A few of the things that you can connect from the memoir to real life is the idea of poverty and people being hungry, and storytelling.
The idea of poverty can relate to this because on page ten Kingston says, “Poverty hurt, and that was their first reason for leaving”. With this line Kingston’s talking about the men came to the United States looking for a better life and their main reason for coming over was because of the poverty. In a 2011 study by Steven Friedman of the Huffington post he lists the top five countries that are in poverty are Turkey, the United States, Chile, Israel, and number one is Mexico. Even though the United States is one of the wealthiest countries it’s surprising to that the United States as high as it is in this list. The second way poverty can relate to this is when Kingston says, “But the men-hungry, greedy, tired of planting in dry soil- had been forced to leave the village in order to send food-money home”. Even though the men are over in the United States working they’re still sending the money back home so that the rest of their family can have the money.
Using the same quote as listed above “But the men-hungry, greedy, tired of planting in dry soil-had been forced to leave the village in order to send food-money home”, we can see that some families are having a hard time putting food on the table so that they can eat. This is also a problem in the United States, and in parts of other countries. Another example of this is when Kingston says, “Always hungry, always needing, she would have to bed food from other ghosts, snatch and steal it from those whose living descendants give them gifts” on page 16. Kingston is talking once again talking about her aunt who is looking for food to feed herself and to possible feed the baby. Another example is on page seven, when Kingston says, “In a commensal, food is precious, the powerful older people made wrongdoers eat alone”. If you are an older person and you have done wrong, you’ll be eating a meal by yourself.
Telling stories is helpful because it can help people understand different things like different people that they are related to or what people used to do for fun when they were younger. An example of this is when Kingston talks about her grandfather on the bottom of page ten and at the top of page eleven, saying that “There are stories that my grandfather was different from other people” and “And one day he brought home a baby girl, wrapped up inside his brown western-style greatcoat. He had traded one of his sons, probably my father, the youngest for her”. This quote goes to show that Kingston is learning about her grandfather through a story she probably would have never heard, if it wasn’t for the person that is telling her the story. Another example is at the bottom of page fifteen is when Kingston has learned about her aunt and her mother tells her to not talk about the aunt and the cousin because the father doesn’t want to hear the name of his sister who he doesn’t believe ever existed. In the sentence that starts out “I have believed that sex was unspeakable and words so strong and fathers so frail that “aunt” would do my father mysterious harm”, to think that even mentioning the word aunt around your father would do him harm is sad to think about.
Questions:
1) What other ways are stories being told throughout the memoir?
2) What are some other ways in which poverty is talked about?
6 thoughts on “Connecting past to present”
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I like how you touched on the importance of stories in this. The mother uses stories as caution and to test her children’s strength as they grow up. This is expressed on page 5, the narrator says “whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on” and “your mother who marked your growing with stories.” The mothers ‘talk stories’ are cultural tales that help inform of their history. The mom is teaching her daughter values and trying to warn her from premarital sex. At the end of the story on page 16, the narrator says “my aunt haunts me- her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her…” She feels guilt for not having had told her aunts story sooner and continuing the tale that she grew up on.
These are good quotes, Katrina, but try to write them in proper MLA-style citation.
The way you connected the events in the book to real life events was a good approach you used in this blog. You used present day matters about poverty to connect to the book. Also, you created a connection to the ways that poverty is told through story. In regards to your question about what other ways stories are being told throughout the memoir, I believe that the way the mother talks about her aunt is a story that is told to show her a life lesson. The lesson that if you act in premarital sex or participate in the act of adultery, the village will be watching and resent you while destroying all you know. The way the mother tells this story resides with her for a long time and maybe her whole life. I believe that the way in which the mother says to keep it to herself and to not let her father know she knows makes me believe that this is why it makes her so much more curious about it.
Rachel, don’t forget to include a quote from the text in order to receive credit for your comment!
This post does a very good job of supporting the main arguments via in-text quotes. However, the quotes provided could use more explaining and connection to poverty and the importance of stories. Even though the quotes themselves are explained, it would be helpful to the reader to also connect the quotes to the effect on life poverty had/has, and the cultural importance of spoken stories.
Charlie, don’t forget to include a quote from the text in order to receive credit for your comment!