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RECONFIGURING THE SAME OLE SAD RHETORICAL
STUDENT NARRATIVE LOVE SONG: AN EXAMINATION OF
IDENTITY AND TEACHER-STUDENT NARRATIVITY IN A
FIRST YEAR WRITING CLASSROOM

presented by

LATOYA FAULK

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Master of degree in Critical Studies in Literacy &
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RECONFIGURING THE SAME OLE’ SAD RHETORICAL STUDENT NARRATIVE
LOVE SONG: AN EXAMINATION OF IDENTITY AND TEACHER-STUDENT
NARRATIVITY IN A FIRST YEAR WRITING CLASSROOM
By

LaToya F aulk

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS

Critical Studies in Literacy & Pedagogy

2009

ABSTRACT
RECONFIGURING THE SAME OLE’ SAD RHETORICAL STUDENT NARRATIVE
LOVE SONG: AN EXAMINATION OF INSTRUCTOR-STUDENT NARRATIVITY
IN A FIRST YEAR WRITING CLASSROOM
By

LaToya Faulk

This thesis focuses on two students’ in a first year college composition classrooms
where diversity, power, language and race are topics of discussion. It explore the ways in
which these two students invent personal narratives. It collects a connection between
personal narratives to human existence, community and racial ideologies. Ultimately,
this project analyzes how institutional forces, symbolic representations of self and
“otherness” influence the types of narratives that are composed in the composition
classroom. When closely investigating what kinds of people the intellectual work of
college seems to be asking students to become and particularly to un-become, this project
finds that subjective narratives like the literary autobiography call out the hypocrisies and
ironies of performing, speaking and behaving through various logics and truths. This
rhetorical act reveals the complexities of performative identities, it also positions
acculturation as persuasive and performative, rather than simply an achieved act. Lastly,
it questions the dependency of the teacher’s body politics in relationship to student

narrative invention processes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In my family one must never forget where you’ve come from. This motto has
instilled in me the importance of never forgetting those that have shaped my becoming.
First, I thank my son, Christopher, for understanding these moments when I could not
give more of myself, when he really needed “mommy”. I thank my family in Saginaw
for their love and support. I thank my (Michigan State University) Writing Center family
for their encouragement and guidance: Janet Swenson, David Sheridan, Trixie Smith,
and Dianna Baldwin — I love you guys! As well, Dr. Ellen Cushman, Dr. Mindy Morgan,
Dr. Julie Lindquist, and the late Dr. Aime Ellis have all nurtured this thesis from its
inception to its final chapter, giving generous amounts of their (personal) time to read
countless drafts and provide critical feedback. Also, I give special thanks to Nancy DeJoy
for her unceasing support. I could not have completed this project without your tireless
dedication and nurturing spirit. Lastly, I wish to thank Kendall Leon, Jeremy Williams,
and Lauren Mason for their useful critiques, advise, and encouragement. It has been such

a pleasure to know and work among each of you.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. v
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................... 5
CHAPTER 3: SELF IMPLICATIONS - - - . - - - - 1.1
Self Reflexivity: Relations Among Instructor and Student Participants 13
CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY & SETTINGS-u- ...... -- - -- - - -- 15
Data Collection ................ _. ......................................................................................... 19
Student Participant 1: Socialization & Community ................................................... 22
Student Participant 2: Using Language to Affirm Identity ........................................ 30
CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS ................................................................................... 34
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 37

iv

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1:1 ........................................................................................................................... 17

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

It is in the process of creating stories; we create a sense of self
- Monisha Pasupathi, Kate McLean, Trisha Weeks

“The truth about stories is that that ’s all we are ”
—Thomas King, The Truth About Stories

My desire to explore student narratives in my own classroom is affirmed by my
own desire to tell stories. King (2005); Pasupathi, McLean and Weeks (2009) and Ba]
(2009) address the omnipresence of narrative. Stories are everywhere, and in telling
personal stories we reflect and construct significant recognitions of who we believe
ourselves to be. In the classroom, stories can be significant to students and instructors,
especially in bureaucratic university settings where specialized knowledge is valued. It is
the stories within these settings that offer us signs of resistance, transformation and
freedom. Narrative assignments are significant because they ask students to become
critically aware of the ways in which their language communities shape their lives
(Brandt, 1998; Eldred & Mortenson, 1992). However, this positioning of the narrative in
first year composition classrooms requires that we confront issues of race, language and
power. When it comes to confronting power in the classroom, I wrote my own race
narrative and came to realize the assignment, if completed effectively], requires
substantial subjective disclosure from students. In the first year composition course I

taught, narrative was an integral part of the programs course requirements. As a teaching

 

I The effective completion of the assignment depends on my understanding as an instructor, of how well
the students satisfies the assignment with respect to what the assignment sheet is asking students to do.

1

assistant (TA), the narrative was launched as an initial course assignment that could
support classroom practices. Further exploration of my own narrative disclosure process
along side my students, lead to critical awareness of: (1) written and oral racial ideologies
(both my own and my students), (2) vulnerabilities and issues of personal disclosure, and
(3) ways of locating alternative means to disclosing racial subjectivities.

Initially, I often celebrated the ideal that we all operate in individual logics and
truths as it relates to race and personal experiences. Additionally, because the course
centers the writing of racial and ethnic experiences, altering the narrative assignment to a
race narrative supported transformational dialog and ideological disclosure. However,
such a stance put me in a very vulnerable situation as I read the works of my racially
conscious students who were Caucasian predominantly. Consequently, as an African
American instructor at a predominantly white institution teaching first year composition,
it had become clear to me that students write race narratives based on their own
understanding of race, and the ways in which their own racial perceptions influence how
they perceive me as an instructor. Given this conclusion, through the usage of narratives
and the “inventive and revisionary processes”2 located within two students’ in a first
year college composition classrooms at Michigan State University, I seek to support
narrative focused pedagogy that engages racial logics through subjective voice.

Prior to teaching the course mentioned here, in TA training (with of help of Dr.

Nancy DeJoy), I came across a practice that asked instructors to compose the assignments

 

2 In Process This: Undergraduate Writing in Composition Studies (2003) Nancy DeJoy presents invention
processes as a way to guide reading and writing activities. In DeJoy’s work she offers up the following
invention questions: First, what activities did the writer have to engage in to create the text, and secondly,
what ideas, practices, arguments, etc. are created through the text. Revision consists of the ways in which
the text inspires change, persuades or motivates an actions or new way of thinking.

