Narrative Theory and Stories that Speak to Us - by Cynthia L. Selfe and the DALN Consortium

Yusuf ends the coda to his narrative with a personal evaluation of his progress, appealing finally to logos,

I’m not a very smart guy, you know? But I overcame. You know, the first year, the second year I was in America I started speaking English clearly, you know, I understood what everybody said; I knew the whole word. I started making a 4.0. If a person like me who grew up in a village where there's no water, no electricity, doing that? If I can do that, everybody can change; they can change a little bit in the world; they can do somethin’ different.

Yusuf’s narrative illustrates a complex set of identifications, both personal and political: with successful students, with other Somali Immigrants, with the “younger generation” in general, with other students at The Ohio State University, and with Somalis who have not left their mother country. Such multiple and hybrid identifications frequently characterize students inhabiting transnational contexts, individuals who feel connected to more than one culture and whose identifications, as Wan Shun Eva Lam (2004) notes, are “spread over multiple geographic territories” (p. 79). Like Yusuf, these students typically speak multiple languages, often including variations of World Englishes, and maintain rich active networks of friends, family members, and contacts around the globe.

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