{"id":1704,"date":"2021-03-29T21:49:33","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T01:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2021-03-29T21:49:33","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T01:49:33","slug":"woven-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2021\/03\/29\/woven-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Woven Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

In one of Shani Mootoo\u2019s interviews, she was asked, \u201cWould you say that to some extent you are writing your \u201cselves” into being?.. Audre Lorde refers to the \u2018\u2018telling\u2019\u2019 of experience, and part of Lorde\u2019s meaning in that phrase is the \u2018\u2018telling\u2019\u2019 or the \u2018\u2018relating\u2019\u2019 of parts of oneself in order to share the experiences\u201d(110). While Mootoo sidestepped this question in the interview, the concept of being able to write or tell oneself into being (or part of oneself) is very evident within Mootoo\u2019s novel, \u201c<\/span>Cereus Blooms at Night<\/span><\/i>. In <\/span>Cereus Blooms at Night<\/span><\/i> the main character, Mala, goes through extreme trauma throughout a significant amount of her life, starting from when she was a child. We see Mala deal with this trauma in her own way, often secluding herself into her mind and into the past, \u201cfortified by the night\u2019s display she wove memories. She remembered a little and imagined a great deal\u201d(Mootoo 142). Memories are usually things that we think of as set, of things that happened in the past which are then unchangeable as a whole, however Mala \u201cwove her own memories\u201d implying that she was able to manipulate strands of her past memories like threads along with new imagined events to create new memories for herself. Mala draws within herself to create a version of her life, a version of her younger self, Pohpoh, in a new narrative, with a new ending. Mala \u201cthought harder of Pohpoh\u2026 I, Mala Ramchandin, will set you, Pohpoh Ramchandin free, free, free, like a bird\u201d(Mootoo 173). Mala <\/span>thinks<\/span><\/i> another Pohpoh into existence by telling and retelling herself the stories of her youth until she cannot distinguish her original memory from her woven memory, the created existence within her own mind. Through these woven memories of her own design, Mala creates a separate Pohpoh and lets her free. Pohpoh\u2019s freedom, her happy ending, is soaring in the sky, away from the rocks that strangers threw at her, the bullies, the whispers of people who knew what her father was doing and did nothing, and most importantly far above her father\u2019s reach and control.\u00a0 This Pohpoh was one that Mala created a happy ending for, a happy ending that involved her (Mala) saving herself (Pohpoh) by finally freeing Pohpoh.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Mootoo may not have written one of herself into being in <\/span>Cereus<\/span><\/i> Blooms at Night<\/span><\/i>, or at least refused to speak on that, her character Mala thought and told a version of herself, Pohpoh, into a new being in the freedom both parts of Mala desperately needed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one of Shani Mootoo\u2019s interviews, she was asked, \u201cWould you say that to some extent you are writing your \u201cselves” into being?.. Audre Lorde refers to the \u2018\u2018telling\u2019\u2019 of experience, and part of Lorde\u2019s meaning in that phrase is the \u2018\u2018telling\u2019\u2019 or the \u2018\u2018relating\u2019\u2019 of parts of oneself in order to share the experiences\u201d(110). … Continue reading Woven Memories<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4656,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}