Author Archives: John Vasoli

Don’t Kill My Embodiment

Posted on April 11, 2011 by John Vasoli

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely seems to be the wrong title for Claudia Rankine’s lyric about American life. I would suggest something more along the lines of Don’t Die on Me. Or, if that’s too cliche, perhaps something more subtle … Continue reading →

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My second post involving a cat

Posted on April 6, 2011 by John Vasoli

 

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I Missed out on Turkey

Posted on March 31, 2011 by John Vasoli

My paternal grandfather was born in Bergamo Italy, my paternal grandmother Algiers Algeria, my maternal great-grandmother Vancouver Canada, and my paternal great-great grandfather Norway.  What does this mean to me, John Vasoli, a middle class, white kid from a Philadelphia suburb? … Continue reading →

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I like Reading, Sort of

Posted on March 14, 2011 by John Vasoli

I don’t love reading.  It’s ok, a decent way to pass some time.  Let’s say better than most TV, but not a mediocre movie (Patrick Swayze will always trump Hemingway).  My mom is big reader, a former english teacher.  My dad is not, … Continue reading →

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Real World Autobiography

Posted on March 3, 2011 by John Vasoli

Of all the autobiographical acts that Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson describe in their book Reading Autobiography, the four autobiographical I’s- the narrating, the narrated, the ideological, and the historical- seem to be the most important; after all, what is more … Continue reading →

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Is Benjamin Franklin a Puritan?

Posted on February 24, 2011 by John Vasoli

No.  But from Puritan autobiography to Benjamin Franklin, there is a noticeable change in what Watson and Smith call the ideological “I”.  In Reading Autdbiography, they define the ideological “I” as the “mobile positionalities of the ‘I’” or in other … Continue reading →

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Relationality and the Autobiographical “I” in Mary Rowlandson

Posted on February 15, 2011 by John Vasoli

On relationality in autobiographical acts, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson in Reading Autobiography write, “This concept of relationality, implying that one’s story is bound up in that of another, suggests that the boundaries of an ‘I’ are often shifting and … Continue reading →

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Dearest Diary,

Posted on February 8, 2011 by John Vasoli

I feel as though this may be the last place I have to express these sudden and inescapable fears that the Lord Our God is, for some reason, upset with me.  For what exactly I have yet to discern, however, … Continue reading →

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Cabeza de Vaca’s Constructed Autobiographical Truth

Posted on February 1, 2011 by John Vasoli

It’s interesting to read Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacion because it is seemingly a straight forward account, almost to the point of being akin to a captain’s log, of his experiences in the New World.  At the time of its publication, … Continue reading →

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