2

they ask their students to complete. In writing your own assignment, instructors take on
the perspectives of their students. However, as a reader of my own narrative assignment,
I confronted discomforts and vulnerabilities as I negotiated what to disclose, how to
disclose and in disclosing what to alter and what not to disclose at all. I utilize
“inventive processes” to identify racial and cultural performances, while paying close
attention to “revision processes” as a way to locate transformation and change. Such
process model approaches to narrative writing illustrate the ways in which subjective
written performances link directly to the ways in which students interpret the instructor’s
body and discourse. Although I have decided not to disclose my own personal narrative
in this project (for purposes I will discuss later on), the results of investigating my own
narrative in relationship to student narratives led to an opportunity to position the course
as a dialogue among numerous racialized bodies. The inventive process of composing
narratives for this project takes into consideration identity construction and pedagogical
positionality. It also considers the institutional experiences and influences of location
which define the college student (Kynard & Eddy, 2009). The revision process supports
transformation and change, however such change isn’t always evident in the artifact for
the writer of the text.

Min-Zhan Lu (1999) follows West in his statement on “critical affirmation of
black humanity” (West, 1994, p. 30) and calls forth “critical affirmation” 3 to be used in

the teaching of personal narratives for the purposes of revising one’s sense of self (p. 3).

 

3 Comel West (1994) in addressing Toni Morrison’s Beloved contends that through “subversive memory” it
brings forth “critical affirmations of black humanity found in the best of both nationalist movements (p.
30)”.Min Zhan-Lu utilizes “critical affirmation” as a central contribution to identity politics in that it
establishes concerns for others.

Furthermore, Villanueva (1997), Health (1983), Delpit (2006), Prendergast (1997),and Lu
(1991) argue that we must confront power, race and the origins of the literary forms we
ask our students to construct in academia. Therefore, prior to assigning narratives in first
year composition classrooms (where race and ethnicity are topics for discussion)
instructors benefit from addressing the inventive and revisionary processes of their
students. Secondly, instructors must consider their own racial and ethnic narrative
histories in relationship to those of their students and the history of the intuitions to which
they serve. Lastly, instructors must better situate narrative and critical race theory when
assigning student narratives. The purpose of this is to understand how we (both students
and instructors) come to construct the stories that we tell about our racialized bodies and
their histories.

When closely investigating what kinds of people the intellectual work of college
seems to be asking students to become and particularly to un—become, I find that
subjective narratives like the personal narrative call out the hypocrisies and ironies of
performing, speaking and behaving through various logics and truths. Students negotiate
what gets displayed in their personal narratives depending upon the pedagogy at work,
identification of and with their teachers and the interpretation of such identitifieations
which shape most composition narratives. This rhetorical act reveals the complexities of
perforrnative identities, it also positions acculturation as persuasive and perforrnative,
rather than simply an achieved act, it makes acculturation rhetorical and very much
dependent upon the teacher’s body politics: its primary audience. Additionally, this
project is a call to better explore the workings of narrative writing and race in first year

composition classroom. I propose that while assigning narratives for the purpose of

4

identifying student writing capabilities benefits pedagogical practices, it also creates
better subjective writers. Yet and still, it puts the student at risk of revealing personal
experiences that create critical understandings of how our own racial categorizations and
narrative creations influence transformative thought.
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Far too often learning spaces that discuss race become entrenched with not just
subjective writing, but subjective voices. Such subjective disclosures often go without
locating significant collective meanings or critical conclusions. Although this project
focuses heavily on race, it is important to note that critical narrative affirmations provide
substantial information on the workings of pedagogical positionality 4and student
performativity. Assigning narrative writing asks students to perform in ways that require
they become authentic5 representations of their race or ethnicity. I use Cushman’s (2001)
self-reflexivity, to confront the ways in which social relations position the researchers
and its participants (more on self-reflexivity in Chapter 3). The field of composition has
used critical race theory (CRT) and identity politics, making tremendous strides
concerning issues of personal disclosure, race and its significance in composition
classrooms. In this project, it is my hope that putting student narratives alongside my
own might allow for transformation and critical awareness that pushes my pedagogical

practices further. I use self-reflexivity, partly because layering discourses together might

 

4 Pedagogical positionality refers to liberatory pedagogy. It is adapted from the work of bell hooks (1994),
Paulo Friere (2000), the phrase gives reference to classroom dynamics created by the instructor. Whether
students internalize the requirements imposed upon them by the instructor or if emanicpatory practices for
freedom and critical consciousness are at work.

5 The word authentic is used here to address the belief that there are stereotypical characteristics that
categorize individual bodies thus placing them into racial communities.

5

speak back to my own understanding of classroom dynamics and my own transforrnative
sense of self. I also do it because the objective universality of teaching is always uprooted
by subjective positionality, whether we deny it as teachers, or hide behind it for the sake
of “professionalism”, we often hear students through our own experiences.

Brush and Higgins (2006) concluded that narratives are overwritten by
subordinate groups. While, Tanaka (2009) contends that narrated identities often come
with great distress for white students who cannot locate stories to tell. But, we must not
continue to focus entirely on students and their adequate or inadequate abilities to tell
stories given their ethnic identity. Instructors play a Vital role in their students’ writing
processes. I have come to discover that in order to better understand narrated identities,
we must explore the ways in which the instructor’s body politics in the classroom
influence the kinds of stories students locate (or do not locate).

Composition scholars within the past 10 years have questioned personal narrative,
often acknowledging its relationship to the political (Brandt, Cushman, Gere, Herrington,
Miller, Villanueva, Lu, Kirsh, 2001, p. 42). They contend that personal disclosure isn’t I
always in the public interest. Given America’s colonial history we learn that stories have
always played a major role in the public and the political. That is, stories are gathered to
construct collective meanings and have been used throughout history to develop
standards, laws and regulations. Personal disclosure have always been and always will be
political and thus, connected to the interest of an audience. That being said, students are
often always in situations where they must decide to confront subjective disclosures
where membership, belonging and entrance into a community is at stake. It is for these

reasons I explore how students’ performed their narrated identities in composition

6

classrooms within bureaucratic power and gate keeping mechanisms. It is through this
process that student become better writers.

Writing instructors celebrate the idea that writers teach writing. However, unless
one enters the classroom with personal narrative work already published, writing
instructors rarely release their own personalities through narratives the way students are
expected to do so in narrative assignments. Although, this project supports instructor
narrative disclosures alongside that of students, it hopes to show that writing instructors
can also utilize their own personal narratives alongside their students, to reveal the effects
institutional practices have on both, instructors, students and classroom dynamics. This
is significant because it shows us the ways in which academic writing is associated with
power in the same way that language is associated with power (Fairclough, 2001). The
exploration of student writing processes affirms the idea that stories are the framework of
our existence and within those frameworks both students and instructors invent and
recognize meaning.

