On Dec.7, we started our last tutorial class in front of Burling library, and walked to A&M Café together. That day was cold; the lawn on campus was covered by a layer of hoarfrost. When we crossed street, there’s a certain slant of light which projected our shadows on the road.

I felt kind of shame that I still could not order food adeptly after I arrived America for nearly four months. Prof. Rodrigues gave us our breakfast data of the whole semester, which she began to collect at the beginning of our class. To some degree, this sheet of data is a souvenir of our first semester in Grinnell.

We divided into two groups to find two different words to sum up our study about American autobiographies. One group came up with the word “father,” and another group raised “epiphany.” Almost all of autobiographies have a figure of father in their narratives, and the “father” also alludes to the “founding father” of America. This “father” which came up with by our classmates doesn’t only refer to the real father of the author, but the roles who act as a father role or give the author supports. The “epiphany group” emphasized that every authors have their epiphanies in their stories, and the establishment of America might also be a kind of epiphany of freedom. Epiphany gives people a chance to obtain prominent improvement and it’s the change points of a lot of stories.

Finally, “epiphany group” persuaded “father group,” and decided to choose epiphany as the final word of our class. I consider our class is also a kind of epiphany, which gives us a method to get into the study of college.

As the groups went through their presentations, I was amazed to see the connections to our lives on campus. I learned about the roots of construction and education. I saw connections between our work in tutorial and our other classes. My group used readings from my  political science class and another group used information from their linguistics class. All the connections within our small class got me thinking about the connections between texts that we have read. It was incredible to see how all of our keywords were applicable to the texts we’ve analyzed throughout the semester. The presence of education is in many more texts than I would have thought.  Even within texts there is the differentiation between formal and informal. When Will and Yaz were explaining the definitons, I saw how applicable all these keywords are to our lives. We will certainly be seeing the actions of agency, consequences of time, and results of education along with many other things in our careers here at Grinnell.

These analysis of keywords and autobiographies will help all of us in our future years at Grinnell. I think it is important to understand the discoveries we have made in our course. I continue to think about the reoccurring themes of patriarchy, revelation, family, travel, and much much more. The information that may have been left out by the writers are also a vital part of the story; I will be reading and analyzing in a much different way after this course.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the revelations of sexual assault/harassment that have been extending everywhere from prominent Hollywood actors and producers to politicians to journalists.

I feel like this kind of relates to what we’ve been talking about this semester. There seems to be this tension between whether allegations are made to be credible or not. And, in a way, the stories of men and women who’ve undergone abuse become a sort of mini-autobiography, because they are self-communicated stories of what has happened to someone. But then, there exists this public discourse about which of these “autobiographies” are “legitimate” and which are called into question for their authenticity. (Also, I hate to use the word “allegation” because that serves to undermine the validity of these stories, while at the same time the word “allegation” serves a legal purpose.)

It’s interesting to think that on the human-level, some people will outright claim that these allegations are untrue when they are just people telling other people about their lives. When thinking of these allegations through the prism of autobiography, I think it creates a humanizing effect and it becomes harder and harder to discredit people who experienced trauma. It kind of calls into question why we disregard some stories immediately, while other stories we take at face value. Obviously, there is a historical thread of patriarchal defamation of women’s voices, and that makes the idea of “legitimate autobiography” all the more interesting.

Sorry, these thoughts are kind of scattered, but I am curious what other people think about this.

One interesting thing that we discussed is the underlying importance of literature in this text and the different ways in which Bechdel thinks about literature and books in general. For Bechdel, it seems like reading is a way for her to escape from reality. As we talked about in class, people can use literature as a way to cope with their problems. We learn that Bechdel was an avid reader growing up. She also describes her father’s affection for literature, and how one of the most notable ways that they could connect throughout her childhood was through their shared love of literature. Thus, literature took on many different meanings for Bechdel. She could use her books as a way to escape from the reality of her family situation, where her father created an unpleasant home environment. Yet at the same time, literature could also be used as a tool to transcend this unhealthy home environment and try to bring some positivity into her relationship with her father. In a relationship that was largely marked by unpleasant interactions, Bechdel could gain the attention from her father that she craved through their shared love of literature.

