“I, Too, Sing America”: Analyzing Multimodal Counternarratives

“I, Too, Sing America” is a digital poem created by Tommy Nouansacksy (real name used with permission).  A high school sophomore at the time, Tommy made this during the iPoetry unit in Jen Scott Curwood’s English class during the 2005–2006 academic year.  As part of this unit, Jen and her students read Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” and Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America.”  After taking a rather traditional approach and analyzing the poems’ literary devices and situating the themes within historical contexts, Jen then asked the students, “What is your America like?”  While all students wrote a text poem in response, a number decided to use this as one of their digital poems.  To do this, students used words (either text or voiceover), images, music, and transitions.  They then compiled and edited their work in iMovie and later shared their digital poems with an audience that included their classmates as well as other students, teachers, administrators, and parents. 

In “‘Just Like I Have Felt’: Multimodal Counternarratives in Youth-Produced Digital Media,” (2010) we use multimodal microanalysis to trace the presence, absence, and co-occurrence of modes in Tommy’s digital poem. He identifies as gay, Asian, and a second generation immigrant, and these identity markers are evident in how he “sings” America.  Through our analysis, we posit that Tommy’s digital poem functions as a multimodal counternarrative, which we define as the way in which individuals employ multiple modes of representation to push back against oppressive master narratives.  We argue that Tommy uses digital media in four key ways to create his multimodal counternarrative: by remixing stories and traditions, mixing modes, using functional load to foreground identity, and creating a space for dialogue and reflection.  By tracing Tommy’s modal choices, we are able to show how he concomitantly resists racism and homophobia while opening a dialogic space with his audience. 

References

Curwood, J.S. and D. Gibbons. 2010. “Just Like I Have Felt”: Multimodal Counternarratives in Youth-Produced Digital Media. IJLM 1(4):59–77. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ijlm_a_00034