"Pathography and Enabling Myths"

I found this essay very interesting, and I think its my favorite so far.  In it Anne Hawkins talks about the different ways people come to terms with an illness, often using writing and narrative to help themselves cope with the new world they find themselves in. She points out that once someone becomes sick, they enter a different kind of world, since our society puts so much importance and normality on being healthy. Pathography is the story in which patients tell to summarize their illness, and Hawkins argues that it is a very important step in accepting the event. She also argues that these pathographies exist in both a space of story and memory saying "It is less, in that remembering and writing are selective processes--certain facts are omitted either because they are forgotten o because they do not fit the author's narrative design; and it is more, in that the act of committing experience to narrative form inevitable confers upon it  a particular sequence of events and endows it with a significance that was probably only latent in the original experience. Writing about an experience--any experience--inevitably changes it" (225).

The parallel Hawkins establishes between a medical report and the pathography is similar to what we have been talking about with logic and emotion. On one side you have the facts (logic and medical reports) and on the other you have the emotions (pathographies) that go along with those facts. I think it is interesting that more stock, for patients as well as society, remains in the facts and that it is odd or the last ditch effort to find something to latch onto that forces people to turn to the emotional side. These pathographies serve as a way of healing because they allow a person to face their issue and explain it, essentially taking it back and turning it into something that they can understand on a deeper level.

I think Hawkins has a really good handle on the relationship between the person and healing, and I think this is what would have made Brand's essay better and more relatable to our topic of writing and healing.

"Healing and the Brain"

In this essay, Alice Brand discusses the importance biology has in our development as a species as well as an individual. She begins the essay by pointing out a tiny little gland on our brains called the amygdala and argues that it is one of the most important pieces of our brains for memory. Throughout the essay she explains the different functions of the brain and how exactly it has helped us evolve. But she also talks about its importance in healing.

Emotion plays a large role in this essay, and Brand clearly conveys the lack of attention it gets in education. She argues that we have survived this long because of emotion and classrooms thrive or die because of it. Without emotion, and the highly important amygdala, humans wouldn't be as intelligent and evolved as we are. Brand puts this information forward so that the we can also learn about ways of healing, through language and the natural abilities of the brain. She argues that this is an important and inevitable process, but we seem to ignore it for more rational alternatives.

What I found most interesting about this essay was how the amygdala is fully developed before the hippocampus, which allows memories from early childhood too be stored and saved. Our amygdala's are also responsible for a host of emotions and memories that often impact us without us even realizing. I think the brain is fascinating in general and it is even cooler to hear how our brains are basically machines for dreams and memories.  

Uncomfortable

Church on Sundays was mandatory when I was younger. My mother would wake me up and I'd pretend to fall back asleep. Soon enough she'd pull me out of bed and I would complain, whine, and try to make a deal with her. I'd go next week, I'd be good all week, just don't make me go. She never budged and I always found myself sitting beside her in the pew as the church sang around me.

I remember vividly one morning close to the end of the service. It was before my communion so instead of going up and receiving the Eucharist, I followed my mother with my arms crossed over my chest. I stepped up to the Priest, looking up at him as he leaned over and put a hand on my head.

"Do you accept the body of Christ?" he asked.

I thought for a moment, his words rolling around in my head. My mother stood beside me, still chewing. A moment of panic rushed through me. I didn't know the answer. I looked up at the priest and shook my head.

"No."

My mother leaned in quickly, before he could even take a breath. "She means yes."

The priest chuckled and we moved on, following the line in front of us neatly back to our pew.

Thinking back, I was more uncomfortable with my mother making me change my answer. I was in church, a place where I was expected to act in a certain way, and lying was not included. In the Sundays after that, I was better able to navigate my way through each service, knowing exactly when to leave so for the bathroom so I would miss the point when we were expected to shake hands with the people around me. But the incident has always stuck in my mind and I think it is because I was asked to make a choice in church, and my choice was not accepted. Granted, I was a kid and didn't really know anything about what I was doing or sawing, but my opinion was still ignored.