According to Gordon, MeKibbin, Vasudevan and Viz (2007), places of meaning
can illustrate the contexts, complexities, and situatedness of experience (p. 326). Thus, a
narrative can take on universal and mythical ideologies, the origins of which are
embedded in oral traditions, cultural identification markers, personal relationships and
mass media consumption. To see narrative as a rhetorical devise requires that we use
language to tell a story, which pulls the self together or apart through identification with
an audience for a particular purpose. In the case of the student participants the primary
audience is their instructors (more on this in Chapter 4). This is perhaps the only

audience they are most concerned with. Yet, the purpose of the narrative in this context

7

addresses issues of identity as it relates to power and the ways in which power regulates
the stories told.

Genres situate certain inventive processes (Bawarshi, p. 105). The narrative essay
is an artifact of the contact zone (Pratt, 1991). That is, the text is an artifact that reveals a
stage of the process of identifying with the culture of a dominant community. According
to Foucault (1979) narratives are the equivalent of the Catholic confessional, which are a
governance of self surveillance and self control. Foucault’s critique of narrative accounts
for why the inventive process presumes that we embody ourselves before recognizing an
audience. This remains rather complicated for writers of personal thoughts that will be
made public, or which are used to satisfy a requirement for the course. The power an
audience has over us changes the perception of reality from which we speak. For our
students, their audiences are often representatives of an institution of power.

It is important to recognize how acculturated literacies influence all students.
Knowledge is justified through the Iegitimating of narrative (Lyotard, 1993). Within the
process Of legitimatizing narratives deconstruction and “leaving behind” of certain
narratives must occur. These literacy narratives complicate while also contributing to the
identity formation of students. According to Vandenberg, Hum & Clary-Lemon (2007)
“to be a subject means that one is often only momentarily situated while moving within
discursive spaces; the structures of authority, power, and privilege that we are bound up
with affect the positions from which we speak and write, but positionality is fluid and
heavily contextual” (p. 373). Hence, such notions of becoming to fulfill the objectives of

a system of power determine what students disclose in their personal narratives and what

they decide not to disclose. This inventive negotiation in the writing process of narrative
is rhetorically perforrnative.

Composing a narrative of a “literate self” requires that we first understand literacy
as an identity marker. Identity is complicated, and simply asking that students move
inside a literacy community, particularly ones that enable and sustain power
relationships, can be difficult to master and negotiate. On the other hand, students are too
often positioned in scholarship as acculturating, melting or meshing into academic
language communities (Street, 2001; Shaughnessy, 1977; Bartholomae, 1985;
Prendergast, 1995; Bizzell, 1992). The epic and widely used article by David
Bartholomae (1985), “Inventing the University” is famous for its acculturated signals
like: “speak our language”. David Bartholomae (1985) asserts that being trained in
academia asks individuals to perform, speak and behave through its logic and truth. But,
students bring and transform those logics and truths provocatively, sometimes with an
understanding of the forces of power that embed the multiplicity of their unique selves.
We as instructors must spend time listening to what we don’t want to hear from our
students, or what our student’s refuse to tell us due to power relationships and the
instructional dynamics of the classrooms. As hard as it might be we must situate our
pedagogy and engage in dialog concerning how students make use of or don’t make use
of the literacy information learned in composition classrooms.

Catherine Prendergast’s (1998) work on specialized discourses in academia show
us that language acculturation or cultural conformity are not sufficient in addressing the
sustainability of what Victor Villanueva calls colonial sensibility (respectively).

According to Prendergast (1998) we must “investigate the enduring and ingrained nature

9

of this colonial sensibility and its effects on discourse if the absent presence of race is to
be confronted and the absent absence of racism revealed” (p. 37). The racialized and
colonized history of America provides students (in my classroom) who proclaim their
newness to my black female body with a conflicting outlook on the usage of standardized
language or the cultural politics of my classroom. That is, my body did not in many ways
represent traditional standards of power, and thus, students appeared to be excited as well
as nervous about the pedagogical framework of our class.

Foucault (1979) contends: “power is exercised rather than possessed it is not the
‘privilege’, acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its
strategic positions-an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of
those who are dominated” (p. 23). Foucault’s understanding of strategic position is
extended in the work of Said, who defines strategic location as: “. .. a way of analyzing
the relationship between texts and the way in which groups of texts, types of texts, even
textual genres, acquire mass density and referential power among themselves and
thereafter in the culture at large” (p. 20). Students and instructors are often always aware
of the strategic positions of power that work in the classroom. In line with Foucault and
Said’s work, students are given grades by instructors which determine their efforts and
intellectual contributions to instructor driven assignments. The instructor represents the
institution because of the position he/she has gained. Instructors exercise their power over
students through grades, evaluations and their interpretations of students’ effort and
intellect. College campuses remain racially evasive spaces of institutionalized discourse.

Instructors also reveal their identities, their power and their understanding of the

world through language. Language is central to power and struggles for power
10

(Fairclough 2001; Foucault 1972; Morrison 1993). Hymes (1995) contends that
narratives are a “textual architecture where we can observe residual and emergent cultural
traditions brought into confluence with each other” (p. viii). Language used in their
syllabus, in the classroom and on their assignment sheets. Language is a “form of action”
and a “matrix of forces” that spoken or written comprises speech acts that promise,
persuade and or warn (F airclough 2001; Bakhtin 1981). The inconsistencies that inhabit
our reality are often available to us when examining subjectivity in relationship to
contexts like intuitions, history, time, location and environment. With narrative writing,
students are allowed the opportunity to play with institutionalized constructions of
personhood. Students utilize the genre to resist social systems and reclaim, de-center or
defuse power. Thus, personal narratives then become the rhetorical act of using
language to perform valued identities situated in context.
CHAPTER 3: SELF IMPLICATIONS

Having grown up in an economically disparaging community, becoming the first
person in my family to pursue a graduate degree, essentially multifaceted subjectivities
are presented in my own personal narrative. W.E.B Dubois’s ideal of double
consciousness helped me analyze the contradictions of surviving in academia, while
going home to an impoverished neighborhood overpopulated by what I had come to
understand as “marginalized” people allowed for critical self-reflections on personal
paradoxes. I always saw myself through the eyes of others. The results of such
reflections proved that I was utilizing academia to escape a past full of struggle and
poverty, while reproducing ideological hierarchies in a position of power in academia.

