Incidents Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Incidents - Essay Example As an autoethnographic text, however, Incidents also demonstrates that Linda, the main character, has a very clear idea of her own cultural identity, and that that cultural identity is in large part imposed upon her from beyond her control. As a black salve girl, she is expected to fit those cultural norms regardless of anything else in her life, and she recognizes that she must take every step she can to navigate theses issues throughout her life. Linda’s family situation is one of the main things that creates an autoethnographic understanding of herself. A child is usually innocent with the social environment during the early stages of his/her life. However, as time passes, a child is faced with the inevitable task of acknowledging the state of affairs surrounding his/her life. For Linda this meant one thing: dealing with the situation of slavery, which she experiences almost entirely through the lens of her family. The story Incidents is, in large part, the story of Lindaâ €™s growing understanding of her family. ... Linda admires her grandmothers hardworking nature and appreciates all the efforts she made while trying to free her family from bondage. This aspect of hard work and objectivity in her grandmother chores even as a slave encouraged Linda in many aspects of her life. It is through the lenses of these stories about family that Linda begins to understand her own cultural identity – her cultural understanding of self is constantly influenced by the way her family describes their interactions with slave owners. In every slavery situation, the victim faces unfair and unjustified treatment from their masters. Such mistreatments extend from basic acts of discrimination to other inhumane acts. In her narration about the condition surrounding the childhood life of her mother, the girl highlights this act of oppression on the relationship between her mother and the grandmother’s mistress daughter. Linda’s maternal grandmother was used as the foster mother of her motherâ€⠄¢s mistress. After birth, her mother as weaned from her grandmother so as to give the mistress the chance to be breast fed sufficiently by her grandmother. In the story, Linda is bitter about this content and feels that the people who at the same time pretended to care for her mistreated her mother as a child. Linda’s identity formation process is not solely centered on her blood family, however. Her extended family in the form of other slaves, and especially god-parents, leads in large part to Linda understanding her cultural place in the world. Jacobs illustrates the roles played by the people who care about us in life. Jacobs is not different to the significance of Linda’s mother mistress in taking care of her and her sibling. As we can witness from the text,