Skylar.Locke – English 252

Story

Photo credit to unsplash.com by Nong Vang

Ariana Connor, Skylar Locke, and Tai White

Stories Matter

Definitions:

The Oxford English Dictionary provides us with multiple, complex and often, differing definitions of “story.” One way a story can be defined as “an oral or written narrative account of events that occurred or are believed to have occurred in the past; a narrative account accepted as true by virtue of great age or long tradition” (OED). There are a plethora of ways in which one can interpret a story and the ways in which it is told. A more unconventional perspective of a story is “an event, statement, or situation that supposedly epitomizes one’s life or experience. Frequently in that’s the story of my life and variants, used as a resigned acknowledgment that one has experienced a particular misfortune too often” (OED). Another way of defining a story is “a narrative of imaginary or (less commonly) real events composed for the entertainment of the listener or reader; a (short) work of fiction; a tale” (OED).

Etymology:

< Anglo-Norman storie (early 12th cent.; also estorie , istorie ), variant of Anglo-Norman and Old French estoire tale, narrative, history, account, source, text, etc.

Keyword in Action:

We are quick to fall victim to what Chimamanda Adichie portrays in her TED talk as “the danger of a single story.” According to Adichie, the danger of a single story is “[showing] a [person] as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” People have a tendency to only take a single idea, message, or lesson from a story and that becomes the entire story. This is problematic because storytelling allows us to make meaning out of the chaos of human existence and, in turn, understand who we are as individuals. If we only take single ideas out of stories then, we limit ourselves to one single perspective and definition. Through analyzing Zong! By M. NourbeSe Philip, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of A Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, and Mean by Myriam Gurba, we can see how influential stories are and how beneficial it is to view stories in an open-minded and creative lens rather than from a single, limited perspective.

In Zong!, M. NourbeSe Philip creates found poems by retracing the horrific events that took place on the slave ship to Jamaica in November 1781. She turns the law document of the Gregson v. Gilbert case that views the event through a biased, restricted perspective into chaotic, confusing found poems. Approximately 132 enslaved Africans were killed in the Zong Massacre and were unjustifiably and intentionally chained together. They were then, thrown overboard by the captain due to illnesses from a shortage in water and food supply. The law document of the Zong Massacre gives a one-sided story from the court’s side of view rather than the stories from the victims. Philip’s found poems are the voices of the enslaved Africans that never had the chance to tell their story.

Philip’s poems epitomize the horrors of the Zong Massacre and recover history by challenging the readers to create a story from the unsaid accounts of the enslaved people. She forces the readers to interpret stories in a new, unconventional way. There are multiple different ways in which one can read and understand the found poems in Zong! The abstractness of these poems forces the reader to imagine the outcomes of the massacre and attempt to piece together the events that occurred that day.

The first found poem in Zong! is complicated to read because the design goes against the ways that stories are formally structured; however, this is ultimately Philip’s goal. She is placing the responsibility on the reader to recreate the story of the Zong Massacre. The words one can easily pick out in the poem are “water,” “god,” “days,” “one,” and “won.” The overuse of the letter “w” and the word “water” are used to reflect the surroundings of the enslaved people. Whereas, the letter “d” and the use of the word “days” represents how long these enslaved people were held captive. Philip effectively scatters these letters to show the mess of the massacre that took place. Zong! brings light to this massacre.

Philip changes the original, unjust court document and takes specific words from it to express the turmoil under the massacre. The senselessness of these words further represents how foolish the captains on Zong were and the leaders in the court case. The law document from the Gregson v. Gilbert court case broke down the Zong massacre into a rational and simple event. If we compare the formatting of her found poems to traditional stories that are formally written and easier to digest then, we are able to open our minds to the different ways a story can be told. Stories are effective and are used in ways to separate the readers from the outside world and put them in a time warp to alter the ways they treat and read stories.