Furthermore, Bechdel also uses literature as a tool for self-discovery. As she is beginning to come to terms with her queer identity, Bechdel turns to literature as a way to explain her experiences. This struck me because it almost seemed like she had removed herself from the reality of the situation, and she was doing research on queerness as if she were a case study. It seemed like she was almost trying to study herself through an objective and unemotional lens, and through this approach, she partly removed herself from directly confronting her queer identity. Additionally, I was interested in the way that she used literature to try to understand her father’s life. Bechdel constantly alludes to pieces of literature throughout the novel and compares these stories to the experiences of her parents. Maybe her comparison of her father’s life to various works of literature demonstrates that she does not think that her father lived in reality. Maybe literature marked a way for him to escape from all of his problems in the real world, and like her, he used it as a coping mechanism to escape from reality. However, he might have also used literature as a point of self-reflection, like she did, to try to understand more about his queer identity. Overall, literature undoubtedly played a critical role in the lives of both Bechdel and her father. Although they were very different people, they might have used literature as a lens through which to make sense of the world.

In class last Tuesday, our discussion was short but the question was raised as to how Fun Home measures up to the standard of an American Autobiography in that was about it is specific to the American experience. While it does not pinpoint or focus on an event like Katrina, a period like slavery or Jim Crow, or the founding of the country and what it means to be an immigrant to America, Fun Home is still just as important in the American portraiture. Chronicling the childhood of a white girl in small town America may not seem as revolutionary or important as Richard Wright’s Black Boy, but it is the story of many an American. The book deals with growing up in the Nixon Era, the LGBT movement, depression, movement from rural settings to cities, materialism, and the complexity of our relationships with our families. The book reveals that even when not contextualized within the framework of a specific American event, each American life is a web of complexities. So often these complexities center abound the family and how influential they are in shaping our perceptions of ourselves and the world, which is undeniable to any American story.

Since our discussion on Tuesday, I’ve been thinking about possession in the context of American culture. The concept of possession has been extremely relevant in the news as well as in my classes. With today’s “purge” of sexual predators, I find that the cause of these incidents are driven by the desire to possess two things: women and power. In fact, the mistreatment of women most often stems from the desire to possess them. It is apparent in Zeitoun, where Zeitoun stalks Kathy and physically abuses her for fear of no longer “possessing” her. In American history, the possession of things, and people, is an essential pillar in one’s position in society. In revolutionary times, the possession of property determined one’s citizenship rights. In the antebellum South, the possession of slaves became a status symbol. And even today, the possession of women (as wives, girlfriends, mistresses, etc.) is still a demonstration of one’s power. When observed altogether, it seems as though American culture was built around the possession of things and people. This may be why the second part of Black Boy caused such discomfort in the public discourse. The distinct communist tone (in other words, the rejection of possession) pushed the novel in a new, frightening direction.

On Tuesday’s class, we talked about the dichotomy of American culture. How everything has to put into a lens of good or evil, religious or secular, north or south. The idea that to be an American citizen you have to fully commit yourself to freedom or you’ll risk falling back into slavery. What strikes me the most about this conversation is not only that this dichotomy is integrated into society, but has become this foundation of the culture. It shapes every citizen, forces them to think through this limiting perspective. You can see it in Zeitoun’s actions during Katrina. He chooses to stay in New Orleans despite the devastation that he could encounter. But, I think in his mind he didn’t have a choice. Zeitoun built himself up for nothing, married a white southern girl, has a large house, he is an exemplar of the American dream and wants to inhibit all the values and ideals of an American citizen. That comes with this mindset of good vs. evil. A mindset that thinks it is cowardly to leave, the evil thing, and that it is heroic to stay, the good thing. Wright says and demonstrates the same thing in his autobiography. He is in Chicago where the racism and discrimination against black people is directed in a way that Wright isn’t attuned to yet. Right now, it feels something like inclusion. But, Wright has grown up in a culture that does not see the inclusion of black people as right, so he feels as if he is in the wrong place, around the wrong people. He wants to return the certainty of knowing that the perspective that has been instilled in him will continue to keep him out of trouble. Both men show the long-lasting effects of the dichotomous world view characteristic of American culture that has, and probably will continue to, define generations.

