Critical Questions

Before Reading. Where do we get our sense of self-identity? How do our family and community shape us? In what way can someone's identity be considered multiple identities?

Taking it Further. Many other sources shape our identity: our memories, the stories we tell and hear, the cultural myths around us, and our sense of being different than others. How is a sense of "otherness" and difference manifested through our language, stories, and images?

Electronic Fieldwork Readings

Anna Deavere Smith, "Fires in the Mirror"
Thomas King, "Borders"
Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue"
Jim Mince, "The Beginning of the End"
Tara Masih, "Exotic, or 'What Beach Do You Hang Out On?'"
Frank Bidart, "Ellen West"
Web Connections for Chapter 1

Anna Deavere Smith, "Fires in the Mirror"

In addition to Deavere Smith's work, many people, activists, and organizations are working to build solidarity and alliances between Jewish American and African American people. Visit some of the following sites and think about how they construct these two racial racial/ethnic communities and the relations between them. According to "Fires in the Mirror," what might the two identities have in common and what might be the source of difference? According to some of these sites, what might they have in common? And what might be sources of difference or tension? If you study the links that these sites post to other Websites, what hints do you get about their alliances or their interests in coalition building?

• Biographies of Black American Jews
• Tikkun Magazine
• Site about the film Blacks and Jews
• Information about the CD-ROM game "Ethnic Cleansing"
• Black Radical Congress
• NAACP

Thomas King, "Borders"

Look at the Web Research exercise called "How Many Sides Does a Border Have?" Are other examples linked there or border situations where identity is not simply a matter of one thing or another? Where is biculturalism or multiculturalism more the norm than the exception?

Amy Tan, "Mother Tongue"

Look closely at the language that is used in an Internet setting (E-mail, a bulletin board, a chat room). Pay particularly close attention to how people are talking. What kind of language are they using? Is it formal language, academic language, or conversational language? Is it more like talking than writing? If, for example, you think that it is more conversational or oral than formal and written language, try to explain why.

Jim Mince, "The Beginning of the End"

Many biographical and autobiographical stories about homeless and formerly homeless people in the United States are now "published" on the World Wide Web. Most of these stories appear as part of Websites for homeless shelters or homeless advocacy groups. One particularly interesting group is the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), a shelter and program in Washington, D.C., founded by the late Mitch Snyder, a national homelessness activist. Currently, the majority of the staff at CCNV are formerly homeless people. The organization therefore challenges conventional notions of charity and advocacy. Visit the CCNV site and/or a site for a Homeless Shelter in your area of the country and read some of the profiles or life-stories. How do the stories compare to Mince's? How do they describe the borders between private and public spaces? Are shelters an intermediary space, along the border or a porous border, a transitional space? What about the Websites themselves? Do the pages with life stories break down the borders between those with "homes" and those without?

• Community for Creative Non-Violence
• House of Ruth Homeless Shelter (in Washington, D.C.)

Tara Masih "Exotic, or 'What Beach Do You Hang Out On?'"

In Masih's piece, the "exotic" is a colloquial but charged description of people's bodies and of geographic places. What places do you think of as exotic? What do you picture when you hear the word exotic? The Internet is crowded with sites encouraging tourism to various so-called exotic destinations in the Americas and around the world. Visit some tourist sites and look at the visual images they display in order to advertise, entice, and encourage tourism. In what ways are those images comparable to Masih's comments on the exotic?

• A three-hour tour of one of Rio de Janeiro's favelas, "the largest slum in South America"

Frank Bidart, "Ellen West"

The Web has become a highly contested space in the movement to help women and girls with eating disorders. Some sites even encourage eating disorders, and communities are built around this shared practice. What norms do recovery sites construct or contest? What metaphors emerge (remember the tapeworm in the poem)? The second site below includes pages where people in recovery from eating disorders can publish their poems. As novice writers (rather than professional poets), how do their works compare to Bidart's? What is the function of their publication or dissemination on the Web?

• Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders
• The Something Fishy Website on Eating Disorders (look for poetry page)

Web Connections for Chapter 1

We haven't posted electronic fieldwork questions for all of the readings in Chapter 1; however, most of the readings in this chapter relate well to the Web Research Activities "How Many Sides Does a Border Have?" and "Identity in Cyberspace." Use any of the readings in relation to "How Many Sides Does a Border Have?" to explore just what counts as a border and to name differences that come together along borders. Use the readings in relation to "Identity in Cyberspace" to explore the cultural formation of how individuals define themselves.

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