‘The Fiftieth Gate’ is a biographical memoir where Mark Baker explores his parents’ personal history and is taken on his own journey on the understanding and importance of memory when discovering history. Baker shapes the audience to his view of history and memory through the exploration of his own journey of understanding and discovery. The text being written in a personal, memoir style text aids in shaping the audience’s understanding of Bakers actions, making the text seem more relatable by speaking in first person. Baker combines and gathers different types of text along his journey, including; conversations, documents, statistics, video sessions and various perspectives regarding the Holocaust. The use of various text types creates a sense of credibility with the audience.
Whereas narrative memory is adaptive and social, able to be integrated within a historical framework, the traumatic memory remains fixed, an invasive reminder of suffering that dissolves temporal boundaries. If we are to view selfhood as a narrative of identity, then trauma almost
In The Dancer by Vickie Sears a young girl, Clarissa, finds herself and her confidence through dance. This took time, devotion and passion. At first, Clarissa was young, a bit odd and very isolated, this is shown in line 61 “as quiet as she could be, she was”. As Clarissa grew up she found something she loved (dancing) and practiced it alot. Showing how far Clarissa has come, the foster mom said “There Clarissa was, full up with music.
Character Profile: Dancer The Dancer by Vickie Sears is a short story about a five-year-old aboriginal girl named Clarissa who was lost in the world like many others. In the beginning of the story, Clarissa has just been put into a foster home where she is described to be scared and filled with anger. When walking into this foster home, Clarissa had only brought enough stuff that could fit into a paper bag.
Imagine one day you meet the most talented hypnotist in the world. This hypnotist tells you he can change your memories without even breaking a sweat. Maybe this sounds like magic or just plain nonsense to you but in reality it isn’t that difficult to tamper with memories. Any time you hear a different telling of an event, even one you witnessed first-hand, your perception of the event changes over and over becoming a conglomeration of everything you’ve heard about the aforementioned event. Memoirs and other pieces of literature written from memory suffer from these easily modified memories and can’t always be trusted to be true.
Dreams, contrary to popular belief, are terrible. The best thing to do, is to stop chasing dreams because all dreams do is distract people from more important responsibilities. People spend their time chasing their dreams, but they don’t perform their day to day tasks they need to survive on their own. In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary, has a dream of becoming an artist. Instead of getting a job to provide for her poverty stricken family, she decides to stay home and paint all day.
Even though James Baldwin’s short story is spread in the span of a decade, the narrator can vividly remember the memories that make him recoil as he states “The same things happen, they’ll have the same thing to remember” (153). Sonny and the narrator had so many waves of bad news crash on them, that their world felt like a tsunami. However, not all memories are scarring, some can be intoxicating and last forever. For example: a trip to Disney World as a kid,
In the 1980’s, many Indio’s were sexually assaulted, tortured and killed during the Guatemalan civil war. Gabriela, the main character in “Tree Girl” by Ben Mikaelsen, is a survivor of the Guatemalan civil war. Gabriela, a 15-year-old girl living in a small Guatemalan canton, experienced unspeakable things such as the deaths of the people in her canton, the witnessing of the pueblo massacre, and the fear of being caught by soldiers on her journey to Mexico. There are many important lessons to learn from this book, including how hope allows you to see past hatred. As you read through the book you learn similar lessons to the extent of what Gabriela had learned.
Memoirs are written about one's personal life experiences, where the author invites readers to share in their life experiences. In memoirs, the author mention highlights of their life, and whether those memories, are joyful, terrible, and the impacts it had. Memoirs provide benefits to the reader, such as learning life lessons. In the memoir I read, “The Year Finding Memory,” by Judy Fong Bates, I’ve learned some life lessons that I can relate. My parents have had conflicts throughout their marriage, Bates explained how her parents wanted to split but they had a 'heart' keeping them together, their daughter.
As a former child soldier, so many moments have changed his life. Most of these moments become memories he will never lose. Beah knows how important his memories are, even though they are scary. In chapter 2, he writes about “Memories [he] sometimes wish[es] [he] could wash away, even though [he is] aware that they are an important part of what [his] life is” (19). Beah is living in New York when he writes this.
She argues that if we do not write memoirs for ourselves, then someone else would probably write it. These observations indicate that the true meaning of yourself would be lost. This could also relate to template memories; except the memories are already are written down. All that has to be done is reading the memoir and gaining meaning from it, but you will never get the true meaning unless the memoir is from the person themselves. You would be getting an interpretation which could hold a different meaning or theme from what the person in question was thinking.
O'brien feels that as opposed to people whose lives are temporary, stories live on. It is appropriate to store memories of people in stories because the stories are the vehicle to bring memories the of people past their death, into the future. Ultimately, stories are powerful because they can hold love and memories of people
Stories and memories passed on through generations can help to shape an individual. In many instances, storytelling can tell a lesson or push a person’s opinion about something in a certain direction. Memories can sometimes be unreliable, but can also be all that someone can base their life off of. Judith Ortiz Cofer’s memoir Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican childhood uses storytelling to share her memories in a life lesson manner.
In M Train, the topic of memories relates to Smith’s quest for meaning by allowing her to reflect on her past experiences and to more precisely understand herself as a deeply, emotionally connected person. Throughout M Train, Smith often reflects on memories that she is reminded of during
Uneven Geographies of Race and Class The story “Walking While Black” by Garnette Cadogan from topic 8 follows a young man from Kingston, Jamaica and his struggles due to being a person of color. Let’s start off with some backstory before we get into it. Like I said, this young man grew up in Jamaica. He would walk the streets like nothing, at one point he even described his way home as home.
