Critcal Response #2

             The readings this week transformed storytelling for me. Each one possessed great passion, of how society seems to strip away important details that those of oppressed group cling to. Storytelling in many forms gives power to one’s voice, and allows for them to have a unique identity amongst everyone else. Keeping hold on one’s identity has proven to be difficult in our present society. As we discussed in class it’s a fine line between trying to pressure everyone into one box and losing society in a sea of confusing boxes.

            Patti Duncan’s History of Disease left me with profound emotions. Specifically at the point where it describes the young child’s mother being sick. It was said “Sometimes the girl wakes in the middle of the night and believes that she is going to die. The sickness is no longer her mother’s. It belongs to her”(Duncan 160). It’s nothing new thinking about how we would greatly bare the pain so our loved ones don’t have to. The ending brought me right back to this quote thinking of the idea that the mother never got to tell her true story instead taking the one that society expected her to have.

            Powell’s listening to Ghosts was slightly hard to navigate in the beginning but towards the end it became easier to draw conclusions of its meaning. One of the more powerful statements in the article was “your work should move you”(Powell 16). These words speak to me personally. Being young I thought it best to keep my past and pain to myself, it was until High School when I gave them a voice that I found strength. Finding strength has filled my college years with extraordinary experiences which in turn moved me. This idea of storytelling also comes together in this article when Powell talks about the art of tattoos, “Inscribing an accumulation of histories alongside the history told by the privilege of my skin color”. Tattoos is a way to give honor to your identity which is just as permanent as the ink being pushed into your skin.

             Embracing Race and culture sought to be another thread which tied this week’s reading together. In History of Disease there seemed to be a battle between the identity society associated with being Korean and what the girl in the story wished to be what people saw. I could see the struggle as she ends with saying how she would lay herself across the divide. Culture is evident in Powell’s writing as she tells us her troubles with how history is so easily altered in America and it has proven to be difficult keep the story straight. Even as an American, Identity as an association to history can be hard given that it became so distorted. I think this is what makes storytelling important, to keep accurate accounts of the influential moments that shape you as well as to have it be remembered. Cherrie Moraga’s loving in the war years in the very first few pages expressed to me breaking the divide between her Chicano roots and the influence of America. Although I am not fluent in Spanish I saw its importance in the book, especially when she says “So that gives me hope. That as artists we might have something to contribute between and beyond what we are allowed to live here in this Amercanprison of forgetfulness”( Moraga vii). Another quote which hit me while reading was “ I cannot write what I am not willing to live up to”(xi), I internalize this as accepting you past as part of you but moving forward so that it may not continue to damage you.