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of A Girlhood Among Ghosts, single stories shape the narrator’s life and restrict her from finding her individuality as a young Chinese-American girl. The narrator rejects single stories which allow her to enter the world of multiple, creative stories. Storytelling allows the narrator to liberate herself from being stuck between the norms and identities of being both Chinese and American.

Kingston’s novel, a memoir (the story of one’s life) ironically, opens with the story of someone else. By opening the memoir in this intriguing and strange way, Kingston suggests that stories do not have to follow the traditional layout of what a story is. With that, her novel begins with the narrator reimagining the single story of her dead aunt, the No Name Woman. She creates three imaginative stories about her aunt to understand her evolving womanhood. In the first version, the aunt was raped by a man. In the second version, the aunt chooses to have sex with a man, leading to her pregnancy. In the final version, her aunt sleeps with a man because she was a “wild woman” (Kingston 8). The intention of this story is to create fear in the narrator and portray the danger of sexuality. The mother threatens her daughter by stating “what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born” (Kingston 5). As a result of this story, the narrator becomes traumatized and is fearful of men. She states “as if it came from an atavism deeper than fear, I used to add “brother” silently to boy’s names” to make them “less scary” (Kingston 12). By listening to her mother’s story of her aunt, the narrator is restricted from the ability to explore her curiosity in romantic relationships and boys.

The narrator does not take the story as a cautionary tale that was intended to restrict her life possibilities; instead, she turns it into a story that expands on them. In the narrator’s stories of her aunt, she gives the No Name Woman freedom to be in control of her situation. However, the aunt was not allowed to have this type of freedom due to the strictness of Chinese culture. The narrator desires to break away from the roles given to her in Chinese cultures such as being a “wife” and a “slave” (Kingston 10). She refuses to let a single story restrict her role as a woman and more broadly speaking, as a person. With that, she creates multiple, imaginative stories that aid in her search for her identity. Kingston pushes against this idea that stories only come in one exact form with a single purpose. She wants us to understand that stories exist in many, different versions and perspectives and are allowed to be flexible in the eyes of the storyteller and listener.

Myriam Gurba’s Mean, a memoir of violence and dark humor, pushes against the traditional way a memoir is written by opening with Sophia Torres’ story, not her own life story. By doing this, Gurba is telling the world a story that would have never been taught or given the proper attention it deserved. She is portraying that a “story” has the power to bring awareness to stories that go unnoticed.

Throughout the majority of the book, Gurba writes stories that are focused on the sexual assault and death of Sophia and how Gurba feels emotionally guilty by this event. We do not find the exact reasoning behind her guilt until the end of the book. Gurba states “the man [who] . . . sexually [assaulted] me murdered Sophia Torres” (112). At this moment, we find out that Gurba was not only sexually assaulted but raped by the same man that raped and killed Sophia. In an interview with Gurba, she states “I carried around a lot of survivor guilt because I share a lot in common with the other victim that didn’t survive. But one of the things we don’t share in common is survival” (Racho). Gurba struggled for so long with the death of Sophia because she could have as easily been the victim that died; she was unable to come to an acceptance that she survived. At the end of the book, Gurba allows the ghost of Sophia to live within her and experience life through her.

If it was not for Gurba, many people would be completely unaware of who Sophia was and what happened to her. In the interview, she states “in some ways I wanted to make her somebody, at least in death” (Racho). Sophia’s story was viewed as one that did not matter and went unnoticed. However, Gurba uses her book to show that her story matters. She intentionally waits until the end to reveal that the story is not only Sophia’s but also her own. Through her book, she effectively to shows how a story is not only a single story.

As Adichie states at the end of her TED talk, “when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise” (TED). Stories matter and are influential in everyone’s life. They fill our society and in order for us to grow, we must not limit stories to one single definition and generally speaking, single stories. Stories are important because they provide us with the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of our experiences and who we are as individuals. If we reject single stories, then we are able to enter a creative realm where stories fly around with different messages and ideas.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda. “The Danger of a Single Story”. TED, July 2009.

