A little about me – More about the readings

I have spent some time reading the entries for week 1 (as many of you have also done and commented upon in your entries) and while I would really like to write something pithy or witty to introduce myself, I have a migraine that has lasted all weekend, so instead I will probably lean towards keeping my intro brief.

As I mentioned during class last week, I am currently working on my Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction/Literacy and Language. I am in the process of finishing my dissertation proposal, although I have been reading/researching/writing parts of the dissertation for some time now and I hope to graduate in December ’07. The focus of my dissertation is a critical discussion of graphic novels as verbal-visual texts, so I am constantly in the Graphic Novel, YA and Children’s literature sections of Borders and Barnes & Noble. I came to Lafayette in 1996 to pursue a Masters degree in gifted education, after having worked as an elementary school teacher for a number of years in my home town, Toowoomba (Queensland, Australia). It is impossible to sum up those years of teaching, because they were some of the most memorable, not least because I was fortunate to work with the same group of delightfully precocious students from grades 1 through 3. Prior to my time spent teaching, I also worked for approximately a year and a half as a nanny in Australia (it is hard to believe that Becky is now 19 years old). As an undergraduate student at the University of Queensland I studied foreign languages and literature, receiving a B.A. (Hons.) with double majors in German and Russian and a minor in linguistics. Literature and the Arts have played major roles in my development as student and teacher and I owe my parents a huge debt for always taking my sister and me to concerts, museums, art galleries (even if, at the time, we might have groaned and complained!).

In terms of personal life, the biggest life change for me in recent years was going through an ugly divorce after seven years of marriage. I learned many things about myself and others, all of which had an impact on my own sense of identity. If I were to have answered the questions posed by Kroger at the beginning of her chapter “Perspectives on Identity”, I would probably have said – simplistically - that identity does not fundamentally change over time, that identity cannot really be lost, and that identity is primarily an internal construct. I also would have probably agreed to a greater extent with the perspective of trait theorists who argue that “[…] particular personality features, […], are relatively stable across the late adolescent and adult life span (Kroger 6). Seven years down the road, two miscarriages, one divorce, and a chunk of legal debt later, I would answer Kroger’s questions quite differently. I certainly believe that we may have a stable sense of identity at different times throughout our lives, and this sense of identity is based both on internal and external factors. Our sense of identity, however, can be ruptured - and ultimately changed or lost - when we are confronted by experiences or situations where the external definitions of who we are (perhaps imposed on us by others or by the culture in which we live) do not seem to match our internal beliefs.

Kroger’s discussion of historical perspectives related to adolescent identity (15-16) was particularly interesting and connected well with the second reading “Adolescence and the Problem of Identity” (Kroger 1-7). In thinking back to last week’s class discussion about the themes encountered in YA literature (that seem to deal with “big” issues, contemporary life or at least adolescent life as perceived by the writers of adolescent fiction, and horror and sci-fi genres) and reading the opening paragraph in the chapter, the following quote definitely resonates for me: “Although the foundations of ‘I’ are formed in infancy through the interactions of care-takers and child, adolescence does seem to be a time, at least in contemporary, technologically advanced western cultures, when one is confronted with the task of self-definition” (Kroger 1).

I think that a fundamental question that needs to be considered when discussing literature (whether it’s children's literature, YA or adult literature) is whether literature is mimetic? Widdershoven’s discussion of Collingwood, Gadamer, and Derrida in “The Story of Life” addresses major ideas, fundamental to our understanding of the relationship between life and literature, life and story. Two key binaries frame his discussion: “On the one hand human life is seen as something that can be depicted in stories. […]. On the other hand stories are regarded as ideals that we try to live up to” (Widdershoven 1). What does it really mean when we say the “stories are interpretations of life” (4)? These statement remind me of the words of Bruner and of Northrop Frye. In Making Stories Jerome Bruner suggests that stories are creations: “We know in our bones that stories are made, not found in the world” (22). Northrop Frye, in The Educated Imagination, says the literature is not “life-like”, but “literature-like” (91). He states: “The writer is neither a watcher nor a dreamer. Literature does not reflect life, but it doesn’t escape or withdraw from life either: it swallows it” (80). When Northrop Frye (1964) tells us that “every child realizes that literature is taking him in a different direction from the immediately useful […]” (15), he is reminding us that literature is a creative product of the human experience that attempts to describe, but not instruct. He also states: “The tone literature takes toward this world is not a moralizing one, but the tone we call ironic” (55-57). Literature presents the world as we wish it could be, rather than accurately reflecting life as it is: “The allusiveness of literature is part of its symbolic quality, its capacity to absorb everything from natural or human life into its own imaginative body” (Frye 71). Similarly, Jerome Bruner emphasizes the aesthetic quality of storytelling and its connection with culture, stating: “[…] story is the coin and currency of culture” (Bruner 16). Ultimately, perhaps we sum up the literary experience with the following statement: “Life has an implicit meaning, which is made explicit in stories” (Widdershoven 5). I was surprised by this statement, because it suggests almost the opposite of what I think we tend to teach students about narrative, stories, and literary expression (and yet, at the same time I have to agree with Widdershoven). In terms of my own – subjective – experiences in school in Australia and here in the States, I think there is a tendency to regard life as comprised of explicit meaning, a temporality that can be easily and clearly articulated, whereas in contrast, the world of literature is both elusive and allusive, and deals more with what is implied than explicated. The older I get, the more I experience, and the more I change as a result, the more I find myself seeing life as having implicit meaning; while I do not believe in “using” literature for moral, ethical, and didactic purposes, I do believe that literature can offer deeper insights into human culture and experience than any number of purported “self-help” books. Life, I believe, is confusing; literature, in the other hand, is far more easily understood! (Maybe I'm just a cynic?).

Perhaps the stories, themes, obstacles, characters, settings, experiences presented in contemporary YA literature are more a reflection of possibilities, of choices encountered in the process of self-definition, rather than a depiction of “life as it is”? Many writers and critics allude to the subversiveness of literature, particularly children’s and YA literature, so perhaps that discomfort some may feel with the themes and issues embedded in contemporary YA literature attests to its effectiveness as a medium of expression that can challenge and subvert reader expectations? Two of this week’s readings addressed elements of the reading experience and relate not only to the construction of narrative in YA literature, but also reader engagement. As we talked about in class last week, while there are many fine examples of “well-written”, aesthetically pleasing YA novels, there are many that are less so, for a variety of reasons. Nell’s discussion of reading for pleasure and “ludic reading” in “The Insatiable Appetite” raises interesting points about the role of pleasure reading (2). Equally important, however, is the concept of the “elitist fallacy” that suggests readers “[…] are either lowbrow or highbrow” (4) and that “as sophistication grows, coarser tastes wither away” (4). As someone who has both a personal and professional interest in graphic novels, these two ideas are particularly relevant and strike a chord with me; graphic novels, comics, and sequential art are often unfortunately – and inaccurately - regarded as lacking either “real” literary or artistic merit because they tend to fall into the realm of popular and of low culture. Perhaps the same may be true of many YA novels which depict the lives of contemporary teens whose lives are cyber-connected? I do think that sometimes as adults and as teachers, educators, or graduate students, we may have forgotten that reading, whether for classes or entertainment/escapism, can be pleasurable and sometimes the most enjoyable books are those that may never be regarded as “great works of art”, but rather remind us powerfully that reading is a “play activity” (Nell 2).

Katrina