Liberal Studies Commons^™

Fragmentation And Multiplicity In Cuban-American Identity: In Cuba I Was A German Shepherd By Ana Menéndez And Memory Mambo By Achy Obejas, Daimys E. Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Maria Lugones offers a new way of perceiving the world, which makes visible that fragmentation is not a valuable and transgressive understanding of identity, as Western philosophy and some political theory suggests. What Lugones believes in, as a strategy of resistance to the dominant gaze, is multiplicity – mestizaje. Using Lugones’s framework, this thesis will look at the different aspects of Cuban-American characters in In Cuba I was a German Shepherd by Ana Menéndez and Memory Mambo by Achy Obejas. Each novel offers insight into how characters develop and understand themselves (and others) when they use language that shows that …

Struggling Adolescent Writers Describe Their Experiences, Teri A. Spargur

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Writing continues to be difficult for adolescents throughout the United States. There is little known about writing from the adolescent's perspective. This case study describes six 8th graders' thoughts and motivations on writing. The purpose of the current study was to examine the perceptions and experiences of struggling adolescent writers by taped participant interviews of six students, three male and three female, which scored below proficient on their state writing assessment. The conceptual theoretical framework for the current study is Bandura's social cognitive theory. The central research question of this study focused on the experiences of adolescents who struggle …