Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Story-March 24
Yabo creatively gives personal stories aarger significance. I have been researching a lot about how memoirs, although it is a more intimate form of historical writing, makes the everyday lives of people historically and politically important. Take the chapter titled "Massa Bull Massa Cow" for instance. In this chapter, Rudy and Ramses discover that their child is born intersexed. Being born as an intersexed child creates an inherent mixed identity. What makes this chapter even more interesting is the fact that this family is black. This challenges the idea of an intersecting idea even further, as it makes intersexed anatomies a total reality for both the family and the doctor. For example, the doctor notes that although she never witnessed the birth of an intersexed child, her medical studies of this phenomenon lead her to believe that only white children could be born this way. This relates to history in that historical and medical writing expunges black identities from existence. In this way, the doctor without even realizing it, forgets about the identities of black individuals. I am a history major, and I have definitely noticed that black stories are forgotten, unless it is in the context of black discourse.
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ReplyDeleteYou do a good job of working historical theory into your analysis of the work. This book relies a lot on history and how it works in context with the present so this is an important point to make. You also picked a good chapter to focus on because the revelation of Jules as an intersex character is integral to the plot of the entire book.
ReplyDeleteI think that theory is found in this piece of fiction because it deals heavily with women's issues, LGBT issues, and race and class issues, all of which come with their own studies and theories. Even though the book does not explicitly explain the theories we have discussed in this class by name, by including all of these different groups their theory underlies the context of the whole novel.
-Julie Kearney