“Discover the Story of EnglishMore than 600,000 Words, over a Thousand Years.” Home: Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com/view/Entry/190981?rskey=K2BqaW&result=2#eid.

Gurba, Myriam. Mean. Coffee House Press, 2017.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of A Girlhood Among Ghosts. Vintage International, 1976.

Philip, Marlene Nourbese. Zong! as Told to the Author by Setaey Adamu Boateng. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008.

Racho, Suzie. “Myriam Gurba’s ‘Mean’: A Memoir of Hurt and Humor.” KQED, 28 Feb. 2018, www.kqed.org/news/11652366/myriam-gurbas-mean-a-memoir-of-hurt-and-humor.

“Story | Search Online Etymology Dictionary.” Index, www.etymonline.com/search?q=story.

Women Fighting to Change the Law of Marital Rape

Hi All! First, I’d like to say that I hope everyone enjoyed being an artist and creating your own individual found poems. Second, I would like to thank those of you who read my found poem and those who took the extra step to comment. Finally, I hope you found my poem to be powerful. I am extremely passionate about this topic and dedicated a lot of time to create this masterpiece.

I chose to make my found poem based on an article from the New York Times called “Inside One Woman’s Fight to Rewrite the Law on Marital Rape” written by Jenn Ackerman. The article was published on April 13, 2019, and discusses the fight to criminalize marital rape that stretches back decades. Most states have loopholes within the law that make it more difficult to prosecute rape by an intimate partner. A woman, one of many, named Jenny Teeson, is fighting to change this law in her home state, Minnesota. The issue of marital rape has been an ongoing, ignored problem that has come up “as early as 1848” (Ackerman). The legal director for the National Women’s Law Center states in the article that “it’s long overdue to treat rape in the martial setting with the same seriousness as rape that occurs outside of it”.

As I was looking for articles that made me anger or upset, I came across this article that did indeed, make me mad and upset. I began reading it and my mind spun with confusion. Sometimes, actually most times, I truly do not understand the justice system in the United States. My heart burned with fury as I read the absolutely disgusting acts some husbands have done to their wives. It baffles me that under the law, women still are unfairly treated. What the hell is the difference between a husband raping his wife or a random man on the street raping a random woman? I do not see a difference at all because at the end of the day, rape is still rape. A documentation stating that you are married by law does not make the rape any different or less painful or make it justifiable. Another issue I cannot wrap my brain around is the fact that these husbands raping their wives do not get close to the charges that they deserve due to the law. How insane is that?

On another note, this article was five pages long containing a whole lot of overwhelming and heavy information. I struggled trying to figure out what language and facts are the most important and powerful. As I look at my finished product, I am happy to see the most extreme points laid out. I feel as though this project allowed me to turn an article into a poem and bring a more direct impact to the matter. My absolute favorite part of my found poem is the last line that states “men are not entitled to women’s bodies”. I put a black box underneath it to give more attention because it is the main, crucial point women are trying to make. Men do not have the power over women’s bodies. It is not the late 1800s; It is 2019. However, this problem exists and cannot be ignored by laws.

Sapphire’s Reading: The Power of a Voice

Hello all! I hope your weekend was everything you needed it to be in order to begin a positive week filled with productivity. I wanted to take some space on our blog page to express my thoughts and opinions on the reading that took place on April 4th. Before I begin writing all of my emotions, I want to mention that Sapphire’s voice is a “prominent and well-needed one in contemporary literature” because she pushes us to look for the hard truths in a society that we often try to avoid or hide. Her work is the kind of literature that stays with you forever. With that being said, I would like to continue discussing two main takeaways that I discovered during the reading. The first relates to the writing Saphirre creates and the performance she gives when she reads her beautiful work. The second ties to a question that one of the members in the audience asked Sapphire after her reading.

