Voicing

Abstract

A healthy society relies on the participation of all individuals, which means that the resources and opportunities to engage in public life need to be readily accessible. In large-scale communities where face-to-face communication is not possible or realistic, other modes must be available for individuals “to exchange ideas and information and feelings” (McKee 204). Individuals can only reach their full potential by interacting with others. Likewise, public opinion benefits from the participation of all community members. Therefore, speaking, coming to voice—whether in a memoir or any other mode of public discourse—is a positive, powerful, and future-oriented action. Although memoir is a democratic genre, generally open to all, not every individual is in a position to speak. Because of cultural or political problems such as sexism or racism, some individuals are marginalized or even silenced, often brutally, and so are unable to tell their own stories. This chapter is about how two African-American writers, John Edgar Wideman and James McBride, use the memoir genre creatively by including two first-person voices in a single-authored text to allow others, close family members, to tell their own stories.