D’Allura 1
Emily D’Allura
Mrs. Trahan
15Eng101-041
Reading, Composing, and Responding
8 October 2009
Erasing Our Ghosts
“remembered rapture: the writer at work” by bell hooks is compiled of chapters that depict the author’s “struggle to write her autobiography. (30)” In this excerpt, bell hooks finds that to write an autobiography, one must die a little bit. She explains that it is the “longing to kill the self [she] was without really having to die. (30)” bell hooks goes on to explain that the inability to write her autobiography was directly connected to the attachment to her past; her past being the wounds and scars of her anguished childhood. She maintains that “secrecy and silence” are the bonds that make a family up. According to hooks, keeping her childhood at bay was a way to keep the ties to her family intact. She believed that she should attempt to write a creative piece that would allow her spirit to vent, without tying in her personal past. hooks found this was impossible because “there were the intruding traces those elements of real life however disguised. (31)”
As years went on, bell hooks discovered the fact that memories became less clear and more distant than they had been in previous years. She goes on to say that a relationship with a man served as a “link to the past” that revived memories, and sparked incidents that she had come to forget. During this time, it enabled her to break down the walls that had been built, and allowed her to revisit the memories to which she had long forgotten. bell hooks states that writing an autobiography is the “longing to recover the past in such a way that one experiences both a sense of reunion and a sense of release. (33)” She concludes that by her writing this piece, she was able to take a step back and look at her life from a different perspective. hooks maintains that by writing about oneself, you don’t kill the past. You merely “rescue” the person you had pushed away.
I really enjoyed reading this essay because I felt like bell hooks says everything that most people would never admit to feeling. The majority of people never find the courage to open up like bell hooks did in this excerpt. She openly admits that she wanted to kill her past in writing; to kill the person she once was. I think that everything hooks says in the essay is right on point. Mentally, we all try to block out the memories that seem to have had a negative effect on our lives, whether they be large or small events. It’s almost as if we try to become different people because of our past and the events that have happened to us. bell hooks argues that people will enter our lives that will trigger memories.. Different people will make us remember different, and sometimes abstract things. The smells, the images, and the tastes of memories will flood back in a rush. Things will come back to us that we thought we had forgotten. Maybe they were incidents that we meant to forget, and sometimes they’re things that have simply slipped our minds. Whatever the case may be, these memories shape us into who we are in the present. It doesn’t matter if they are negative or positive, they will have made their imprints into our lives.
Throughout the essay, bell hooks tells us about her childhood and the events that seemed to act as a writer’s block. She believed that writing down her life would somehow release her from its grasp. I think this holds to be true in anyone’s life. It seems that writing is a way to vent how you feel. The words seem to flow out of you like water. While reading this piece, I couldn’t help but to think of my own past and the things that hold me back from being me. Her writing triggered the acknowledgment of my own ghosts that I hold close. It made me think about the walls that I have created in myself that act as my mental barrier. These are the memories that are equivalent to bell hooks’ wounds and scars. We try to bury these thoughts because we don’t want them to define who we are today. On the contrary, I think that once we accept our faults and failures, we are able to move on and recognize that our lives wouldn’t be the same without our ghosts.
One thing I really like about bell hooks’ writing is that she uses a lot of imagery. It added to her piece a lot because the mental pictures she evoked were incredible. It was as if we were in her shoes, feeling, seeing, and living what she went through in her lifetime. One example of imagery that I thought was powerful was “I wanted to kill that self in writing. (30)” She describes her past as a whole other person, almost as if they had been two separate people. hooks draws us the picture of her childhood by saying she wish it were dead and gone. When you read this, the image of a tormented girl automatically comes to mind. It’s not like you can beat it around the bush because she is blunt with this statement. So, she does a very good job of using imagery.
Halfway through the essay, I realized that hooks started to take a positive turn in her writing. It seemed like she started to embrace the past and the memories it held. She explained that her heritage and where she came from was a big part of who she was. I agree with this completely. You have to return to your roots in order to see the beauty in life; the past, present, and the future. Once you learn to embrace who you are, surrendering to what has been will come easier. hooks states that the autobiography became a form of a hope chest. It contains special treasures, ones that she never wants to forget. I think our minds are similar to this chest. It’s true that over time these treasures get a bit tarnished. But, with the help of people and triggers, we somehow remember the exact moment, place, and time that these “treasures” occurred.
At the end of the essay, bell hooks comes to the conclusion that instead of killing the girl she had once been, she ultimately releases her and liberates herself from these memories. Obviously we will never forget the painful moments, but in those moments, we come to find who we are as people. The hard memories are constant reminders of where we’ve been and where we are going to go. I think without these details, our lives would not be the same, and we wouldn’t be the people we are today. hooks states that “remembering was part of a cycle of reunion, a joining of fragments, the “bits and pieces of my heart” that the narrative made whole again. (35)” As we allow ourselves to completely let go of what used to be, we then, and only then can embrace ourselves and put our hearts back together. hooks says that in order to be whole, we must come to know that the enemy is not the past. The enemy is the idea that our tainted memories will hold us back from developing into the present self. So in conclusion, in order to fully come to terms with what has passed, we must put it out into the air, and release it from our bodies. Once that happens, there is no power in bad memories. They simply are what they say- memories.
Works Cited
Hooks, bell. “writing autobiography.” Essays on Writing. Eds. Lizbeth A. Bryant and
Heather M. Clark. New York: Longman, 2009. 29-35. Print.
By Emily D'Allura
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