Over time, my narrative proved that this internal conflict made its way into my writing,

11

my classroom and my pedagogical framework. In my pedagogical framing, I had
adopted Florence Howe’s (2003) understanding of entering the classroom as a member of
the learning community, alongside a person of experiential and intellectual authority.
Moreover, my pedagogy required that students become self-directed learners, and that
they position themselves as a community of writers in diverse stages of the writing
process. Royster (1996) presents the notion that the “laying” of stories “one against
another against another build credibility and offer, as in this case, a litany of evidence
from which a call for transformation in theory and practice might rightfully begin” (p.
30). This project actually translates the listening of student narratives into the
pedagogical practices that engage action and evidence of pedagogical awareness when
assigning narratives. Royster contends: “Knowledge is produced by someone and its
producers are not formless and invisible. They are embodied and in effect have
passionate attachments by means of their embodiment; they are vested with Vision, values
and habits, with ways of being and ways of doing” (p.287). In layering my students
narratives alongside my own in hopes of locating commonalities that drive critical
pedagogical consciousness and transformation, I came to understand that subjective
writing needed the collective voices of others in order to: (1) connect common stories that
replayed within the context of racial attitudes, (2) articulate the representations of a
collection of identities (3) understand the ways in which experiences, personal histories
and stories both fictional and non fictional transformed the writer and the reader.
According to Arnetha F. Ball and Ted Lardner (2005) teacher narratives are vital
instruments for locating teaching practices through the source of what’s affecting the

public and personal lives of teachers (p.103). Instructor narratives alongside student

12

narratives allow for a better understanding of the enactment of social systems upon
institutional practices and pedagogical logics. The analysis of my own narrative in
relationship to the two student narratives selected required that I rethink narrative
purposes. That is, it changed how I situated student narrative writing. I addressed similar
pre—compositional plights and became aware of the vulnerabilities of constructing an
assignment that required that I give background information without understanding the
risks involved or my audience’s ways of reading and understanding the experiences
disclosed. Writing one’s own narrative justified the need to confront collective racialized
identities and ideologies in relationship to my own identification as an instructor of color
and critical reader of student narratives. Addressing discomforts lead to racialized
recognitions that had shaped my understanding of character existence. For my students,
often times they located themselves in a racial/ethnic community where they became
authentic experts fashioned in understanding the ideologies of the whole group.
Self Reflexivity: Relations among Instructor and Student Participants

West (2001) believed that the bureaucratization of the academy would always be
problematic for many African American scholars (p.63). The dominant paradigm in
academia requires a specialization of knowledge which values adherence to western
standards. Such standards can limit opportunities to address personal discourses that
conflict academic cultural assumptions. Placing the literacy practices gained at home for
some Afiican American scholars, in competition with the literacy practices and survival
skills needed in academia. When language survival skills change, scholars, as well as
students must renegotiate their identities and reconcile internal language and identity

conflicts. Young (2007) illustrates the ways in which notions of “authenticity” and

13

classifications disrupt identity constructions. He believes that the central problem with
identity construction is black authenticity, racial identification and class classifications.
Young references Gilyard’s (1997) work on identifying the pluralism of black educators
(p. 96). Pluralism supports multiple cultural ideologies given the acquisition of numerous
language communities. Unlike pluralism, Dubois’s double consciousness adequately
addresses the psychoanalytical disturbances of moving in and out, back and forth and.
among the lines of multiple languages and ideologies. Especially when hierarchical
demands are made in academia which determine which has more merit.

Cushman (2001) offers up self reflexivity as a way to counter the problem of
researcher positionality. Self reflexivity allows for in my own narrative, I confront the
relentless negotiation of moving from home literacies in Saginaw to academic literacies
in college. Although I mention my narrative throughout this project, I have decided not to
include the actual narrative due to risk factors and issues of compromise. Constructing
my own personal narrative led to the identification of Si gnificant inventive processes
which permitted better ways of integrating narratives in my own classroom. My
inventive processes consisted of: viewing pictures of myself as a child at home,
addressing the discomfort of writing the narrative, considering my audience, addressing
the vulnerabilities of confronting home literacies, addressing the possibilities of self-
hatred, and coming to understand that the effects of college socialization has made me
insecure in my own understanding of black culture. I identified with my students’
awareness of audience and the how past experiences allow for critical understandings of

ideologies, acculturated literacies and the burdens of performed identities.

l4

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY & SETTINGS

As a reader of literary narratives, writing my own personal narrative changed my
understanding of what it means to disclose personal information for the completion of an
academic course. With that being said, the assignment sheet for the race narrative, was
written after the composition of my own narrative. The process of writing my own
narrative influenced the ways in which I constructed realizations of what students might
disclose. The assignment was positioned in my classroom as an opportunity to “share a
story of one’s racial past or present” at which the implications of such a story might
provide solutions or historical transformations of racial attitudes. In the writing course I
taught during the spring of 2009 students had the option of creating fictional or non-
fictional personal narratives. They were also given an opportunity to create multilingual,
multimodal or other new media formatted creative stories about racial and ethnic
experiences. I offered students the ability to chose between fictional and non fictional
narratives because I understood the process of recollecting past experiences through the
work of Andre Lorde, in what she calls “biomythography”. The narratives that I had
become a reader of, to which possess very different cultural capital of that of my
students, however exposed the mythology and performativity of recollecting a self in
written form. Also, King (2005) addresses the ways in which fictional stories reveal the
truth in the same ways that nonfictional stories reveal truth. Lastly, as it relates to the
invention process of students DeJoy (1999, p. 164) contends that “invention could and
Often did, mean the creation of something fake”. 7 out of 23 students chose to write
fictional narratives. It was assumed that nonfictional narratives resulted in confronting

the risks of sharing personal experiences. However, more students wrote nonfictional

15

personal narratives, the fictional ones. This may be a result of the limited amount of
fictional readings made available to students. Importantly, many students utilized their
imaginations to compose fictional literacy narratives that spoke to their own
understanding of racial meanings. For example they shared fictional stories on inter-
racial romances to growing up without a father as an Afi'ican American teenager to the
struggles and joys of multiracial and multilingual friendships. I collected a total of 24
student narratives, 16 of which were non-fiction narratives. The arrangement of course
readings played a role in understanding how students negotiate topics and how such
topics connect to personal experiences and imagination. The table below represents the
total number of students that composed fictional vs. non-fictional narratives. The themes
are listed randomly and are outlined by summarizing key topics or themes within the
student’s narrative. Most of the students composed non-fictional personal narratives
rather than fictional stories. This might be a result of the readings which were all non
fictional accounts of personal life stories where racial/ethnic experiences are shared. Of
these fictional personal narratives students dealt with issues concerning race that were

deeply affecting them or their families directly.

