It's a Collection of Voices

At first when I began reading Gere’s article, I was a little unsure of where it would head especially with her discussion on voice. As I kept reading, her argument slowly made its way into view. “…so we often consider our students’ voices separate from the particular family history, significant persons, and events that helped to shape them. We forget that ‘authentic’ means relational. To describe a voice as authentic is to put it in relationship to other voices.” (27-28). We begin to think of writers as individuals writing about a particular subject, drawing only from themselves from the language they’ve developed. We forget for the moment that these people have family, friends, teachers, and situations that have made them who they are in terms of when they speak and write. These influences affect them in some way on how they view the world and certain experiences, and it shows through voice. Their voice is not only their own, but the collection of many others that have made it into their memory.

What I found most compelling about Gere’s argument, and what I loved about it, was that these voices not only collect as a little library we can access in our mind. We can use them at our disposal, once aware of them, in helping to shape the present. Because of Gere’s adoptive daughter’s Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Cindy couldn’t find the exact words to say all of the time. Gere spent many years of her young daughter’s life, learning to understand her and speak for her when she couldn’t figure out what to say. From this, Gere was able to help speak for her mother who lost the ability because of her dementia. A line she puts beautifully when she says, “In part, I was prepared for giving voice to my mother’s thoughts because I had many years of practice–albeit a different sort–with my daughter.” (30). The power that voice can bring, whether it’s writing an article about FAS as Gere had done, or even in your own writing, is pretty incredible when taking into account all of the voices you’re bringing into it.

I’d like the class to focus on the different voices we all encounter in our daily life and even our writing, and my question would be, what are some voices that Gere didn’t bring up in her essay that are just as important? (Cultural, religious, etc.)

An Introduction to Writing and Healing

Throughout this wonderful introduction, I noticed that the author used words such as "control" or "agency" when talking about healing. When you’ve been through something traumatic, whether it’s the death of someone you love, a disease, an addiction, some form of abuse, or even witnessing something horrible, this specific event consumes you. It’s all you think about, it keeps you up at night, and even if you can get to sleep, you’ll awake from the nightmares that inhabit your mind. However, the way to understand healing, and what I think the author wants to leave us with, is that it’s “gaining control over that which has engulfed us.” (5). Becoming a personal agent in not letting the event take over you. Re-externalization is another way to free us of the event, by “transfer[ing] it to another outside oneself and then tak[ing] it back again.” (6). And that’s exactly what writing helps in doing. By writing about our struggles and past horrors, we place the agency back into ourselves, the control is placed back into the very hands that hold the pen to paper. We “exert a measure of control over that which we can never control – the past.” (7). I really loved that line the best, because it’s so true. We control how we write it, we control what’s said, how it’s delivered, when it’s delivered. We take control over what happened to us, which aids in healing from it.

I thought it was interesting when the author talked about Freud’s “seduction theory” on page 9 and continuing on page 10. How he eventually disregarded his theory and “plac[ed] agency of responsibility for psychic pain directly onto the ‘victim’” (10). Comparing it to modern times, it’s not so different from how some men (and women) victim blame female rape survivors when their stories come into the light. “Oh, it’s because her skirt was too short, she was looking for attention, she was ‘begging’ for it.” I feel like Freud has caused more harm than good, especially in learning this.

I would like our class to delve more into the idea of how writing about the self can teach us “to blame [ourselves] because [we] accept the ideology which locates the source of all action and value in the individual self…” (12). I thought it was an extremely interesting passage but also a bit confusing to follow.