Presenter(s): Hayley Schlueter—English
Faculty Mentor(s): Will Alden
Session 4: Let’s KIDD Around: KIDD Creative Writing Program
This project aims to understand the unique ways in which the second person perspective can be utilized for stories about trauma, and therefore, stories about marginalized identities and experiences—meaning people who experience some form of systemic oppression, such as women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people . The second person often creates a sense of discomfort in the reader by calling direct attention to the reader, essentially forcing them to become a part of the story by inhabiting the “you” and the life of the story’s character . At the same time that the “you” creates this often uncomfortable intimacy, it also creates a sense of distance . My research explores the ways in which the second person perspective utilizes these seeming contradictions between intimacy and alienation, discomfort and distance, as a method for telling stories about trauma and identity through the examination of short stories such as Michael Cunningham’s “Mister Brother” and Kiese Laymon’s “You are the Second Person .” I am interested in the ways in which marginalized authors and characters, who already experience the world as deeply alienating, are able to use the second person as a way to emphasize and control that alienation .