16

Table 1:1
Summary of Topic Categories of Student Narratives

 

Mode Themes Total
Personal Narratives

N on-F iction 0 Race, language and parenting 16
Learning about race via play and imagination
0 Coping with identity conflicts as a black athlete
in a predominantly white high school
0 Confronting Italian stereotypes
0 An interview with my Haitian grandmother
Single motherhood and African American
women 8
Growing up without a father
Violence, racism & alcohol on—campus
“I’m not white, I’m Albanian”
Living a “sheltered life” in the suburbs
Understanding the relationship between dance
styles and cultural communities

Fiction 0 Ethics, morals and manners of an Asian 7

American girl

0 An interracial love story

0 A tale about a white girl who leaves the suburbs
and gains black friendship in an urban area

0 A tale of a Korean native and a Korean
American’s transition into College life

0 A tale of a African American Californian who
chose education over gang violence and drug
dealing

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The assignment sheet read as follows:
In class we have been reading, writing and discussing the complexities of our own
racial/ethnic identities. At best, our experiences have in many ways shaped our
identities and how we view and explore the world around us. Many of us have
pondered whether adaptation of Standard English equals possession of power and
American citizenship; others have begun to question the relationships between
American ideologies of race and ethnicity to language, experience specific
cultural values. In this writing assignment I am asking you to “Tell me a story”.
What you tell, how you tell it, when and where you decide to begin or end your
stories is up to you. However, your stories must address or allow your readers an
opportunity to think, question and/or come to believe something critical
concerning race, ethnicity and experience. Creativity is important in this
assignment, but so is Play. This means that you anticipate mistakes and take the
time to critically examine your own stories. Thus, what this translates into is:
writing, re-writing, having others read your narratives and respond to it... writing
and reading what you have written, re-writing and revising. Be sure to revise in
ways that allow experimentation, re-thinking and re-writing the story you desire
to tell. If you get stuck and can’t start a sentence it might help to think about the
authors we have read, consider the ways in which they position their voices in
their narratives about race, ethnicity, gender, religion and culture. For some of
you writing in poetic form (Harreyette Mullen) might be the best way to compose

your story, for others a collage narrative (Malea Powell), and perhaps for some

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combining your personal narrative with course readings or images (Vershawn

Young/Amy Tan).
It is important to note during the class period where I introduced this assignment I shared
a section of my own narrative in class, as a way to promote creative and artistic forms of
subjective expressions. The assignment sheet anchored student writing, it was the starting
point of all in-class peer reviews, one-on-one paper conferences and discussions.
Data Collection

I chose to analyze student narratives composed in first year composition
classrooms because of the pertinent developmental stages of these students. The
transition from high school to College requires that students socialize in spaces with a
critical understanding of audience, various systems of logic and power. Additionally,
students move from classroom settings to their residential halls and “back home”, as you
will see with interview participant 1. As they move across a number of social locations
students are involved in negotiating language and political correctness and adhering or
resisting standardizations of the community they move between. They are also in dialog
with individuals whose religious, cultural and racial identities are different from that of
their own. For students these layers of interaction can confirm or alter their
understandings of truth, selfliood and logic, because college is a space where students
compose, try -on and consume selthoods for purposes of social capital and survival.
Thus, critical moments of narrative contradiction, constructions of identity and selflrood,
along with perceptions of an audience become essential to identity progress and academic

existence.

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Individual perspectives are constantly changing, which is why the follow up
interviews with students’ the following semester became important. The follow-up
interviews allowed the possibility to provide the student with my own understanding of
what had been invented in the narrative. The racial events that students disclosed were
for me as a reader direction to subjectivities and personal ideologies that promoted
stereotypes. The assignment offered an invitation to create a self or multiple selves.
Narrative became a rhetorical device for students and the instructor, where we used
language to tell a story which pulls apart or together the self through identification with
an audience for persuasive purposes. The audience participates in the process of writing
the narrated person into existence. Audience participation in confirming the narrated
person comes with great risk for the writer because narrative is a cultural resource.
Social practices are evident in narratives, teacher body politics become important because
risk taking and constructing these narratives for particular audiences have severe
consequences, particularly for scholars of color.

Constructing such an open-ended assignment allowed for a wide range of
interpretations of what a racial/ethnic experience looked like. Most students in the class
had already been questioning experiences surrounding race. Many of these experiences
often surfaced during classroom discussions. The inference of our class discussions in
relationship to their newly defined experiences as college students aided in constructing
there narratives. Students played with narrative voice in ways that produced multi-voiced
narratives. As a class we read the followings excerpts from personal narratives of
scholars in the field of composition studies: Vershawn Young, Morris Young, Amy Tan,

bell hooks and Malea Powell. After final grades were submitted all students enrolled in
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the classes were sent emails requesting their voluntary participation in the study.

Although face-to-face interviews were my first choice when compiling evidence for the

study, a large percentage of the students who responded to my email were no longer on-

carnpus. Data included selecting 2 of the 24 student narratives collected during spring

semester of 2009. In addition to analyzing 2 student narratives I also conducted

interviews online via AOL chat room, and 2 face-to-face follow-up interview during the

corresponding semester. The following interview questions were asked to the 2 student

participants:

a.

b.

Describe how your racial identity shaped your childhood upbringing?

What family traditions and/or stories help you explain how you understand
and articulate your own racial identity?

Describe for me the relationships you see between race, language and
education?
What have your experiences taught you about these relationships?

Tell me about a time when teacher-student relationships effected what
you choose to write about in your personal narratives.

Tell me about a time when your instructor’s identities lead you to avoid
writing certain topics.

Tell me about a time when the race of your instructor and your
interpretation of who you believed your instructor was and what he/she
valued influence the kind of narrative you wrote.

The 2 student narratives selected fell under the genre of nonfictional personal

experiences. Lastly, the students mentioned below both have been assigned pseudonyms

to protect their identities.

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Student Participant 1: Socialization & Community

Henry, during class discussions, often positioned himself as in opposition of
readings of critical race theorists who argued for awareness and a better understanding of
how whiteness operated in American society. In one class discussion where vernacular,
the NCTE policy statement “Student’s Rights to Their Own Language6 (SRTOL)”, and
literacy was being discussed he contended that “a certain racial group was often louder
than others”. Henry was unable to clarify such a statement when his classmates policed
him for explanations. However, I assumed after coming to know and understand Henry
that much of his comments were directly connected to the frustration, and thrill of living
in a particular residential hall known for its’ large Afiican American student population.
During our AOL chat room interview he identified himself as a white male who grew up
in what he called: “a very white neighborhood”. In his narrative he pieces together
moments in his life organized into 6 episodes. This narrative is entitled “A Sheltered
Child”. He outlines leading encounters during a quest for Afiican American friendship
as a white male from a “predominantly white community”. In the interview, I asked him
why he focused on Afiican American fiiendships over other racial groups. He responds:
“I thought this was the race that I was most sheltered from as a child, unfortunately”.