I think this affected me in other ways in church as well. I struggled with my mother for several more years before she finally gave up and left me home on Sunday mornings, but I was still ingrained with the rules. Whenever I stay with my grandparents, we must go to church. We must dress nice and following along with each song. We must accept the body of Christ and say 'amen'.

"Writing as healing and the Rhetorical Tradition"

Just like the title suggests, T.R. Johnson's essay talks about the progression and tradition of writing as a form of healing. He begins with the ancient Greeks and how writing was associated with healing because trauma was also part of the sickness. Johnson says "The Greeks of this era viewed all disease--not just what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder--as open to the curative powers of language" (90).

Johnson goes on to say that many of this accepted ideas and practices were soon lost due to Plato's idea that writing was not the answer people needed. Johnson instead brings up the opposition to Plato, saying that writing is a way to find one's true self as well as help to heal one's own wounds. To argue his point, Johnson uses the work of Jerome Bruner and Carl Rogers to show that writing is a way to find out more about yourself.

Both Bruner and Rogers directed their work towards some kind of self-actualization. Bruner pushed more towards a researched based form of self-discovery for a writer, which was instead interpreted as simply going against social contexts. Johnson includes a quote by James Berlin, who says "Bruner was not interested in relating knowledge to society...for Bruner students must learn for themselves" (97). Rogers similarly looks at the "self-as-process". Rogers ideas were thought of as escapism and self-indulgence, but Johnson argues that we can learn a lot from taking Rogers's ideas and bringing them into the classroom.

What I found really interesting about this reading was the stuff about the expressivist rhetoric and how there are so many ways to derive meaning from different works. Johnson argues that these ideas offer up an alternative to Plato's ideas and the more rigid forms of thought that would hamper writers like Tim O'Brien. I think it is interesting that writing has always been a way of healing but that certain ideas and ideologies have gotten in the way to keep it from being completely accepted and main stream. It is interesting because with almost every piece we read we learn of a new obstacle in the way of writing and healing, almost like writing in order to heal is just as shameful as the trauma itself.

"Equipment For Living"

In her essay Tilly Warnock talks about how writing is viewed by most people. She argues that it is either seen as a way of living or a kind of coping mechanism. She quotes Burke several times, using his ideas and beliefs as a basis for her own. She goes on to say " I advocate a rhetorical approach to writing and living that provides 'strategies for coping' and 'equipment for living'" (37). Warnock also supports the reader and writer coming together to find meaning in a piece. She argues that this invites readers to come to their own conclusions based on their own experiences rather than just going along with what the writer wants. She delves into a short personal essay that details this, arguing that as a child she was taught how to behave, react, and think about society. She says "the power of language to reflect and deflect and to construct reality was a lesson for white children, who were taught once, implicitly and explicitly, that half f the people in their world did not exist as human beings, and taught later, explicitly and implicitly, that this view was wrong, immoral, and illegal" (39).

This part of the essay related well with the first chapter, when it was said that children quickly learn how to behave based on the people around them. Warnock states that she made her way through school by going along with what was expected of her, by pleasing her teachers with "correct" answers. She also stresses the importance of letting life write you rather than just writing  for life. She uses her mother's needlework as an example of the delicate dynamic between writing life and letting life write you. Warnock goes back to Burke to talk about the importance of revision and argues that he shows readers how to keep revising. She points out another important aspect of Burke's argument, which is comic perspective. But she challenges these ideas as well, bringing them into the classroom and pointing out the flaws that could occur.

My favorite part of her essay was where she went into her personal life and how writing has shaped her into the person she is. Rather than telling us about how she was lost and struggling in life until she found an outlet for herself in writing, she instead tells us that writing was always there and it was her who put it aside to care for her family.

