Week 10--Culture's Stories

Considering culture, I am still wrestling with several questions:

1. How do we define culture?

2. Does culture disable b/c it's human nature (reductionist thinking), or b/c that's what society has done (whole is more than the sum of its parts)?

3. Could we make a culture that doesn't disable (anyone)? Would this still be a culture (Goes back to question 1)?

I was a second grade or so.  I would go into my mom’s room and watch her bookshelves full of variety in colors of the book covers.  Then, every day I would pick out the same book and would read it.  The story was about a little girl cajoling her mother to make strawberry cake.  The mother says, “I’m busy with talking to this new neighbor, go into your room and do not disturb our conversation.”  The daughter gets disappointed and cries. The ending of the story is like that of Waithea’s story in which the little girl drowns herself.  Not that in the story I read, the girl died, but there was nothing satisfactory or moralistic so that it would give readers nihilistic sense.  However, that’s the story I always read every time I entered my mom’s empty room.  I guess my sentiment as a child was similar to the girl’s, disappointed at her mom who does not explicitly give her daughter motherly affection.  My mom was never home because she had to work.  Being in an empty house alone was not a good memory.  I felt not cared enough.  I read the story over and over again because I could sympathize the little girl’s disappointment.

From this experience, although several people might say they did not understand the nihilistic ending of the Pueblo story, I could grasp that however the ending is, the indescribable sentiment embedded in the story is closely related to the Pueblo culture, and that net fact gives a genuine story even though there is no explicit moral.  

I thought the Pueblo story about the girl drowning herself was very much like a fairytale. The outcomes were extreme and the narration was kind of distant like in the Grimm stories we read at the beginning of the course. Also, their approach to storytelling-- drawing the story out of the listener/ reader-- reminded me of reader-response literary criticism, which argues that the reader is never objective and concerns itself with the responses that literature causes in the reader. Were the "inventors" of this form of lit crit familiar with Native American storytelling traditions?

I also find the idea of deep play intriguing. I think the most prevalent form of deep play in my life is the intense emotional connections I have with members of my family and some of my friends, particularly my best friend of nine years who now goes to Haverford. If I were to loose my family or this friend, I would be broken. It's a risk I'm more than willing to take, though, because I thrive on these emotional connections and they make my life so much richer than it would be if I were distant from everyone. I think people engage in deep play because the extreme highs in life go hand in hand with extreme lows: you need to take risks to experience life fully.

P.S. To anyone who is inclined to be alarmed by my crying in class today: don't freak out! It's how I react to things, and kudos to you for making me feel comfortable enough to open up after knowing you for only a couple of months. :D

I thought it was interesting that for each Pueblo person, they have a different story and each word "has a story of it's own". I think it is really rather odd to associate a story with each word, because stories are made of words in Englis and not the other way around. Actually, when I think about it more, each "kanji" (Chinese character) in Japanese has its own story. The kanji for man consists of "rice field" and "power". The kanji for woman comes from the way a woman use to sit way back when.

A long night passed, as I held and rocked my three year old daughter through another ear infection, I contemplated motherhood as culture. Finally, as the pain subsided and I watched her pain turn to short intervals of quiet slumber, I remembered how, when I was a child, I, too, had severe ear infections and my mother and grandmother would rock me to sleep. I then began thinking of the different ways in which we celebrated holidays together, how my mother always was in the kitchen, all my aunts laughing together, cleaning (doing supposed "women's work"), the men watching sports, but it provided a sense of home and community. It occurred to me how important it is, not only to have an awareness of what our culture consists of but how to teach our children the importance of cultural inheritance (is there such a term??) My family has changed since my mother and grandmother, there are now two mom's in our house, and at holidays, two mom's and a dad and everybody does the dishesand "most" of us like to watch sports (partcularly Steelers). But, some of the same culture stays with me from my childhood, nonetheless.

Have a good class...I will be at home being mom.