As I listened to Sapphire read a couple of her poems, I became captivated by the way she spoke and the feelings she evoked within me. In the final line of the poem titled “Nagasaki Number 2,” Sapphire states that “there is no rest or forgetting, the only justice is peace”. Personally, I found this statement to be extremely powerful and true. A couple of lines before this, she literally states that male, African American balls were used for tobacco similar, to how female, Native American uteruses were also used for tobacco. This part of the poem stabbed me right in my chest. The way she stated each word with extreme passion and anger made me feel genuinely angry for how people treat other people. There is a type of rawness behind her writing that cuts right to the point.

In another poem she states, I am a person who says “hi ma’am and bye bitch”. When she says “hi ma’am,” her tone was calm and her voice was gently flowing into my ears. Then, when she exclaimed “bye bitch,” her tone was fierce and demanding. Her voice abruptly interrupted the flow before. She mixes cursing and heavy language into her writing which creates a much more impactful point. It also adds to this underlining humor she plays with throughout her writing. She intertwines extremely dark topics and humor together in a very beautiful, captivating way. She performed each piece she read that made it impossible for the audience to stray away from the power within each word she spoke.

At the end of her reading, an audience member asked her how much time she devotes to writing. She replied that “she does not have much time but it isn’t about time but more about just writing every day”. For her, the best time to write is in the morning. She acknowledges that not everyone is a morning person, some enjoy the nighttime better (I am definatley on eof those people). However, she said that she tries to catch your energy when she has it. A crucial point that she ended on is that “before she takes care of anyone else or teaches anyone else, she has to understand her own vision because nobody else has those visions but her”. I am a full believer that you cannot help or take care of anyone else until you help and take care of yourself. This follows with the statement that “you cannot love others unless you love yourself”. How are you suppose to give others a piece of yourself, (whether that be love, knowledge, etc.) if you do not take a moment to understand what is already within you?

I encourage you all to take Sapphire’s advice: try to catch your energy before it blurs in with our busy lives and take a moment to write about your visions. If anyone had the desire to read this post, please feel free to comment on any questions, thoughts, or feelings you had during my long post (I apologize, I get carried away). Anyway, thank you all and best of luck with the ending of the smester!

“We speak the same language, the very same”: Overcoming the Language Barrier

Out of the Ordinary

Stuck in a divergent, twisted limbo
filled with a place of tradition and familiarity;
Mixed with an unknown language, peculiar people
and an identity that is 
lost in a tornado of unfamiliarity. 
Trapped behind a transparent barrier
between her own universe 
and their world.

useless.
different.
unwanted.

A strange new world,
one where language and skin color defines who you are.
Her identity is lost 
between who she is and who her sister wants her to be. 
No place to call home.
Confused with the way of life, here.
Desiring and begging to go back to where she once was.
No place to make her own.

distinct.
foreign.
outcast. 

Paranoid delusions fill her mind 
and prohibit her from staying sane.
Unable to belong to this new lifestyle,
her new home is an asylum.
People resonate with her,
understand her stories, and her madness.
She does not feel odd.
She is able to find peace among insanity.

United.

Similar to all the other chapters in “The Woman Warrior,” “In the Western Palace” continues presenting this major theme of contrasting cultures. In this story, there is a culture clash between the old lifestyle of Chinese culture represented by Moon Orchid and Brave Orchid and the new lifestyle represented by Moon Orchid’s nieces, nephews, and her doctor husband. Moon Orchid leaves her life of traditions and customs to enter a new life where she must learn to adopt and transition. However, she fails at completing simple tasks and conforming to American life. Along with being pushed behind a language barrier, her sister strongly pushes her to be this “woman warrior” that reclaims her husband and becomes the mother to the other wife’s children. Moon Orchid is unable to confidently succeed with this challenge and ultimately, loses her own identity due to the culture shock in America.