Two of the six episodes of his narrative, I outline here, he writes:

 

6 Student’s Rights to Their Own Language is a document composed in 1974 by the Conference on College
Composition and Communication that “affirms student’s rights” to utilize their own dialects and
vemaculars in the Composition Classroom. Many have contested the statement, of them is Vershawn
Young who argued that to give someone a right to use their own dialect, is still positioning oneself as
having discursive power and control over another.

Please see: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFlles/Groups/CCCC/NewSRTOL.pdf for further information.

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White Americans expect blacks to live in the ghetto and be gang bangers with
little money. I realized that [Mike] was different when I picked him up for
hockey practice one night. I went up to his front door and rang the doorbell. A
white man answered the door, and I asked for [Mike] hesitantly thinking I was at
the wrong house. What I learned next was astonishing. He was one of fourteen
kids seven of which were adopted. He’s adopted! Both of his parents are white,
he’s Jewish, he wears designer clothes, he plays hockey, and he has a white
girlfriend. At this moment the saying you can’t judge a book by its cover became
entirely true in my eyes! Over the next four years [Mike] and I became fiiends.
We played on two hockey teams at the same time together, we worked at the same
place, and we both have the same group of fiiends. [Mike] is one of a kind that’s
for sure. He is a great friend and I am lucky to have him as my friend.

The final episode:
I realized something this semester during my WRA 125 class. Over 19 years I
only have two real friends that are black. This truly bothers me. I have never had
a bad experience with anyone of a different race. Then it can only be my fault
that I have not ventured outside of what I am used to. I ‘m used to being
surrounded by whites, and interacting with them. Or can I not blame this on
myself, because I don’t know any better? I’ve never had the chance to develop
any relationships with people of a different race than me. I think now more than
ever I am starting to understand racism. It seems as if everything revolves around

money and location. I am sheltered from many aspects of life, because of where I

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live and how much money my family has. There is only one thing I can blame

only having two good black friends on. That is the economy and location.
Henry takes some personal risks when talking about race in an honest and open fashion.
Additionally, he positions himself as a member and expert of his “very white
community” when he states: “White Americans expect blacks to live in the ghetto, and
be gang bangers with little money”. It appears that although these are Henry’s thoughts
alone, he generalizes the assumption to include all those in his community.

This universal community logic as it relates to race justifies stereotypical
ideologies. Henry goes on to use first person, when he states, “I realized” that Mike was
different. Again, this suggests a correlation between the Speaker’s notions of blackness
to that of all people within his community. Working through what it means to locate
friendship within and outside of his own community allows for critical awareness of the
ways in which a “very white” background constructed his own understanding of race and
personhood. Where Henry begins to articulate contradictions, he also addresses his
limited amount of knowledge obtained concerning other ethnic and racial groups. He
does this first with Mike, who although he looks “black”, according to Henry he lives the
“white” life. Henry struggles to locate blame, interestingly assembling a polite language
filled with contradictions, he states:

(1) I have never had a bad experience with anyone of a different race. Then it can
only be my fault that I have not ventured outside of what I am used to.

(2) Or can I not blame this on myself, because I don’t know any better?

(3) I am sheltered from many aspects of life, because of where I live and how much
money my family has

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(4) There is only one thing I can blame only having two good black fiiends on. That
is the economy and location.

To blame in statement (4) his lack of black friendship on “economy and location”
yet also appreciate its ability to provide him with a “sheltered life” can be perceived as
contradictory. However, Henry understands that the safety located within the
homogeneous “sheltered life” has benefited him. He also articulates how this same
“sheltered life” is in opposition with his understanding of “blackness” or what it means to
be an African American. He believes his upbringing is in opposition with blackness,
particular black male connectivity. Limited exposure to cultural and racial groups other
than that of his own resulted in victimization. In the revisionary process, white privilege
becomes a burden or rather the effect of wronged racial ideologies. Again, it is
important to note that his essay is entitled “the sheltered life”, which appears to be a
celebration rather than a prosecution of racial/ethnic experiences.

In a need to locate the source of his unsuccessfulness in befriending those who are
black, particularly black males, Henry finally comes to locate the blame for his “sheltered
life”: the economy and location. Hill (2008) outlines multiple scenes of cross—cultural
language misconduct as “referential ideology”. She contends that knowledge “shared by
most white middle-class Americans” come to stand for things in the world. What you
come to see here is how racial ideologies are embedded in social structures. For
example, Henry perceives that blackness is universal, that it has a look, a feel, a language
and a location (6. g the ghetto). When he learns that his friend, who is adopted by a

Jewish family is outside of the location of blackness that he has learned, he begins to

reconsider blackness; for Mike a Henry concludes is “one of a kind”.

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Established codes of a race create written normalcy which influence behaviors,
identity constructions and acceptable types of imitations. Thus, authenticity works in
two ways here; there is the authenticity of the writer as a speaker who has been socialized
in a particular community, and the authenticity of the other, the one the writer speaks in
reference to. The invention and revision process speaks to oral, written and visual
identities through the construction of language. Identity models are embedded in
America culture through stereotypes, stories and standards. These models are often
always consciously or unconsciously mimicked in particular contexts. Succeeding at
accomplishing an act valued by a community, or through the process of entering a new
community requires that one adapt the identity model for continued existence in that
space. These valued traits are in all social control mechanisms, even spaces as sacred as
the classroom cannot ignore or escape them. According to hooks (1994) education for
freedom is essential to critical consciousness, yet the freedom of self is always in
relationship to a standard, hierarchy or model, and one ponders whether such freedom of
self can exist and be transmitted into personal disclosures surrounding race in the
classroom. It is clear that submission to standards or hierarchies allow for the subject to
access the ideologies that sustain survival and belonging. Like, Henry in my own
narrative I blamed my home community. However, for me (as an African American
instructor from the ghetto) that blame was a result of the ways in which college had
conditioned me to devaluing my home literacies and ideologies.

Although blame is real, it does not warrant the fact that both Henry and my blame
are different. Henry’s blame is anecdotal, while my own is visceral. The vulnerabilities

experienced with putting together my own personal race narrative, and then deciding

26

whether or not I would present it to an audience is a direct rule of this visceral blame.
Henry is grappling with dominant racial ideologies allowed for locating alternative
dominant ideologies through classism and separatism. I often believed that Henry’s
primary audience for his paper was his instructor (myself). It was his own way of
explaining the battles within his head that warranted rebuttals in class which spoke loudly
of his resistance to the materials read.

