I/We in Writing
Stacey Schlau’s The Use of the Word and Leigh Gilmore’s The Limits of Autobiography complicate ideas of genre and demonstrate the various ways in which writers employ and subvert genres, especially that of autobiography. Both acknowledge the constraints of genre and the difficulties in breaking the canon. The genre of testimonio provoke the limits of fiction, autobiography, individual and collective, personal and political. Both critics suggest that perhaps writing cannot fall into binary categories, but rather writing that perhaps might be understood as autobiographical, testimonio, or other push the limits of genre.
Gilmore comments that writers who have experienced trauma, often employ an autobiographical mode of writing that is written outside the constraints of an autobiography genre. Much of this choice seems to rely on ideas of definitions of truth and the legimitization of the writer in recounting and claiming stories and the relationship of the story to the self. Gilmore suggests that "conventions about truth telling, salutary as they are, can be inimical to the ways in which some writers bring trauma stories into language. The portals are too narrow and the demands too restrictive. Moreover, the judgments they invite may be too similar to forms in which trauma was experienced. When the contest is over who can tell the truth, the risk of being accused of lying (or malingering, or inflating, or whining) threatens the writer into continued silenceâ€?. Schlau also interesting enough, references silence as a mechanism and strategy that threatens patriarchal norms. With these differences, I agree with Schlau that it is important to read texts in context of in which the writing occurs. Part of the controversy in testimonio and autobiographical writing seems to be due to the concept of I. Many writers appear to use I, not just in an individual sense, but also in a collective identity of bringing the voices of other women to be heard. As writing is political, the ability to write and publish permits the writer to be in a privileged position. Writers, then might use this position to recount the stories of others who are not in the same position. Perhaps written with the idea of collective solidarity, there is a collapse between I and we. The autobiographical mode of writing then becomes a way of representing, and cannot be read as purely realist, but rather a realist interpretation of the self/we. This also brings into play the use of memory. By criticizing the veracity of autobiography and testimonio, critics then often perhaps assume that true autobiography uses a pure memory that is infallible. Yet, memory changes according to context. Kozameh’s Steps Under Water employs various third person/first person modes in order to express a collective identity of self and we. Kozameh also does not shy away from admitting that her story is not purely her own, but also the stories of others. Given the trauma that she experienced, is it not honorable to want to remember and put into print the memories and experiences of others? Yet also, trauma is perhaps not necessarily personal, but collective, and in this sense, perhaps there is no choice but to collapse the we/I/them. In Persona, Morejon also questions the I and we. She starts the poem with a question. ¿Cuáles de estas mujeres soy yo? She sees herself not through just a mirror but through other women. She also sees a collective identity based on slavery and oppression, and while she suggests that it is not skin color, it is implicit in her rhetoric. When she questions if Todos mis huesos, ¿serán mÃos? /¿Me los habrán comprado en aquella plaza remota de Gorée?, she literally places her body into a collective identity of history in Cuba, and suggests that her very body is not necessarily purely her own, but rather part of a larger collective experience in which Afro-Cuban women were dispossessed of their own bodies. The trauma of slavery and its legacy is an experience, suggested by Morejon, of potential solidarity. This is a reference to both the act of buying slaves, but also to the ways in which Afro-Cuban women are related by these experiences. Morejon speaks of her identity then in terms of an identification with other women, who have also experienced this legacy. Kozameh and Morejon both use their writing to speak for themselves and for others. However, by speaking for others, it it not necessarily an appropriation, but rather a legitimization and the acknowledgement of the multiple ways in which one experiences that cannot be understood merely by an I.