Big Decisions

Following the submission of our Genre Analysis essay, we are not shifting gears to focus on our Multimodal Memoir essay. With this comes big decisions about what we want to focus our writing on, so I had to take some time to find a particular event from my life that I can show the significance of, and connect it to a political or social problem.

I come from a Hispanic and African-American, middle-class household. I have also seen both sides of the wealth spectrum, so I believe I can turn my experiences into a great connection to a problem in society. The biggest problem that I face due to my culture is not being "black enough" or "Mexican enough." Since I am only half of both ethnicities, I find myself often unable to fully connect with people who are of a full ethnic background. In my memoir, I want to explore a cultural problem that I face, but I might struggle to come up with an experience to support it. With this, I hope that I can teach the readers how hard it is for me to connect with people who are of full ethnic descent, and how this might cause my views on both cultures to change.

I have a couple of possible stories I could write about, with the first coming to mind being my high school Black Student Union.

This is a picture of my school's Black Student Union at graduation.

Being a chairman of my High School's Black Student Union (BSU), I was often asked "are you even black?" I feel like I could make a great connection to the way that I wasn't looked at the same way as my peers in the club, and how the tone of my skin does not warrant me being "black enough."

By pursuing this message, readers can dig into their ethnic backgrounds, and determine whether or not they can relate to my story. Teen Vogue's audience likely comes from various ethnic backgrounds, and with this, I'm sure that there will be many people to relate to the same kinds of problems that I did based on my ethnicity. While reading my memoir, I hope that the audience will question their judging ability, and ask themselves why they are quick to judge when they don't entirely know one's ethnic background. However, because I am speaking to such a young audience, I have to make sure that my storytelling is intriguing, so that the readers stay engaged.

A big obstacle that I am scared I will face is that I don't know the extent to which the reader will connect to my story. What I mean by this is that I am the one telling the story, so I know how I will interpret it. I have no way of telling how another person will interpret my story. Not only this, but when I tell stories I find myself losing my train of thought, so I need to do my best to stay on task with my storytelling so that I only tell aspects of my story that will help me connect it back to send a message.