Family Matters in Jamaica Kincaid's <i>The Autobiography of My Mother</i>

Amit S. Rai begins his essay, "’Thus Spake the Subaltern…’: Postcolonial Criticism and the Scene of Desire," with the following question: "If we are sure today that the subaltern cannot speak, can we be as sure that her ghost does not, especially when postcolonial criticism seems to re-present the discourse of that ghost?" (91). In The Autobiography of My Mother, that ghost speaks in multiple voices which blur the lines between fiction, biography, autobiography, and criticism. I adopt Rai’s figure of the ghost here not to detract from the powerful subjectivity of Kincaid’s narrator, Xuela, whom Kincaid calls "more godlike" than her previous protagonists, but to emphasize her ability to transcend traditional literary and political realms.[1] Xuela tells of her life on postcolonial Dominica, and while her story is intensely private, avoiding mention of the island’s political affairs in favor of her thoughts and relationships, it is imbrued with the history of colonialism and slavery. The story also draws on Kincaid’s own life (as does all of her fiction) and that of her grandmother, such that, as Alison Donnell writes in "When Writing the Other is Being True to the Self," "we cannot be certain who the auto-biographer is [of] this text, or if there is more than one, for if this is Kincaid’s mother’s auto/biography, then Kincaid is still present as the ‘ghost’ writer/biographer" (127). The layered voices of the female narrator disrupt familiar patterns of subjectivity and nationhood as well as the autobiographical form

I Live in Nepantla; I Live in the Borderlands

This autobiographical research draws from testimonio inquiry exploring my lived curriculum as an emerging scholar and curriculum administrator of students who are living in historically marginalized areas. The questions are: How can testimonios inform the struggles of immigrant students in the Whitestream curriculum? How does my life in Nepantla inform teaching and learning in Aztlan? My framework is based on Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of Nepantla. More specifically, I use testimonio as a method of inquiry to critically explore my work to transform a curriculum designed from a White supremacist perspective into a more relevant curriculum. This study is important because immigrant educators will acquire conocimiento (knowledge) about the educational inequalities that still exist in education and they will learn to be agents of change in education

Library Trends 46 (1) Summer 1997: Buildings, Books, and Bytes

published or submitted for publicatio

Chicana feminist participatory action research: Collaborative environmental justice in the Imperial Valley and the identifying violations affecting neighborhoods community development project

In 2007 in Imperial County, a community-based organization called Comite Civico del Valle (CCV), along with the Department of Toxic Substances, and concerned residents, created the Identifying Violations Affecting Neighborhoods (IVAN). IVAN is a community-based environmental reporting and monitoring system that is built on the idea that residents are the most knowledgeable about their environment and therefore should have a place at the table alongside environmental regulation agencies. For more than a decade, this has allowed residents to better report environmental concerns. However, for many residents there is still a lack of knowledge about how to properly utilize the IVAN reporting system, and, therefore, the inability to properly report environmental concerns. The purpose of this project, the IVAN Community Development Project, was to create a community-based collaborative research project with the main objective of furthering the knowledge and the ability of residents to report environmental concerns by better utilizing IVAN. The IVAN Community Development Project, which is connected but distinct from IVAN reporting system, employed both Feminist and Participatory Action Research (PAR) epistemology, methodology, and methods approaches to create a collaborative project that would allow for plurality, performativity, and inclusion in the process. Chicana Mestizaje-Feminism was applied to the reflection of the experience after the project’s completion. By establishing a co-inquirer relationship, CCV and I, along with ten additional residents who were not affiliated with CCV prior to the IVAN Community Development Project, formed the Community Advisory Panel, conducted research, and co-wrote an IVAN Community Guidebook

The design of 3D cyberspace as user interface: Advantages and limitations

Virtual reality propagandists, technologists and the Internet community have long debated the issue of the usability of online three-dimensional (3D) environments. A lot of work was published about the benefits of 3D spaces for human-computer interaction and information visualisation due to their realism (Anders, Kalawsky, Crossley, Davies, McGrath, Rejman-Greene, 1998, Hamit, 1993, Heim, 1992, Aukstakalnis, Blatner, Roth, 1992). This topic also receives continuous industry support including standardisation of Virtual Reality Modeling Language ( VRML, VRML Consortium, 1997) and the more recent Macromedia & Intel alliance to bring web 3D to the mainstream (200 1, Intel Corporation). The actual implementation of this technology is, however, still challenging (McCarthy & Descartes, 1998) and minimal because 3D is too new and waiting for good design to be discovered (Nielsen, 1998). The practical aim of this project is to fulfil the niche by creating a functional 3D interface for the access of two-dimensional (2D) information, such as text, using VRML. The theoretical aim is to contribute to further research into 3D usability by describing and analysing the design process in terms of possibilities, challenges and limitations

Exploring Bateson’s Syllogism in Grass in Systemic Design

Gregory Bateson’s syllogism in grass expresses a form of abductive reasoning which can be used to generate and discuss metaphors, particularly in living systems and humans’ interrelations with them. This paper tentatively explores the possibilities of the syllogism in grass in a systemic design context as a creative method of provocation and reframing

Metaphor : Library

Includes bibliographical references.This literature review identifies and examines metaphorical concepts that have been associated with the word 'library' historically in an attempt to identify the possible role and function of libraries and librarians in the twenty-first century. Drawing on contemporary theories of metaphor, the various ways in which libraries have been represented metaphorically within literature are considered as external perspectives of the institution and profession. These images are compared and contrasted to those library metaphors evident in the professional literature - that is, internal perspectives of the library. Examples of other professions adopting the concept 'library' as a metaphor, most notably within the online environment, are also discussed in order to hone in on those concepts perceived to be represented by the label 'library' by those choosing to employ the term. The cross-cu!tural applicability of library metaphors is also considered, drawing on examples from African librarianship, and a cluster of metaphorical concepts likely to inform future library development are identified