Personal Essay

The seats were organized alphabetically, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem for me, but in this case, my sixth grade math teacher weaved my classmates and I up and down the room of desks, like columns. I landed in the front row, two seats down from the dusty projector and only a twitch of the eye away from his scrutinizing gaze.

Math was never my strong suite.

Short, old and unforgivingly blunt, Mr. Bean was adored by the rest of the class, and most of his former students. He’d been a staple at my middle school long before I arrived and was now just on the cusp of retirement. Even before school started, I was terrified of him. Stories about his class and the way I saw him strut around school, only about a foot and a half taller than us, made him out to be a teacher that took no nonsense and didn’t care how his students saw him.

 While my fellow classmates received nicknames like “Paintbrush” and “Sasquatch” for characteristics like hair and height, I tried my best to remain under the radar. After going over homework each class he would return to his desk, open his grade book, full of red marks and notes and begin to call out names.

“Brook Alenwick!”

“Two,” she answered, placing her pencil down beside her notebook. Even from my seat in the front, I could see how neat her homework was.

One by one my classmates responded with similar numbers—one, two, sometimes zero.

“Nickolas Lee!”

“Seven,” he replied, with a proud chuckle.

The class laughed, hard and loud, at his obvious stupidity while Mr. Bean made a mark into his grade book. Usually he made a comment, but instead he moved on to the next name.

“Samantha Perry!”

“Two,” I lied.

I wasn’t proud of my mistakes. I’d given up on getting the right answers early on in the class, instead watching intently as Mr. Been went over the more difficult questions, tracking my path to failure each time. In the beginning, it was easy enough to lie, to simply spit out what my classmates were saying so I wouldn’t become the next target for the class’s pent up laughter. Eventually, my test scores prompted Mr. Bean to come up with a new way of monitoring my progress.

“Andrew Zinc!”

“One.”

With the last name called and marked down in the book, Mr. Bean looked up, narrowing his eyes and pointing a stout finger at me before curling it back. Bringing my homework, void of the notes and doodles that were so often featured in the margins and free space, I trudged up to his desk, feeling the eye of every student on me. After handing over the notebook, Mr. Bean went through each question, marring the page with red slashes and x’s.

It was everything that I feared would happen to me while in his class. Not only had I failed to stay under the radar, I was the one my friends snickered at. I was the one that made the class laugh, so hard and loud, when I called out my number.

This class effectively stomped out my voice. Unlike Nick Lee, I wasn’t proud of myself or the way in which I could make the class laugh. I faded into myself to keep from being embarrassed, humiliated in front of the people that made up my whole world. This class instilled in me a fear, so deep that I struggle to this day, of answering questions and speaking up in class.

Over the years, the experiences with the good teachers have overpowered the memories of Mr. Bean. I have learned that my input is valued, even while I struggle to become comfortably enough to speak. 

"Whose Voice is it Anyway?"

In Ann Ruggles Gere's essay she argues that the voice of a writer has a lot of significance. "Authentic" is a way in which a writer's work is often defined or criticized, but Gere argues that authenticity can also stifle a writer's work as well. Authenticity is the comparison of one person's voice to the voice of authority. If that voice does not match up, the writer's true voice is made to be inferior and incorrect. Gere points out that students's voices are often ones that teachers set out to fix, which is basically the same as taking the writer's voice away all together. In Gere's opinion, a writer's voice develops based on their family history, their past and what has shaped them into the person they are. Without their own voice, writers are separating themselves from themselves in order to have a voice that matches what society wants.

I think Gere's argument relates directly to the process of healing. A writer cannot heal if their voices are stifled and the histories are made to be separate from the voice that society will accept. This idea goes back to the first chapter when it talks about soldiers struggling with PTSD. If a writer is not able to write in their own voice, their trauma will be harder to overcome because they are not part of a community that accepts their voice and their views.  I think this is what I found most compelling about this chapter. While we as writers are urged to find our own voice, certain voices are better than others and easier to accept. So, my question would be what are those "authentic" voices and how can we integrate more to allow for more healing?