Transferring and Transforming Cultural Norms

In this essay, I describe moments in my mother's life and examine them as living narratives or "lifestories" and apply critical theory and analysis that has traditionally been reserved for written narratives. I argue that these moments are teaching tools that reinforce and sometimes challenge cultural norms and discuss how her living narratives were revised by me as I began to "tell" them to my own children. I apply performance narrative, fiction, and Native American literature theories to these narratives. I point out the cultural and generational differences in me and my mother, and discuss the influence of the different regions where we spent our childhoods. This essay is a comparative literary study of a multigenerational living text in process. (Literature, Critical Theory)