I find how this class had changed my point of view very, very interesting. I like thinking about my first reactions to a reading and then comparing them to how they might have been different before this seminar. For example, in the first paragraph of this reading, the author talks about how important speaking in the moment is: “Where I come from, the words most highly valued are those spoken from the heart, unpremeditated and unrehearsed.” My very first reaction was, “Where does that expression ‘words from the heart’ come from? Is our unconscious the same as our heart? As our emotions? Maybe we just think it is difficult to access our unconscious, like some people find it hard to access their emotions… “ Just a crazy little train of thought that went through my head.

 

I think one of the most interesting things that I read in this first article was the idea that a written speech is highly suspect because that means the words that this person speaks are not “from the heart” and that they are detached from the occasion. As someone who is very interested in theater, this made me wonder if the Pueblo Indians viewed theater as something not truly from the heart since it was already written down and not improvised. And that also makes me wonder about how much they value storytelling. Isn’t storytelling a “premeditated” and “rehearsed” form of expression? I’m by no means trying to discredit the Pueblo Indians, though. In retrospect, it seems like I’m out to disprove them or something--which I am not!

 

The other fact that stood out to me was when the author discussed the importance of remembering and retelling all stories—both positive and negative. This part especially stood out me because the author describes this as an important practice because, “If others have done it before, it cannot be so terrible. If others have endured, so can we.” I found this mentality very interesting

In response to the two questions posed in the prompt, I believe that we can step back far enough from culture in order to explain it and tell stories about it. The first reading was written by a member of the culture that was being written about and did an excellent job of conveying the important aspects of the culture. I think that sometimes we don't realize the distinct characteristics of the cultures that we are a part of but once we begin to think about them ideas come pretty quickly. I also think that this is highlighted when put in comparison with other culutres. For example, the story about Bali is very interesting to us because our culture is very different from the culture of Bali. It talks a completely new way of living and interacting with one another. Most people in America don't completely ignore outsiders until and then accept them after a certain amount of time, but in Bali it is normal. The things we may find strange in Bali's culture point out what we find normal in our own culture. I have found  this same occurance in coming to college. Here there are so many people from very different backgrounds and hearing their stories have pointed out certain characteristics of my own culture from home. I have come to realize what makes up the culture that I come from which before I just took for granted. Maybe I will write about this in my next paper? 

I think Language and Literature... was the first piece that we've read that actually gave a brief definition of a story. We have referenced this theme within the bigger picture of all of our discussions but have not read about it any of our readings and if at all then not very often. It's nice to read a story from the reading that ties into the bigger picture.

As interesting as I found the story about the girl drowning herself, I found the story to very odd. Why would the girl want to drown herself after she knew that her mom had "yashtoah" for her? I can understand that children are more vulnerable and often have suicidal thoughts in order to determine their worth. Did she have suicidal thougths before she wanted the Yashtoah and used the fact that she gathered snakes instead of wood as an excuse to commit suicide? If so, what were her real motives for commiting suicide since her mother wasn't able to stop her. Once her daughther jumped into the water, I was surprised that she didn't immediately jump into the water and make any further attempt at saving her daughter. A mother watching her daugher drown herself does not seem like a normal reaction. Maybe there's a certain understanding in their culture about suicide since she seemed more keen in grieving her daughter's death and scattering her daughter's belongings than trying to save her life.

I have to agree with carterian in the fact that I was frustrated with the Pueblo stories because they left them open ended and I wanted to know more.  Why did the young girl committ suicide; just becasue her mother scolded her for bring home snakes instead of wood.  That is honestly absurd.  These Pueblo stories are supposed to teach a lesson of some sort, so what is the lesson from this story-committ suicide if u bring home snakes instead of wood-ridiculous.  Also, with the story about the woman who lost her husband, but then applied for the job in the Keans Canyon, we never know what happens once she arrives.  I wanted to know more details about these stories, but they seemed to be left open ended, which personally annoys me. 

 

However, I was extremely interested in the sory about Bali and the anthrologist who visited.  This story gave so much information into the background of cock fighting and the meaning behind it all.  I have much to say about this story, but that would go on forever, but one thing that I will say is that I think that the information about the cock fighting, especially the betting part went on for too long and I lost interest quickly and had to skip around the page.