Unpolished Gem is a thought provoking tale that explores the journey of Alice Pung from girl to woman. The memoir fluidly transitions between a series of themes and ideas, but through these a constant concept is explored; the cultural divide. Alice’s culture and background are the foundation of every decision she makes and thus, throughout the entire autobiography, the reader observes the implications of this, and often, the divide this creates. The reader perceives the social division Alice’s culture generates and the impact this has on relationships in and out of the home, and also in Alice’s ability to assimilate. Cultural divide is also apparent to the reader when comparing the expectations of Alice’s family to those of her classmates.
William Zinsser the author of “How to Write a Memior” gives three key phrases for writing a memoir. “Be yourself,” “Speak freely,” and “Think small.” This is a way to organize your memoir however you want it to flow. Walter Dean Myers author of “Bad Boy” follows these three phrases that Zinsser suggests by writing from a child’s point of view, freely but honest memoir, and vivid memories. William suggests that the best way to write a memoir is from a child’s point of view. ”
“I love you, I love you so much, and I lied to you, (Edwards, 115)” In the fictitious novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, the author, Kim Edwards, takes readers through the pernicious repercussions of deception. The main character, David Henry, becomes immersed in a sea of lies and dishonesty, making his identity unknown to even himself. His choice ultimately tears his family apart, leaving nothing but a slew of destructive secrets, emotional voids, and haunting memories.
Concurrent with the theme of this week’s lecture, the film ‘Couleur de peau: Miel’ revolves around the childhood of the protagonist, Jung, his family, his childhood, as well as his inner world and imaginations. Torn apart by the Korean war, hundreds and thousands of infants were abandoned and shipped to Europe as adopted children. Having been rescued by an officer while wandering on the streets and brought into a Belgian household with four children, Jung soon transformed from the outsider into an integral part of the family as the years went on. Anecdotes filled Jung’s life, such as accidentally shooting an arrow towards his sister, or falling in love secretly with his eldest sister. Yet these all never diminishes his family’s love for him.
The issue of the comfort women has been so politically charged in China and South Korea that if someone dares to attribute it to some factors other than the Japanese brutality and imperialism during WWII in public, he is likely to be branded as a traitor and inundated with threatening letters, expletive languages, and disparaging news articles. Such ethnic nationalism has created numerous barriers in academic research of these marginalized women in history. Fortunately, C. Sarah Soh makes an audacious attempt to challenge the dominating public rhetoric and offers an insight into the origin, the development, and the legacy of the “comfort women” system. Born in post-colonial Korea, but educated and worked in the U.S., Soh successfully distances herself from the intense emotion and nationalism in Korea and takes an objective, comparative approach to study the comfort women from the viewpoints of South Korea, Japan, and third-parties.
In the poem “Nikki-Rosa,” Nikki Giovanni incorporates diction and imagery to prove that her childhood was happy in spite of her hardships. She writes about how throughout her life, her childhood was viewed as a hardship due to her race. However, “Black love is Black wealth” (22), implies that there was a strong community of people that was often dismissed when speaking of her childhood and she implies heavily that it wasn’t as awful as most people perceived it to be. In “Nikki-Rosa,” Nikki Giovanni adamantly refuses to accept others’ beliefs of her childhood only being full of hardships and sorrowful memories.
Growing up in America and having a parent from another country comes with many perks and stories. In case you haven't read the title or wondering which parent is from another country; My father is from a small island in Central America named Belize. To give you the brief history about Belize, Belize first inhabitants were the Mayans from the beginning of time until the fourteenth century due to them mysteriously declining in population. The Mayans had a huge roll in the Central American countries. This due to the fact that they developed the idea of hieroglyphics, which back then was the only fully known writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas-as well as for its mathematics, astronomical system, art, calendar, and architecture.
Repressed memory is defined as a memory that was or is actively repressed by a human’s brain to protect them from a psychologically devastating impact of that memory (such as child abuse, rape, molestation, and more). It is interesting that our mind has the ability to disassociate just to shelter us from our psychological harm. Even though some people believe repressed memories should stay hidden because it would only hurt the person that it belongs to, I think it is better to have the memory and deal with it, and not having a piece of your life missing. A situation I can think of comparing this to would be another incident of memory failure.
The biological approach to the basis of memory is explained in terms of underlying biological factors such as the activity of the nervous system, genetic factors, biochemical and neurochemicals. In general terms memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and recall information and past experiences afterwards in the human brain. In biological terms, memory is the recreation of past experiences by simultaneous activation or firing of neurons. Some of the major biopsychological research questions on memory are what are the biological substrates of memory, where are memories stored in the brain, how are memories assessed during recall and what is the mechanism of forgetting. The two main reasons that gave rise to the interest in biological basis of memory are that researchers became aware of the fact that many memory deficits arise from injuries to the brain.
A photograph is more than just a simple image; it tells a story. A story beyond a particular moment in time, it holds secrets and memories. The eagerness to comprise a moment in the perfect shot seems to become an obsession for many. In Kim Edwards ' novel The Memory Keeper 's Daughter, Edwards uses photography as a motif which coincides with the novel 's idea of secrets. David Henry, the antagonist of the novel, becomes fascinated with photography after choosing to give away his daughter and compresses his guilt with photography.
INTRODUCTION Autobiography is a combination of self-representation, and life narration usually being written by him or herself. It has also been around with its complex history. These individuals would usually engage in different aspect of lives, usually their own life, through modes of storytelling using narration, illustrations or performance. Being situated in a specific time and place, the individual subject is in dialogue with their own processes or archives of memory. In the process of remembering, the individual creates meaning of the past.
Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.
Postcolonial writing has concerned itself specifically with the recuperation of lost history. Cultural Memory studies is that burgeoning field of study which provides the important tools for understanding and ultimately deconstructing the configurations of nationalist and imperialist power embedded in the representation of the past which takes cognisance of the visceral experiences and the memories of resistances of the oppressed through generations (Gandhi 92). ‘Culture’ is a veritable social construct that is usually understood in and through the contents of its traditions—its modes of action, forms of language, aspirations, interpersonal relations, images, ideas and ideals. ‘Memory’ is the capacity to remember, to create and re-create our past. The substance of our very being is memory, our way of living is retaining reminders; articulating memory is our raison d’etre.
The theme of the girl’s recollection was “Who am I?”. Before the recollection, if I asked myself this question, two things could happen: 1) I would stare into space with my body immobilized until I found a suitable answer. 2) My mind would blow up because of its inability to grasp the depth of this 3 word question. So under normal circumstances I would not recommend asking anybody (including yourself), this question.
When I was only a couple of months old my mom and I were stuck in an airport due to delayed flights. The only luggage we had was my diaper bag and a backpack full of baby toys. I was miserable and cranky the whole entire time which didn’t make my mom feel better. At the time I had no idea what was going on but now that will be stamped in my memories forever.
