Personal Narrative: My Activism

adherence. However, the merger between personal and public narratives may produce varying results, including personal gain at the public’s expense and vice versa. I argue that It’s My Life and Burchardt’s article “The self as capital in the narrative economy” illustrate the variability of this imperfect merger. It’s My Life details Zackie Achmat’s personal health sacrifices in his battle for the public’s benefit, whereas Burchardt’s piece shows how a narrative loses its validity to the public if the

with anybody that is willing to listen. The importance of social media in social and political movements became clear to many people during the rise of the Black Lives Matter campaign. Anybody that had an opinion on the campaign could take to their personal social media sites and share what they had to say. While mass media, like news companies and talk shows, allows opinions and biases to spread due to a single, often influential, person sharing their beliefs to a viewership, social media allows anybody

For our activism project, my sister, Maggie, and I went to the Ziibiwing Center in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. We live in the near-by village of Shepherd, so we decided to visit the Center while we were home for Easter break. I had been interested in visiting the Center for a number of years and saw this project as the necessary push to finally act on the desire. Mt. Pleasant is located right next to the reservation of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe. At times is hard to tell where the reservation

fellow organizations and countless hours of volunteer services depleted my energy. Add the hours of academic work, and well, I could never complain that my life was uneventful.On this eventful day, the Social Justice Fellows were holding our monthly guest speaker meeting. Although at the time I was feeling lethargic, the monthly meetings always gave me a boost of inspiration. I have an affinity towards academia and activism, but an even stronger affinity towards intellectual discourse. Which these

This class has taught me how to engage in strategic lifelong activism. Activism is an umbrella term referring to the promoting or campaigning of policy or social change on the cultural, structural, or national level. Activism has been developed and practiced throughout history by people like Jesus Buddha, Thoreau, and Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK). Thanks to these people over the years activism has developed a clear and effective structure which has proven effective in history and a number of cultures

INFORMATIONAL/ORGANIZATIONAL EVENT REPORT On October 21, 2015 I and some friends attended an event sponsored jointly by the Humanities and English department. The title of this event; “Adoption Narratives of the Human”. Four women sat on the panel; Maggie Jones, Visiting Assistant Professor, Nonfiction Writing, University of Pittsburgh; Margaret Homans, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies, Yale University; Frayda Cohen, Senior Lecturer, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

Literature, Faculty of Al Alsun, Minia University An (Inter) textual Analysis of Two Poems from Nikky Finney’s Head off & Split (2011) Abstract Nikky Finney (1957- ) has always been involved in the struggle of southern black people interweaving the personal and the public in her depiction of social issues such as family, birth, death, sex, violence and relationships. An(inter) textual analysis of two poems from Head off & Split, “Red Velvet” and “Left”, reveals that she succeeded in making the beautifully

from adversity. On the whim of my single mom, I have moved from place to place on pocket change and borrowed money. I have been raised a transient: shifting three hundred miles or three thousand, I have experienced poverty in states across the nation. I have lived with rats in Ohio; I have slept on couches in California; I have had to sacrifice groceries for rent in North Carolina and rent for my mom's breast cancer bills in Georgia. Being homeless for several months of my freshman year of high school

of their skin color. The text begins with an account of the 1899 lynching of Sam Hose, he was chained to a tree, tortured and burned alive in front of cheering crowd. W.E.B. Du Bois resolved to devote himself to the anti-lynching cause. Dray’s narrative then moves back to 1835, year of the first widely publicized lynching, and proceeds in order to summarize some of the darkest moments in the human depravity, ending with a brief account of the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas. Dray

it to prevail through the power of the majority” (412). Similar to Thoreau, Orwell found himself in the minority and frankly put, on the wrong side of history. Orwell stated, “For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better” (308). However, when compared to Thoreau, Orwell did not actively protest imperialist England; in fact, Orwell was actually employed by the English government. This greatly distinguished