In class on Tuesday we talked a little bit about how the novel Zeitoun functions as a critique of the media, especially the media’s portrayal of Hurricane Katrina. I was most interested in the various techniques and styles that Eggers seemed to appropriate from TV and movies to describe real life, and how he examined the liminal space between media representations and real ilfe. I got to thinking about this because it seemed to me in the initial reading that the character of Zeitoun and to a lesser degree the character of Kathy were both sort of flat sit-com type characters, Zeitoun being the stoic hardworking breadwinner husband, Kathy the sweet, accommodating, dedicated, loving, wife and mom. And it seemed as though the characters who moved away from New Orleans were prone to more human drama and depth as the story progressed. Kathy and the kids becoming inconsolable, doubting, having their judgment clouded by frustration, whereas the characters who stayed in New Orleans retained their sit-com flatness, almost as if the descent of TV cameras froze them in some kind of a zone of mediation. The most noticeable example of Eggers’ appropriation of TV techniques being the way he framed the period between Zeitoun and Kathy’s last phone call and the call Kathy got letting her know that Zeitoun was in prison. When I read that part, the fact that Eggers kept the reader in the dark alongside Kathy made me think that Eggers was simply trying to build suspense, the same sort of technique you would find in a movie or TV show, however as the contents of Kathy’s days became more banal and repetitive, it seemed to me that Eggers wasn’t merely trying to build suspense (if at all) but also to place the audience in Kathy’s shoes. It was also interesting to see in the last part of the book Zeitoun talking about how he thought he was being punished for his vanity in trying to match the achievements of his swimmer brother, because during the part of the narration there was no evidence that Zeitoun was at all motivated by vanity. Although his musings that his altruism might elevate him in the eyes of his family, when they saw him on TV, were included in the book, they appear to come after he made the decision to stay, and after he made the decision to paddle around helping people. In this way Zeitoun’s actions appear to be intrinsically motivated and in no way performative, however his later reflection shows how more “authentic” and performative motivations coexist and grow from one another.
-Jeremy Andrew

After I found out that Zeitoun was imprisoned for domestic abuse and stalking of Kathy, it made me rethink Zeitoun the book. I also found out that it was not only after the book that the domestic abuse began, but there was a long history of Zeitoun abusing Kathy before Katrina hit. I am conflicted now on both Dave Eggers and the legitimacy of the book Zeitoun. Part of me wants to discredit the whole story. What else did Eggers leave out in telling this story? How could he leave out such a crucial aspect of that marriage? Why would he lead us to believe they had a happy and healthy relationship? As a reader, I feel deceived. We talked about how people leave out aspects of their life when they tell their story, but at what point does the story they tell  differ too far from the truth to be legitimate?

When I consider that it was not Zeitoun that wrote the story but that it was Dave Eggers, it further complicates things. I must force myself to consider why Eggers decided to write this story despite the ugliness that occurred and was untold. I believe that he thought that the Zeitoun family’s experience of Katrina was too important not to be told. Despite the abuse that occurred, Eggers could still capture imperative aspects of American life that he may have felt important to expose. It is true that the ugly hidden truths of American identity and government were vividly exposed to us as readers. We saw the islamaphobia, the backwardness and inefficiency of FEMA, the abuse of power in the justice system and law enforcement, the deprivation of civil liberties in the name of a disaster, and the detrimental effects Katrina had on the people of New Orleans. In these ways, Zeitoun is still incredibly important and meaningful. Do these things make it okay that Eggers published a book that idealized a man who abused both his wife and kids? I’m not sure that there is a clear answer to it, but it does make us rethink both the purpose and sacrifices made in telling a person’s story. Here is the link to the article on the Zeitoun family after Katrina: kathy_zeitoun_interview.html

As I was reading Zeitoun, I kept on imagining a dystopic futuristic place. The kind of thing that would happened in a sci-fi movie or novel. There is no electricity, water shortage and limited modes of transportation. No human life was surrounding Zeitoun for a while. I got the end of the world vibes and Zeitoun being the last man in the world who had to look for any live remnants of the wreckage. Zeitoun is left to fend for himself and the people around him. I was wondering if you guys felt the same way with this depiction of New Orleans? In class, we discussed how Zeitoun’s experience could be a representative of people of New Orleans. I was wondering why the author decided to pick a minority family such as the Zeitouns. An immigrant and Muslim family with very diverse cultural backgrounds. The story would lose a significant part of it. I know the fact that the story is not about a stereotypical white family leaving in New Orleans has kept me reading and enticed. There is a whole different feel to the family and the author makes us fall in love with characters in book. Have you felt the same about the book?

Happy reading.