LIBS1265: Your Life

Through Story
Week 6: The Self, Family, and Community Winter 2024
Agenda
1. Getting ready for upcoming evaluations

2. “Contamination" and "redemption" narrative framings and

"inheritance" in origin stories
3. Over to you - time to develop ideas for your Story Draft!

4. Story Reflection #3
Upcoming deadlines

Story Reflection #3

25 Feb. 2024, 11:59 PM

21 Feb. 2024, 11:59 PM

Draft Story
 Home in the World
An example of an origin story (or at
least its beginning)
Recapping the Story Assignment
Things to know about this assignment:
Instructions, grading tools
Contamination vs Redemption Narratives
Let’s listen to the podcast episode together!

Contamination: When good things turn bad. Positive beginning/ negative ending
Redemption: When bad things turn good. Negative beginning/ positive ending

*Objective facts remain the same, but the "framing" is different. Where the story starts and stops
likely changes.
(McAdams et al., 2001)

- Identify an example of each used in the Hidden Brain podcast episode.

- Can you think of any examples of contamination/redemption narratives from popular culture?
 Origin Stories
• Cultures around the world and throughout human history have created their own
common "origin stories" to explain where we come from. These stories are often
very meaningful for people from particular communities.
• In many cases they were first recounted orally and then written down.
• We also see these in comic books (superhero's "origin story" about how they got
their superpowers)
• In memoir and autobiography, the author's personal "origin story" helps explain who
they are/ why the see the world in a certain way. Cultural beliefs and
family/community connections often factor in.
• What have you "inherited" from your family/culture/community that makes you
who you are?
• * There is also a recent trend where folks create "professional origin stories" about
who they are and what led them to seek a specific field of study/ career.
"Inheritance"
• What is inheritance generally?

• What does it mean in literature?

Head Start on Your Story Assignment

Reflect on some key events in your early life that helped form who you are
(origin story).

What have you "inherited" from your culture/ family members etc. that makes
you, you? (inheritance)

Focus in on one event that touches on both things (origin story and
inheritance).

Now, draft a short story that frames this event as either a contamination or a
redemption narrative. (Consider: Where will the story start/stop?)
Ask me anything about the
Story Assignment!
Next week February 20 !
th

Workshopping Story
Drafts
Story Reflection #3 due February 21st

The real value of a material object . . .

1. In response to Haley McGee’s play Ex-Boyfriend
Yardsale.
2. We’ll watch Haley McGee’s play together in class.
3. Then we’ll review the instructions for Story Reflection
#3 and study the example.
Taylor Swift
(Time Magazine's 2023 person of the Year)
Taylor's Swift's song "Best Day" recounts a difficult
moment when she was 13 years old and called
several friends to see if they wanted to meet up at
the mall. They all said they were busy. Her mom
offered to take her to the mall so they could shop
together. When they arrived, she saw all of the
friends she had called were actually there without
her.
(Clip 1:20-2:24)

Remembering this experience years later, Swift was

able to re-frame this difficult narrative into a
"redemption" story in Best Day.

- Why do you think a song like this has such huge

appeal?