What Ratcliffe (2005) calls rhetorical listening, a cross-cultural code of conduct
for better situating the rhetorical situation of speakers from various cultural and ethnic
backgrounds, Roysters (1996) deems a shift in paradigm that aligns “individual stories
placed one against another against another to build credibility and offer as in this case a
litany of evidence from which I call for transformation in theory and practice” (p. 31).
Hill however uses “personalist”, “referential ideology” or “referential linguistics” to
interrogate self-hood and referential ideology, particularly notions of language
appropriateness spoken by individuals who believe in the correctness of words, which in
part permit reproductions of racism and whiteness (p, 45). For Hill, the individual using
words is controlled by historical discourses. She then continues and states: “Personalist
and referentialist linguistic ideologies intersect, because referentialist ideology, with its
focus on accurate communication, holds that people should believe what is true”
(Sweetser 1987). So, just as they assess intentions, interlocutors must be able to assess
belief (Hill, p. 89). For Henry, analysis of this relationship between language, whiteness,
racism and institutions of knowledge that rely heavily on diversity and acculturated
literacies show that truth often places someone else at blame for the cultural logic that

exists. As stated earlier, even I myself place blame on the systems of logic that I have

27

learned through the process of growing up in Saginaw. But blame alone should not be a
case for maintaining a logic that promotes false truths that dominant others or that
supports the idea that one value system is closer to reality than another. In my case, my
narrative of blame is located within the loathing over the community to which I was
brought up, but for Henry his narrative of blame is summed up as white ideology that
presumes truth.

It is important to note that Henry stayed in a residential hall nicknamed
“chocolate city”. This nickname and many others like “the hood” and “the hubb” are
assigned to this dorm given the copious population of African American students that
resided there. Our interview reveals the ways in which residential life, the classroom and
the community in which the student resided in prior to college admission played intricate
roles in the narrative Henry chose to write. He mentions this space in our interview
together, contending that living in such a residential hall allowed him an opportunity to
see life “differently”. As an African American instructor it was hard for me not to
wonder whether or not a direct result of my own pedagogical performativity as a black -
bodied individual, influenced Henry’s narrative. The race of the instructor determines the
classroom dynamics, but I still wasn’t sure how my students perceived I was performing
my own race in the classroom. Throughout our instructor-student conference, I asked
Henry about his decision to focus on Afiican American male fiiendship as a Caucasian I
student. During our student conferences he wasn’t sure of his decision to write such an
essay. However in our interview together he was very clear about why he had decided to
compose an essay that put him in relationship to the African American men that had

shaped his understanding of his own lifestyle and way of living. He contends:

28

Henry: I personally think that most of the time this happens, I try to write about
something that I know I am interested in and then I think about my audience,
which most of the time is my teacher or professor so I try to write about
something I think they might like or be interested in as well.

Henry: Does that answer your question?

Interviewer: Well say more. How do you think the race of your instructor or

their position on certain topics influence class dynamics, can you provide any

examples?

Henry: Well you were my first black teacher ever, so I sometimes felt as if it was

necessary to watch what I said when it came to stereotypes for instance. I

couldn’t just state a stereotype in my paper this year I had to explain them

completely. If that makes sense?
There are connections merging between Henry’s experiences back home, his dorm life
and who he becomes in the classroom. The knowledge and socialization that Henry had
gained growing up in a predominantly white suburb had asked him to be very cautious
about those outside of his cultural community.

In my face-to-face follow-up interview with Henry, he advised that he had moved
out of the residential hall which had impacted his narrative. Although he had learned
much from his experiences there he was now living with a group of males that were “all
white”. He also contended that he could not recall any “racial experiences” since him
leaving the residential hall. Although he expressed deep gratitude for his residential hall
experiences, he also expressed the ways in which his own personal background had
impacted the ways in which he had developed a racial logic. In the end of our interview,
Henry argued that the campus is general was very racially divided. “People stick to their
own” he claimed and although the campus prides itself on diversity, many times that

diversity is divided within racially homogeneous subgroups. In analyzing my follow-up

interview with Henry, I realized that Henry had become aware of the racially grouped
29

safe houses within the campus contact zone (Canagarajah, 1997), he however did not, and
perhaps may have not been willing to see his own decision to move out the residential
hall into a “all white” living Space, as racially grouped seclusion.
Student Participant 2: Using Language to Affirm Identity
Like Henry my next student participant had also grown up in a culturally
exclusive Albanian community outside of the Metro Detroit area prior to attending
college. In his personal narrative, along with his interview with me he mentioned that he
was a “pure” “100%” 6th generation Albanian male whose family traditions were
significant to his understanding of race and the history of American civilization. In his
narrative entitled “European in America” he writes:
In America, when someone is called “white”, people automatically consider them
as an American. I am not American so that is one reason that I do not like to be
called white. Albanians are very patriotic people who have unexplainable love
for their native land. I am no exception. I love America and what it stands for;
' however, I can never turn my back on my land and my people. I think the first
time that I stood up against the norm of being called white was in the 8th grade. I
was talking with my friend and he called me white. That hit me hard for the first
time in my life. I disagreed with him on the fact that I do not consider myself
white. Like many other people, he did not understand why I would do such a
thing. It was as if I had become white American without knowing it. However,
what has bothered me the most is I never asked to be called white. For centuries

people have stereotyped each other without taking time to think. I am aware of

30

the fact that I do look like the average white guy, but I consider myself Albanian
because I have features that distinguish me as one.
Concluding paragraph:
In addition to being seen as a white person, I am forced to choose to be called
white on many applications that I fill out; whether it is for work, scholarships or
financial aid. All the other races have the name of the places where they
originated from, but next to white there is nothing. White people did not originate
from American, but for some reason it is implied that way indirectly. I feel like I
am losing my uniqueness when I am forced to be considered white on
applications. Being that I am seen as the majoring on paper and in person, I am
not seen as a candidate that will increase diversity. I disagree with the fact that
people are forced to fall into this pointless classifying system that the United
States makes people fit into. It takes away people’s original identity and forces
them to have a new one.
Here Andrew confronts individual ideologies that might not be acceptable or in
agreement with those that are dominant. For Andrew whiteness is a cultural erasure, but
for Henry it brought about “safety”. Andrew knew that something was at work here,
concerning “whiteness” and he addressed the “pointless classifying systems” utilized
within American history that asked people to “fit in” with their own. However ironically,
it also appears that he himself values the protection of an exclusive cultural community.
He contends:
(1) I think the first time that I stood up against the norm of being called white was

in the 8th grade. I was talking with my fiiend and he called me white. That hit
me hard for the first time.

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(2) I consider myself Albanian because I have features that distinguish me as one.
(3) White people did not originate from America, but for some reason it is
implied that way indirectly. I feel like I am losing my uniqueness when I am
forced to be considered white on applications.
Although in sentence (1) Andrew recounts the first time he confronts being classified as
white, he does not disagree with classification of his own ethnic heritage. In (2) he
provides the correct racial classification of his body, the one he most agrees with. And,
in (3) he addresses the history of whiteness and America’ racial irony. Here, Andrew is
deconstructing his own whiteness. Deconstructing whiteness would mean to clarify that
those within antiquity who expressed ideologies of white superiority. Andrew asks that
we not believe in the existence of whiteness, or rather that his audience not believe in the
existence of his own whiteness, despite the fact that he is still in a position to benefit from
white privilege.

