Assignment Overview
In this paper, you will consider how language and the act of storytelling can be used to discuss and/or understand trauma as it relates to identity and selfhood. Authors Gloria Anzalda (How to tame a wild Tongue) and Toni Morrison (beloved)address the ways in which language is policed in both literary culture and everyday life as a way to construct normative ideas of the self. However, each author remains committed to storytelling as a powerful means of disrupting those boundaries as they confront both trauma and systemic oppression.
Paper Prompt
Your paper should take the form of an imaginary “conversation” between Gloria Anzalda and Toni Morrison as they discuss the following topics:
What constitutes trauma in the experiences they share, and in what ways language is limited (or otherwise policed) in its ability to recount these traumas;
How Morrison uses narrative style and point of view to convey the impact/significance of trauma on the lives and identities of her characters;
Similarities and differences between Morrison’s narrative approach to addressing the trauma of slavery and that of Zora Neale Hurston’s;
What other narrative text or twothis can be any kind of narrative text (e.g., film, TV show, album, book)they would recommend to students looking to understand trauma as it relates to identity/selfhood, and why.
Remember to write this as a conversation. To achieve that, focus on those areas where you see the authors agreeing or disagreeing (i.e., where their ideas, perspectives, and narrative approaches either overlap or diverge).
Be creative. You might write this in the first-person as an observer watching the conversation unfold; you might write it in more of a script format; or you might write it as a narrator in the third-person POV. However you write it, your focus should be on the ideas and words of the authors identified above..
Be sure to draw on specific examples from the text(s) to support your arguments where necessary. However, as this is an imagined conversation, you should definitely avoid using direct quotations. Instead, briefly paraphrase the main points or examples in your own words (or, really, what you think each author’s words might be!).
