A part of our discussion on Thursday was surrounding the keyword essays (immigration, family, freedom, and slavery) and how they relate to the narratives of Franklin, Douglass, Jacobs, and Antin. What was most striking during our discussion was the difficulty of only assigning one keyword to each narrative. I think this has to do with the different content and goals of each author as well as the how different connotations of the word were used in each work. For example, the word freedom, as Yaz touched on, is not a static idea. For Douglass and Jacobs, it is becoming separate from ownership, for Franklin it is independence, for Antin it could be freedom to express identity. It changes based on the author, the environment, and the time period. The intricacies of the words, as well as the setting of each narrative, make it difficult to pinpoint one obvious theme.
I also think that separating the keywords was difficult because each author integrates every keyword. As Jeremy mentioned, the idea of immigration appears in every narrative we read. And as our discussion proved, a case could be made for the appearance of every keyword in each narrative. I think this happens because their stories mirror the ones of “American” stories. Franklin is popularly considered the “first American.” Douglass and Jacobs tell stories of attainment or the goal of freedom in the United States, an idea tightly linked with US development. Antin shows the voluntary adoption of the American identity. They all portray a sense of becoming an “American” beyond the state of citizenship. Similarly, the keywords are often linked with citizens’ personal stories of becoming an American. Their background often involves immigration, family, freedom, and slavery. The keywords are instrumental in how people define themselves in the US. The task of trying to isolate the themes of the American identity from inherently “American” stories cannot be done easily.
I agree that the goal of the author may not be apparent when readers are interpreting the text. This means that the keyword we assigned each story may not be the word the author wanted us to understand their story from. I was very interested to learn more about the reason for the sequential storytelling of slavery to freedom in many autobiographies. I want to learn more about the process of writing this type of life story and why the stories do not being at freedom and backtrack. I will be researching a bit more into the connotations and varying definitions of freedom. This last class made me think about more keywords and how most are in some way connected.
I think it is a good point to emphasize the openness of the keywords we used. Each one can mean a very different thing for the person who is using it. It similarly interesting to think about how the word “America” and the idea of “what it means to be American” can vary so much from person to person. As we’ve seen from our readings, people’s view of an American life can drastically differ from another person’s view. Keeping that in mind when we read, I think it is especially important to try to define what each person’s America is and why that is significant.
I also thought that the keyword essay activity was particularly interesting. It was more challenging than I expected to only pair one word with each keyword essay. I thought that picking between slavery and freedom was especially difficult; it is really interesting to think about how we automatically like to associate these two words with each other. It is pretty much impossible to say that one story is about freedom while the other one is about slavery–but can it be about both? Can you talk about one without also talking about the other? The dynamic between the ideas of freedom and slavery is certainly one that would be fascinating to discuss further.
I found the activity where we had to summarize our respective keyword essay particularly difficult because it was summarizing a summary. Basically, it just seemed like if I were to put it in shortened terms, certain parts of the essay had to be overlooked. And yet, I really think that the upcoming keyword project will be helpful and interesting; I like to learn an expansive amount about a narrowed idea.