, and cultural oppression of Europe. She pointed to her own success as proof of the abundant opportunities held out to immigrants who abandoned the old to embrace the new wholeheartedly.

Nativist Movement

Americanization > erasing the original cultures, especially the languages, of 27 million new immigrants to the United States (1880-1920)

"Me and a Gun" (1991)

Amos was raped and was threatened with a knife. She was told that he would take her to his friends and cut her up, but she got away because he needed more drugs. She was left paralyzed and urinating all over herself for years

Author of "Bread Givers"

Anzia Yezierska

Performing Arts

Art forms in which artists use their voices and/or the movements of their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression. All are intended to be performed in front of a live audience.

Indictment of revenge

Assembling evidence in an alternative jurisdiction.

Performances of the Self

Autobiographical performances mark the multiple, non-unitary constitution of the self, and the notion that the "self" is not fixed, given, deep, or essential. "performing the self" is often criticized as being "narcissictic" or "egotistical"

"Chicken Soup" author

Blondell Cummings

Maya Angelou

Born in 1928 in St. Louis. Raised by her grandmother after her parents separated. Was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was 7 and became mute for a while. She worked as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Lived abroad in Egypt and Ghana - helped Malcolm X. with organization of Afro-American unity.

Mary Antin

Born in Polotsk, Russia, in 1881. Her first poem was published in the Boston Herald when she was 15. The letters to her uncle were published in the American Hebrew. Mary Antin became a symbol for those who championed the nation's capacity to assimilate the immigrant and the immigrant's capacity to enrich America.

Esmeralda Santiago

Born in San Juan district of Villa Palmeras into poverty, moved to New York at 13.

"Born in the U.S.A" Author

Bruce Springsteen

Performing Arts in Autobiography

Can be enacted in many media - short features, documentary films, theater pieces, installations, performance art (music, dance), monologue.

Maya Angelou's relationship with her mother

Captivated by Vivian's beauty, strength and aura. Admires her mother's self-reliance, resilience, and casual approach to sexuality. Recognizes her mothers flaws. She gradually depends on her mother and becomes more objective in her assessment of her mother's personality.

Harper High School Assistant Principal

Chad Adams

"Mom and Me and Mom" Themes

Changing connection between mother and child: Grandmother vs. Maya, Vivian vs. Maya, Maya vs. Guy. Ambivalence towards Maya's mother - evolving relationship.

"In Real Life" Author

Charlayne Woodard

Zora Neale Hurston

Comes from a family of 8 children, her father was a Baptist preacher and town mayor, her mother was a teacher. Worked as a maid to get money for her education.

Cultural Pluralism

Countered Americanization and Melting Pot Theory by rejecting all efforts to coerce cultural minorities to assimilate. Celebrated diversity, insisted that ethnic minorities had a right to maintain and develop their original cultures.

Harper High School Social Worker Working With Devonte

Crystal Smith

Autoethnography

Description of Hurston's narratives - blends of autobiographical and ethnographic elements.

Four motives of Self Writing

Franklinesque, Legacy, Psychology-of-discovery, Indictment of revenge

"Homecoming King" Author

Hasan Minhaj

Symbolism on the book cover of "I am Malala"

Headdress color, confident stare, knowing smile - questions raised. Confidence and persistence in the face of adversity. Is enigmatic stare addressed to reader or oppressors?

"The Promised Land" Author

Mary Antin

Harper High School Principal

Leonetta Sanders

"Coal Miner's Daughter" Author

Loretta Lynn

Author of "I am Malala"

Malala Yousafzai

Author of "Mom and Me and Mom"

Maya Angelou

"In Real Life" (2000)

Mirrors Woodard's childhood experiences of growing up in Albany, New York. Tells her story about trying to become an Actor in New York.

"I Am Malala" Themes

Modern international human rights discourse: education is considered a "fundamental human right". Life of a young girl caught in the vortex of war and religious extremism.

"Dont Let Me Get Me" Author

P!nk

"Sleep Story" (1987) Purpose

Past cultural loss (holocaust) vs. his own personal loss (Uncle Bob, his girlfriend) and the respective losses in his artistic and dance communities (his ballet teacher Ernie Pagnano). Uses memory of the past to make sense of the present situation. His stories become more entangled with each other as his body becomes more distressed.