Moon Orchid is unable to develop meaningful relationships with her nieces and nephews due to the language barrier and lifestyle differences. In a way, she is foreign among her biological family. She wanders around the house with a mind filled with questions and pure curiosity. She observes everything that her family does to try and understand their lifestyle. However, the family becomes quickly annoyed and irritated by the presence of their aunt. In one moment she asks one of her youngest niece what she is doing and the niece replies “You’re breathing on me. Don’t breathe on me.” (Kingston, 132). The aunt was simply wondering what the girl was doing and in return, the niece is being extremely hostile. The niece does not want anything to do with her aunt and this is how most of the children begin to feel. It is extremely difficult for the aunt and the children to connect because they are in complete opposite lifestyles. Another moment in the story, the children claim that the aunt is “driving [them] nuts!” (Kingston, 141) and they say this to one another in English infront of their aunt. The children purposely speak in English because their aunt cannot understand them; It is as if the presence of the aunt is a burden among them. It is truly heartbreaking because the aunt is only trying to belong but she is constantly being suppressed. In the end, when she becomes mentally ill, the children state “Chinese people are very weird” (Kingston, 158). This shows how vastly different the children are compared to the aunt. The children base their judgement on their aunt to make a claim about people of their own. They are completely uneducated of their culture which is a problem that Brave Orchid deals with frequently in the story.

Brave Orchid is determined to have her sister reconnect with her husband based on a mythical story from China. However, Moon Orchid does not want to interrupt the lifestyle of her husband but her sister convinces her that she has no other option. Brave Orchid assumes that the traditions in China will fall over into the U.S which is not true due legality. Disregarding the rationality of the situation and Moon Orchid’s feelings, Brave Orchid truly believes that her sister will be able to storm into her husband’s house and become the mother of the other wife’s children. She claims “the children will go to their true mother—you” (Kingston, 125). This absurd mindset leads to an unfortunate situation that causes her sister to become mentally insane. Brave Orchid is misguided by her chinese culture which results in the loss of her sister.

When Brave Orchid unwillingly forces Moon Orchid to see her husband, Brave Orchid does most of the talking. Moon Orchid rarely speaks up and when she does she whispers the question “what about me” (Kingston, 153). Her husband points out the fact that she will never be able to fit in America because she “can barely talk to [him]” (Kingston, 153). This further supports that she is completely trapped behind a language barrier that is interfering her way of life. After he explicitly rejects her, she becomes insane and loses herself completely. In a way, Moon Orchid’s attempt to regain her husband back is an act of holding on to chinese tradition. However, in America a husband cannot have two wives. This completely devastated her into a reality that she is completely lost in this new world. She begins to stop writing which had been her way of communication. Silence is again, a symbol of losing one’s self. The way of life in America is not anything remotely close to what she has was used to in China. When Moon Orchid is in the insane asylum, her last words to her sister are “we understand one another here. We speak the same language, the very same. They understand me, and I understand them” (Kingston, 160). They all speak the language of madness in the asylum which unites them together, in a way that she never felt with her family. For Moon Orchid, language is what caused her to break down. It is ironic that a different type of language made her feel whole again.

The poem I wrote above is a retelling of Moon Orchid and her struggle to overcome language. It is interesting that she does not feel sane until she is insane. Do you think that Moon Orchid’s insanity is different from Brave Orchid’s strong belief in the chinese myth of the Empress of the East?

Kingston has presented two complex stories of her two aunts to us so far, How are Moon Orchid and the No Name Woman very much alike?

Hi, I’m Skylar!!

Hello everyone! My name is Skylar and I’m from Port Jervis, New York. I’m a freshman majoring in English and business in human resources. I love the color yellow and my absolute favorite quote from Jennifer Niven’s novel, All The Bright Places is “You are all the colors in one, at full brightness”. I love doing yoga, writing in my journal, reading poetry and laughing with my friends. My favorite tea to drink is ginger and chamomile, however I am obsessed with iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts. Lastly, I cannot wait to spend the semester with you all!