Identity via Narrative

"It is only through narrative that we know ourselves as active entities that operate through time."
"All I want to do is tell the truth about myself." -- H. Porter Abbott

Both reflective prompts for this week seem to go hand in hand with each other. Since I started graduate school and even long before, identity (the ways in which we see, label, and express ourselves, or the classic who we are, etc.) has been something I've struggled to understand. Because of this identity struggle, because of this identity crisis, both terms above appear to be interchangeable. Abbott, I would argue, is absolutely correct. Narrative allows us to understand ourselves and our history, and in that same regard, narrative enables us to tell our story.

Our identity is formed through narrative. We learn about ourselves from our past, from our present, from hope for the future, and from our ongoing reflections. Our utterances, our dialogues link us together as human beings; to me, that's narrative at it's best. We attempt to understand one another by sharing our narratives. If the Western culture preaches anything, it is this idea that we can solve anything by simply and wholeheartedly talking the matter out. The older I get and the more experienced I become, the more I believe this to be true. Truly, through dialogue, we improve our day to day events, world, and history.

Gloria Anzladua is one of my scholarly heroes in terms of identity, labels, and understanding ourselves. Anzaldua in one of her pieces mentions that she will forever live in her writing. Some of her writing is narrative at its very best, and her Borderlands/La Frontera mirrors Abbott's quotes above. Another writer who understands herself through nonfictional and fictional narratives is Sandra Cisneros. Like Anzaldua, Cisneros writes in order to establish her presence in two cultures simultaneously.  Both authors use narratives and writing in order to understand themselves.

The other night in class we discussed the narrator/narrattee concept at length, and I am glad we did. As a result of our discussion, I realized that life is all about the way in which we perceive the world and in which we perceive stories, narratives, etc. Our perception, our point of view, our identity -- all three we come to understand through narrative, and narrative is natural communication. Narrative can be illustrated or spoken, but either way, we are able to relate to whatever it is that we are seeing or hearing.

Each of us has a story -- a narrative to share, and this narrative is who we are. Through narrative, we are able to see ourselves as a part of a whole in which we may or may not fit in. This whole, this culture, in return establishes some sort of an identity for us, and from this whole, the identity struggles surface as many are stuck on answering the question: "Who am I?"

Best,
Aida