Contexts:
her past life: In the essay Foss talks about various stages of her life. There is a small allusion to her life with her family, but a good chunk of the essay refers to how she discovered her literary interest. This interest seemed to begin with her writing of letters to her boyfriend in prison on yellow pads of paper, but never mailing them. This was just a first step, and the letters show up agian later in her life in prison. In my life i write in a journal and have in the past writen many letters to people that have never been mailed. I even had a section in a journal once entitled "letters never to be mailed."
her current life- in her current life she is a writer and a teacher which frames alot of the writing of the essay, she goes back through her story with her commentary in her new voice, the voice of an older, more mature, educated woman. She knows about what she is writing and how she should put it, and makes concious decisions to frame it in the way that she does, and to utilize a variety of voices. Today i am no teacher and no real writer but i like that she doesn't use conventional language, even if i don't agree with the use of the specific words themselves. i like that she isn't afraid to make decisions that others wouldn't make, well maybe for the time, since i don't feel like anything she's written is earthshaking. I think she realizes this also though, when she talks about on the last page how all of the "errors... are becoming part of the stories themselves"
education:the educations of foss is integral to the essay and to the person she becomes. The streets start her education with her legal pads, which is encoraged to grow. She then goes on to attend colleges and get degrees, while teaching herself, as shown in the passage about when she buys a typewriter. The culmination of what teachers try to tell her is right, her own experiences and the changing face of literature educate her and alow her to be her own person, a socially bilingual person as she puts it. I think i can compair a little of my education becuase i've spent years fighting battles with english teachers, trying to stay who i am while still getting the grades. From not capatilizing letters i don't want to capitalize to playing with punctuations i think i've learned more from hating english than from loving it. I look at it as more a thing to change than a thing to learn.
prison: in the context of prison foss learned that she could have something useful. in prison writing bought her time, this factor led her to work harder at it and to continue most of all. Prison straightened her out and set her on the path to her future career. I have yet to find a path and have never been to prison, but i'm sort of the opposite, when i'm required to do something, i hate doing it.
Other peoples views: today other peoples views still affect foss. She thinks in her class about what the parents would think if they knew her whole story. Then in her past she thought herself an outsider because of the views of others, they obviously did not coincide with her thoughts. I try not to let others ideas ruin what i want to write about, an english teacher of mine wanted to stop me from writing in my own way. That jerk. Didn't stop me though.
Growth: this has alot to do with her education, what came out of it, throughout the essay she is growing into the person she will become, she is refining her voice and her language and coming to terms with who she is and what she was. I htink most of the growth in my work just came from my vocab throughout highschool.
Language throughout the essay foss learns more about writing, spelling and vocabulary. This is reflected in the style of the writing, although it seems contrived in the begining. The vocab and style of my writing evolves also as i read more and learn more words.
Boundaries i do believe we killed this topic in class.