Speak and Diary

By -
In both The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Speak, both protagonists use art in order to build upon their own voices as individuals who seek to belong.  In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior, an adolescent male Indian who lives on a reservation uses cartoons because they are a way for him to formulate his thoughts and experiences into a form of language everyone can understand.  He believes that languages are too specific and unpredictable, so if he is able to draw cartoons then can talk about the world in an artistic form, and maybe his drawings lead to a way to escape from his reservation; drawings are his lifeboats in a community where everyone is drowning.  Junior draws cartoons to better understand the world, to make fun of people, and to honor those who are close to him.  During a time where Junior is shunned by others on his reservation for enrolling in a white school, and failing to be accepted at his new school because of his race, Junior seeks to find his place, his identity, and his voice.  Through his struggle to find himself and his own voice in the world, Junior turns to drawings to help him navigate and better understand his relationships, experiences, and the communities that surround him.  Cartoons allow Junior to artistically communicate his experiences as he seeks to find acceptance.
In Speak, Melinda Sordino, a freshman who begins the school year being shunned by her peers for calling the police at a party where she was a victim of date rape, uses art to help her find her voice to tell the truth about what happened.  Afraid to tell anyone about the rape, Melinda keeps the dark secret to herself and begins to lose her identity and her voice.  She is given a project in her art class to create a tree that depicts true art full of feeling and meaning.  Throughout the book, Melinda struggles to navigate where she belongs, and begins to spend most of her time in a dark closet and falls silent.  Throughout her struggles participate in school and in her family, she also struggles with the ability to depict a tree in a way that is worthy of the title, art.  As she begins to deal with her withdrawal and silence, and is able to gain the courage to talk about the rape, she is also able to grow in her artistic abilities.  By the end of the novel, Melinda is able to break her silence and tell her story.  She is also able to create a tree that earns her an A+ in art, the only class for which she earns an A. 
Both novels tell stories of adolescents who struggle to find their place within their communities and turn to art in order to communicate their experiences and build a voice of their own.

Comments

  1. TashaTOnlineFebruary 1, 2017 at 10:36 AM

    I love how you examine the role of art in these texts. Do you think art, in it's many forms, provides a similar outlet for the typical adolescent? And could you think more about each author's purpose for making art integral to the protagonist's struggle. "Voice" is a very important them in Speak--both literally and figuratively. Can you think more about how her art becomes her voice? Art definitely facilitates finding a place in the community, but for Melinda, isn't it also a source of healing? This would be a great topic for exploration in either a literary analysis or a research paper. Thank you for your response!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe...
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm...
Read more

Postmodernism in Curious Incident

By -
Before I start writing, I first want to acknowledge that I just really loved this book! It seemed like a lot of the class had trouble enjoying or appreciating the novel because it's so different stylistically, which is understandable, but all of those unique elements helped make the novel more authentic. The main topic I want to focus on (also what I'm writing my paper on) is how a lot of postmodernist elements were used in the novel to make Christopher come to life. While obviously not every postmodern novel is about an autistic kid, I think Haddon really used a lot of these elements to his advantage and they ended up working out really well to characterize Christopher. One of the major postmodern elements which helps this book really craft an authentic portrayal of autism is the fact that it's metafictive. Basically, this means it's a "story within a story." Readers would be extremely limited just reading the parts of the novel which are meant to be C...
Read more