How My Cousin Dawn DiPrince and I Are Related to Dr. Patricia Trujuillo

It's true...Dawn DiPrince and I are cousins, more than twice removed, but cousins none-the-less. Dawn's great-great grandmother, Maria Antenucci, and my grandfather, Salvatore Antenucci were brother and sister. So, what does that have to do with Dr. Patricia Trujillo's rhetorical family tree? Everything!
Since this is to be our "most-in-depth, reflective blog for the course," I trust you will bear with me. When Michaela, Emily, and I formed our group and drew Dr. Patricia Trujillo as our professor, I was thrilled. Prior to this assignment, my only contact with Dr. Trujillo had been as a substitute for Dr. Eskew's class one night last fall semester. She had us read bell hooks's Feminism Is For Everybody which taught me more about the feminist movement than living through it! I also attended Dr. Trujillo's workshop at Rawlins Library during All Pueblo Reads. She spoke about ethnicity, food, and story, and I knew that night I wanted to get to know her better. Here was my opportunity.
I won't duplicate Emily's blog except to add that our group took this project seriously, had fun, and made important connections that strenghtened Dr. Trujillo's rhetorical relationship to major theorists such as Karl Marx. During our interviews with Dr. Trujillo, it became apparent she was more influenced by family and community than scholarship. I asked her which theorist was her strongest influence, and she said her strongest influence was the work of Gloria Anzaldua. That statement led to a lengthy discussion about migration, borders, diaspora, culture, ethnicity, and genealogy. In fact, Dr. Trujillo shared a story of her own heritage that seemed like something from a Hollywood movie script. Migration and memory are powerful for Dr. Trujillo. Culture, ethnicity, borders, place, and the Feminine have shaped her. And, will shape her students. Indeed, Dr. Trujillo predicted the next theory to emerge will be the theory of space, i.e. physical geography, location, and homelands of the past.
I had just finished a reading assignment in Dr. Eskew's class. Written by Susan Stanford Friedman, the essay "Migrations, Diasporas, and Borders" was of great interest to Dr. Trujillo as we shared some of the passages. Two weeks ago Friedman was mentioned in Linda's power point presentation in Dr. Souder's class.
I gave a presentation on Jean Franco for Dr. Eskew's class. A specialist in the comparative literature of Latin America, Dr. Franco is part of Dr. Trujillo's rhetorical family tree. And the connections don't stop there. Juan Morales is the director of my creative thesis and David Hume (my major rhetorician for power point presentation) shows up in his lineage.
Lineage is my connection to Dawn DiPrince just as Gloria Anzaldua is the connection for Dr. Trujillo. We are women impacted and linked through migration, borders, ethnicity, and second language. I was twenty-six when my great-aunt Maria Antenucci DiPrince died, and I never had a conversation with her. She didn't speak English. Yet, here Dawn and I sit at a university in an Master's English program.
Of all the compositionists we've read and studied this semester, Mina Pendo Shaughnessy is the one who stands out. I can now appreciate the pressure placed on my father as a speaker and writer of English as a second language. I really do get it. I think about our conversations with Dr. Trujillo and I get it. Growing up, I witnessed a community of Italian immigrants living and farming east of Pueblo and I get it. Theory has given me the framework to get it. Will my future writing be colored by these new interprative skills-absolutely!
Richard Enos's essay Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric states
"the route to understanding Greek literature was through Greek culture, and understanding that culture meant understanding the development of writing and its relationship to orality" (17). What I witnessed as a kid and young adult was all about culture, memory, and loss.
Dawn helps her students recover that memory when she teaches her memoir classes. In fact, I've been one of her pupils.
This rhetorical genealogy project was initially an oral history, if you will, followed by research of lineage. I traveled to my grandfather and his sister's village a few years ago but my research was not as successful. You see, I found family, but I didn't speak Italian. Those who left, those who stayed behind, the theory of space: physical geography, borders, language, place...all open to interpretation.

Mike Rose By Any Other Name

Mike Rose's article "The Language of Exclusion" (586-604) included in the Norton Anthology will become part of the framework for my final paper. If you haven't taken the opportunity to read this fascinating essay, I encourage you to at least read the first few pages. Why? Because Rose provides a historical grounding which leads to understanding how composition pedagogy evolved. As I struggle with my own pedagogy statement, I value Rose's information. And, because he was erroneously "named" a remedial student, (CompBiblio 241) I trust his analysis that writing shouldn't be "defined by abilities one can quantify and connect as opposed to the dynamism and organic vitality one associates with thought" (Norton 592).
I see a connection to Peter Elbow's argument that until the academy views composition students differently and "makes them feel like writers, and avoid setting things up to make them feel like academics" ("Being a Writer" 499) there will be scant success in those classrooms.
In Bartholomae's counter argument which focuses on authorship and the individual's right to claim that right based on personal experience, Bartholomae questions the authorial validity of his female student who writes of her parents' divorce without the sounding board of scholarship "How and what might it mean to talk back to (or talk with) Adrienne Rich about family life?" ("Cross Talk" 484). Interesting discourse when you place Foucault's article, "What Is an Author?" into the mix.
Would Foucault see this girl as an author? Probably not, because she has little value in the larger voice of the discourse community. After all, "What are the modes of existence of this discourse?" (Author 120).
Heiddiger allows that "language [is] audible utterance of inner emotions" (Language 193). It seems to me that Elbow applies that concept to writing when he defends the female student writing about her parents' divorce. Elbow argues he would never claim the girl's experiences aren't her own but by providing feedback would allow her to make a stronger case for her experiences, which in effect is the foundation of all academic writing.
Rose could certainly jump into this discussion as an academic; and as a student whose academic experience was based on Mike Rose by any other name.