Response to "Memoria is a Friend..."

            In his article “Memoria is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourse of Color”, Victor Villanueva discusses the concept of memoria. He argues that memoria, “the inclusion of memory and past experiences” in literature greatly improves the sense of identity that readers get out of a text. He says that Plato’s prophecy of literacy being the fall of memory is coming true. He thinks that literature needs to use memoria more often to create a greater sense of identity and to successfully show pathos, logos and ethos.
            This article is similar to Elizabeth Wardle’s article and Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau’s article. All of these article discuss identity and with Villanueva’s article he extends this idea of identity more so, showing how memory can be used successfully to create a better picture of an individual’s identity. Villanueva uses poems, which I believe is a great way to show identity, as poems are a very good expression of someone’s identity.
            I found this article almost fun to read. His use of poetry kept me excited to read more as well as took some space out of the large margins of this book. It was a little confusing as it was a much different way to look at discourse communities.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

7.)

            Villanueva’s primary discourse is the discourse from his New York side. His secondary discourse would be that of his Puerto Rican heritage.  To me they seem fairly straight forward, but to get into them deeper you have to take a lot more in than just face value, whether that be his family’s background or what he did in New York to after school, or even what he did in Vietnam.