Lana's Short Narrative

By Author: unknownmem
Total Articles: 9
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Scratch, scratch, she is holding The Pen like a weapon. One wrong answer and who knows more questions, more scratching, same Pen. Now she asks for my birth certificate! Why Don't I look born? With so much information I imagine The Black Pen is turning into a snake, getting bigger and bigger with each word it writes...big enough to swallow me whole! Oh, well, I guess it's just a job. Somebody has to do it. She is doing it to!

Freire (1970) observed narrative as an "existential necessity" (p. 68). He argued that through dialogue we "mediate the world, in order to name the world," and that by narrating our worlds, we transform them and thus gain Omega Replica Watches significance as human beings. Bruner (1986) reaffirmed this understanding, stating that stories "provide, so to speak, a map of possible roles and of possible worlds in which action, thought, and self-definition are permissible (or desirable)" (p. 66). Lana's narrative poeticizes the realization that institutional language is an un-storying practice, whether at the welfare office, ...
... the county courthouse, or in the classroom, reducing identity to a handful of demographic descriptors or stigmatizing labels. Lana's writing re-invigorates that struggle for self-determined meaning and underscores the importance of personal literacies as means for re-storying. Her title suggests double entendre: institutional literacy transforms human beings into case numbers; personal literacy, expressive writing in particular, helps one retransform, reclaim identity. In her writing, Lana reactively names her world, regaining some critical perspective while realistically acknowledging the systemic nature of the problem— that "someone has to do it."

As a recovering alcoholic, Lana's short narrative, "Failure" addresses the internal conflict between spousal and maternal impulses to nurture, to "treat" her children and husband, and the powerful seduction of addiction:

I wake with a hangover and the feeling of disgust. I make a vow that today won't be a repeat of yesterday. Many yesterdays. Today I'll make that cake I've been promising them for so long. Today I'll talk, not scream. I'll tell them how much I love them. And I'll listen!

Today, I'll sew that button on his long Breitling Replica awaiting shirt. Today, I'll be the perfect wife and loving mother. Today and every new today for the rest of my life. I open the refrigerator to get the makings for a delicious breakfast. Then I see the bottle.

Lana's decision to reflect on and write about deeply personal experiences suggests a need—even desire—and a willingness on her part to connect life and learning. If we consider Lana's case in relation to Baltes' (1987) research in life-span developmental psychology, adult students who pursue writing as a means for ascribing meaning to earlier life experience are demonstrating the "innovative" emergence of new processes—of reminiscence and life review— of a cognitive system, underscoring the exigency of a curriculum that accommodates students' interests out of developmental necessity.