In my interview with Andrew he points out how instructors influence what and
how personal narratives are told by students. He contends that in a former class he
wanted to write about why gay marriage should not be allowed. However, he decided not
to once him and his fellow classmates came to the conclusion that his instructor was gay
and thus would not have given him a “good” grade on the paper. Please review the
following:

Andrew: I wanted to write about why gay marriage Should not be allowed but we
(students) thought that she was gay

Andrew: So I figured I wouldn’t do well on my part

Interviewer: Interesting. Why do you think it wouldn’t have been a good paper?
Are we defining “good” as getting a good grade?

32

Andrew: No, I wouldn’t have gotten a good grade, I thought but I was not sure if
she was gay, so I didn’t take a risk.

Acknowledging Andrew’s interview forces me to confront interpretive risks.
Particularly, in situations where gender and sexuality become part of the language
operating in the inventive stages of the writing process. Thus, when examining the
process of student narrative invention investigating the sexual, racial or political
orientations of who their instructors were was a major factor in the process. If the L
instructors body politics become a part of the writing process, how do we address this

process in our classrooms? Andrew and Henry do rather brilliant things when analyzing

 

the ethos of their primary audience: the instructor. The instructor appears to be the
audience that truly matters. Andrew contends: “she is the one giving the grade”, thus,
she has complete control over their writing bodies in the classroom. Similarly, I confront
audience in my own narrative, for me its invasive ability to ask the writer to perform
gives the audience control over the language used. Action taken which confronts the
clashes between audience and subjective writing can be vital to the revision process.
What is it that these pieces of writing are asking it’s instructors to do, to see and to
realize? But, most importantly, are these realizations meaningful and transformational.

According to Ratcliffe (2005) gender and race are identity and classification
markers that are strands in all our stories. These classification, or what Ratcliffe deems
“dynamics”, represent predominant power differentials in the US, but these dynamics
are not static. Sometimes they shift and when shifts occur, the new dynamics emerge not
so much as simple reversals of power differentials (as in reverse discrimination) but,

rather, as messy complications of these differentials” (p. 134). Ratcliffe’s claims about

33

gender and race differentials and power lead me to conclude two things about Andrew’s
understanding of his teacher’s sexuality and the ways in which it influenced his writing
invention process. First, Andrew’s recognition of his instructor as gay and his desire to
compose a paper in resistance to what he saw as a gay bodied instructor could be a Sign
of resistance. Secondly, power differentials are at work among instructors and students,
such differentials appear to be present conflict. For example, in my follow-up interview
with Andrew, he recalled his personal narrative and claimed that although he still
believed that “whiteness” was an ideal that he rejected when describing his his own racial
identity, his friends were often quick to point out how he had unconsciously used his
“whiteness” when necessary. The rejection of whiteness for Andrew had evolved through
the resistance of course readings. These course readings were assigned by the instructor,
who is in the position of power which regulates the required readings of students.
CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS

Although for future studies I’d like to include a more diverse group of student
participants, this project has shown that students are marginalized under systems of
institutional power, and that narratives can be used to confront hierarchies, ideologies and
institutional truths. White students or as Andrew might contend those students that are
presumed to be a part of the “dominate” group are often just as likely to become critically
aware of their own social and racial conditions through personal narratives. Narrative
forms always consider the cultural significances of personal disclosure, however the
genre is often too subjective, and unless students are engaged in critical revisiting and
reconsideration of narrative invention processes, often times transformative

understandings are not met. Lastly, Student participants affirmed the notion that the
34

identity of their instructors play an integral part in their writing processes and their
willingness to write about issues that might create conflict among themselves and their
instructor.

Not only does race matter, but bodies indeed matter (Ratcliffe, Middleton &
Kennedy, 2005; West, 2001; Morrison, 1992; Butler, 1993). Bodies are composed of
matter and bodies are marked for the purposes of production, perception and
categorization. In college classrooms, bodies of production are not exclusive to
instructors; we are like the construction of race and whiteness, players in the construction
of student bodies. That is, when it comes to evaluating the writing processes of our
students, instructors are also actors in the process of constructing race and whiteness.
Thus, the distribution of power in operation in the classroom, the interpretation of the
pedagogy being performed, and the social politics of the classroom determine what
students disclose in self narratives such as literacy autobiographies, race narratives or
various other compositions which invoke the telling of personal stories and histories.
This shows how we are all interwoven into a thread of racial, gender and sexual
constructions that write us, in the same way a rigid, soft or wavering hand writes or
speaks a story; capturing us, it and everything existing unto itself. For future classes, I
hope to continue working with personal narratives, however I have come to realize
through the course of this project that (1) narratives surrounding race require action and
group dialog, and (2) confronting conflicts and risks in relationship to the invention and
revision writing process can promote critical review of the self, identity constructions and

ideological conflicts.

35

 

Additionally, It is important to recognize that racial identifications embedded in
language and culture complicates identity formations but also contribute to the identity
formation of students, and (what we come to find) in this case students who aren’t labeled
“marginal”. But I ask if moving in and out, or even within the margins and gaps of new
literacy communities can operate in convergences and divergences, then how do fields of
study like linguistic anthropology and composition studies navigate shifting this
ideological paradigm where racism is repeated? This question has arisen in conclusion of
my study and can be utilized for further investigation. Lastly, I confront the limitations
of the study. One being that lack of overall student diversity in the study; I ponder how
selection of a diverse group of student bodies in race, gender and sexuality might have
changed my research conclusions or altered the content discussed. Initially, this project
was set up to understand the workings of students’ inventive literacy negotiations as
“trickster”, but the theory behind trickster rhetoric often always required that I overly
judge and unkindly treat the works of my two male students given trickster’s long
standing connections to marginalization and the struggle of colonization and power
negotiation. In future studies on race, identity and performativity I hope to take an
ethnographic approach and engulf myself into a community through self-reflexive
ideologies that join, but also respectfully separate me from the community to which I am

studying of for the sake of adding to an intellectual community.

36

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Aristotle. (350 BC). On Memory and Reminiscence. Adobe ebOOkS.

Basso, E. (1988). The Trickster’s Scattered Self. Anthropological Linguistics. 30 (3-4).
292-318.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of
Texas Press.

Ball, A. F. & Lardner, T. (2005). African American literacies unleashed: Vernacular
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