Narrative Theory and Stories that Speak to Us - by Cynthia L. Selfe and the DALN Consortium
Some of these students, like Yusuf, are part of diasporic movements motivated by chaos in their homelands; some migrate and travel along the economic vectors of globalization; others move across conventional geo-political borders because they seek the understandings of other cultures. Many of these students, alone or with their families, “move physically, economically, and emotionally back and forth across borders and between cultures” (Martinez-Leon and Patrick, 2003, p. 138), often using their “multiple subject positions situated in various cultural and sociopolitical arenas to subvert the social categories imposed on them by any one system” (Lam, 2004, p. 81).
Yusuf’s narrative helps us understand the arguments of scholars such as Paul Kei Matsuda (2006), John Duffy (2008), Carmen and Allan Luke (2000), Suresh Canagarajah (2007), and Morris Young (2004), who maintain that we can understand transnational literacy practices and values only when they are properly situated within the context of a particular historical period, a particular cultural milieu, and a specific cluster of material conditions.
