Stern and Evans

What is Stern's methodology?  what skills does she use?  How do the limitations of autobiography identified by Evans apply to Stern's essay? 

Stern's methodology is pragamatic. She is using the autobiographical research to find a solution. She has a few questions she is talking about in her essay. She talks about how she wants to find out it is that did this to her and how it shaped who she is now. In the preface, she first explains about her life and what her and her sister do now. In the chapter, Rape, Stern explains what happened to her and her sister the night they got raped. Since she does not remember exactly what happened that night, so she uses her police report to recall the events from that night. Even though she was in her teens when the rape happened, she becomes angry with herself that she did not do more. Overall, Stern's methodology gives us explicit details into what happened to her the night of her rape and the questions that she is trying to solve throughout the autobiography.

The skill that Stern talks about that she acquired has to do with the fact that she can do certain research that other people probably would not be able to do. In the preface, Stern discusses how what happened to her (the rape) gave her an ability to do research on things that are typically scary to the rest of the world. Because of her experience, she feels that she has this skill that many other people are not capable of.

Evans theory applies to Stern's autobiography when Evans discusses that autobiographys need to make you actually feel something for the person that you are reading about, instead of just collecting information on the person. Stern's autobiography does this by making you feel for her as a person. Even though Stern gives information in a timeline of what happened to her, she also gives you the emotions that she felt along the way of it. I know that when I was reading, I started to cringe at certain parts of this story, and it was mostly because Stern was giving such vivid details through her emotional recalling of what happened to her.

Overall, Stern's autobiography shows the person she has become because of the horrible incident that happened to her when she was younger. She explains that "My unusual reaction to fear turned out to be an asset in this work: I discovered that I could do things that other people find frightening...". This is definitely a skill she has acquired, from a horrible thing that happened to her.