Core of Story in Bread Givers

Paternal Abuse

Stand up Comedy as Autobiography

Performances as expressions of identity - simultaneous construction of personal identity and cultural critique. Live performance - breaks down the boundary of creator and performer. They are entertainment but also an expression of the performers involvement within their geographical communities and beyond.

Hasan Minhaj

Political Science Major at UC Davis. Did stand-up comedy on the Daily Show. Grew up a child of Muslim Indian immigrants.

This American Life Podcast (2013) Themes

Public Schools in the US, gun violence, gangs. Since 1999, 187,000 students attending atleast 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours. Hispanic students: 2 times as likely to experience violence as white students, Black students: 3 times as likely.

Melting Pot Theory

Rationalized the coercive essence of Americanization - hastened the process of immigrants adopting "American culture"; also fostered a number of less explicit agendas (eradicating radical ideologies in the U.S.)

Autobiography as compared to Memoir

Recounts the story of a life that is (generally) more all-embracing, with a greater chronological sweep and a more linear structure.

Hurston's cultural commentary

Represents stereotypes as different forms of herself. Understanding that she was "at the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or weep". Hurston's statement about slavery being the price for civilization mirrors the ideas of white artists and intellectuals, who looked to black people for originality.

"The Promised Land" and the Autobiography Genre

Represents the affirmation of personal identity and a record of social history. Represents the effort to understand and define the minority experience in America.

"Chicken Soup" performance description

Scrubbing a floor on her hands and knees, repeatedly stands and convulses. She then goes back to serenely scrubbing the floor.

"How it Feels to be Colored Me" Themes

Self realization, importance of Self-Identity, segregation and racial Identification, cultural commentary on stereotypes and misconceptions. Heavy black dialect - artistic aesthetic that prioritized the creative significance of working class black culture to the creation of "high" art.

Anzia Yezierska

She grew up in a Jewish Settlement in the Russian Empire and moved to New York. Two works of hers were adapted into films and she became known as "Sweatshop Cinderella". She grew frustrated by the insincere nature of Hollywood and her alienation from the Jewish ghetto.

"Born in the U.S.A" (1984)

Story of a Vietnam vet who returned home to discover that the economy in his hometown was crumbling and he had little hope of a better future or even a job. Decisive attachment to political and sociocultural issues at a time when Ronald Reagan was reviving a patriotic pride.

Franklinesque Motive

Studying and writing one's life as useful - practically and morally; an exercise in democratic citizenship

Imaginative Reaffiliation

The desire to know and gain closeness to a parent who was unavailable in life.

"Me and a Gun" Author

Tori Amos

"Chicken Soup" (1981)

Unhappy woman who hated doing this domestic task of scrubbing the floors, was "going crazy". Is it protest art?

Malala Yousafzai

Was born on July 12, 1997 in Mingora, Pakistan. named after Malalai of Maiwand, the "greatest heroine of Afghanistan" who inspired the Afghan army to defeat the British in 1880. Blogged for BBC about living under the Taliban's threats to deny her an education. Used the pseudonym Gul Makai.

This American Life

Weekly public radio program and podcast since 1995. New theme each week.

Legacy Motive

Writing life as a gift of love and memory, passed on to posterity.

Reb Smolinsky

Yezierska's father. Life focused on the promise of heaven and offering charitable contributions to others. Knowledgeable, but knowledge does not translate well in America. Patriarchal.

"How it Feels to be Colored Me" Author

Zora Neale Hurston

Podcasts

deeply-reported, sound-rich audio portraits of private and public figures in American life. Heard from subjects directly, or people who knew the subjects best It feels real: the wall between the author and the audience disappears.

Narratives of Filiation

memoirs - usually of a father or mother - by a son or daughter whose parent was remote, unavailable, abusive, or absent.

Malala's memoir

opens the door to some of the greatest challenges of our modern world. It is about politics, education, culture, religion, and violence against women and girls.