Author Archives: Rachel

Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let It Begin With Us

In Reading Autobiography, the section on embodiment includes a description of a sociopolitical body. Smith and Watson define this sociopolitical body as “a set of cultural attitudes and discourses encoding the public meanings of bodies that have for centuries underwritten … Continue reading

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“Old Father, Old Artificer” The Father-Child Relationship in Bechdel’s “Fun Home” & the Similarities in Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son”

Alison Bechdel and James Baldwin are two seemingly disparate writers. While Bechdel is concerned with queerness in contemporary American culture, Baldwin concerns himself with the place of African Americans in pre Civil Rights Movement America. Yet, they are united, not … Continue reading

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Seeing the Truth: A Somewhat Buddhist Interpretation of Kingston’s “White Tigers”

Maxine Hong Kingston’s “White Tigers” is a an example of biomythography. Through this genre of life narrative, she remythologizes the battles of her own life as a Chinese girl in the slums of America into the mythological battles of a … Continue reading

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Hungry For What?

My Daddy used to give me a bath every night when I was little, up until I was old enough to bathe myself. We had our routine; Daddy would bathe me first, doing “tricks” with the washcloth, then I would … Continue reading

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Gettin’ Learned with Granny

  I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, my Granny, when I was young. To this day, I hold on to a card that she wrote me on my twelfth birthday, urging me to “do good in your … Continue reading

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Scraps of Pop

  This project is a multidimensional scrapbook, documenting the life of my grandfather, Robert Davis.  By weaving Pop’s own narrative through the stories he tells about the settings and times of his life and the people around him, I created … Continue reading

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Franklin’s Deism … Distant Love of God, Close Love of Self

Benjamin Franklin’s deism emerges, surprisingly, out of a semi-traditional belief system. In Autobiography, he situates his own religious principles by comparing them to the Presbyterian belief system. He denies “some of the Dogmas of that Persuasion,” but upholds what he … Continue reading

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My Truth is Your Truth in the Puritan Self

In  Reading Autobiography, Smith and Watson explore the ways that “Structuring Modes of Self-Inquiry” affect a text (90). In this, the writers engage with the idea that the use of conventional structures in writing, or of original ones, can be … Continue reading

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A Quasi-Puritan, Divine Remembrance During My Ten Minute Work Break

On the early evening of Sunday February 6, I call my eighty-five year old grandfather, “Pop”, from the back room of the coffee shop on my “ten.” On the third attempt (when he finally hears the ringer), I hear a … Continue reading

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The Ideological I – How a Changing Cabeza Changes God

In Reading Autobiography, Smith and Watson discuss the “Ideological I” in a way that illuminates the competition between Cabeza de Vaca’s religious/social/political beliefs and his diminishing likelihood of survival in the first ten chapters of his narrative. Smith and Watson … Continue reading

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