Author Archives: Crystal Frost

Collective memory and the role of the media in Don’t Let Me Be Lonely

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Crystal Frost

In Reading Autobiography, Smith and Watson discuss the expanded possibilities for collective memory and the creation of “’imagined communities’” with the advent and widespread use of technologies such as television, film, and the Internet (26). The sense of identification with … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Collective memory and the role of the media in Don’t Let Me Be Lonely

An Artificial Life

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Crystal Frost

In exploring the extant to which her father constructed his life in a deceptive way, Alison Bechdel implicates herself in the studied artifice of his life and death. Profoundly impacted by the echoes of her father’s death, Bechdel’s memories of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on An Artificial Life

“Staking fence rods in my flesh”: Anzaldúa’s Embodied Borderland

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Crystal Frost

In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa boldly claims an identity inherently composed of the intersecting elements of Chicana culture, internalizing the complexities of the US-Mexico borderland. As Smith and Watson explain, “the cultural meanings assigned particular bodies affect … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off on “Staking fence rods in my flesh”: Anzaldúa’s Embodied Borderland

Can I just read it myself?

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Crystal Frost

I remember my mom and dad reading to me every night before I went to bed when I was a young child. I had a bed so large (“She’ll grow into it,” they said, eyeing the bargain price) that it … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Can I just read it myself?

Of the gracious mercy that I hath been shown

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Crystal Frost

In the year of the Lord 1992, in the Spring of that year, when I was but a young child, my parents did begin, through the goodness of the Lord, the building of a home for themselves and for their … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Of the gracious mercy that I hath been shown

Cabeza de Vaca’s Conscious Forgetting

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Crystal Frost

As Smith and Watson discuss in the Reading Autobiography, the narratorial strategies which self-writers employ often “attend to the role of remembering–and conscious forgetting–in the act of making meaning out of the past and the present” (30). As de Vaca … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Cabeza de Vaca’s Conscious Forgetting

Temporality in Alexie’s “Unauthorized Autobiography”

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Crystal Frost

Sherman Alexie organizes the time line of events and narratives in his essay “The Unauthorized Autobiography of Me” in a non-linear fashion, touching on essential information spanning his entire life. Through this warped sense of time, Alexie highlights experiences which … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Native Land and Forebears

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Crystal Frost

As a young child, I reveled in the tales of the West, my family’s native land, told after supper as we sat in my grandparents’ house. My grandfather, Frank Frost, would tell stories of his life as a young man … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on Native Land and Forebears