Language In Wendy Rose's Neon Scar

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As Wendy Rose writes, her words transform into the scar tissue of her trauma, both indicating and masking her emotional wounds. In “Neon Scars”, Rose projects her authorial voice in a direct and cutting fashion to express her turmoil from the disconnectedness from her roots that she experiences. Born a mixed blood Native American, she addresses the lack of identity she feels due to the disparity between her European background and her Native American appearance. Additionally, she lives with the face of a Hopi native, but empty handed in claiming a spot in her tribe. Rose aims at portraying feelings of familial alienation through the scattered format of her autobiography where she outlines both the origins of her family and current psychological…show more content…
By taking on a psychoanalytic scope of her autobiography, a reader can explore the author’s past to delve deeper into the meaning of her harsh language and her opposing tone towards the world. To reinforce her strife she includes, “I have heard Indians joke about those who act as if they have no relatives.” (97) Feeling ostracized from both her European and Hopi relatives, she projects dissent against the assertion and claims that she has "no relatives.” (97) Additionally, she also emphasizes that they "threw [her] away." (97) Therefore, Rose also employs an idea of herself as inhuman; she mentions that her family “threw [her] away”, connoting that they simply disposed of her as worthless. Rose repeatedly states that her family ignored her and further intensifies her unpromising feelings of isolation from society as she reiterates, "When my family threw me away” (97) and includes, “every human on earth did likewise.” (97) If one were to observe Rose’s identity issues from a psychoanalytic perspective, considering that “as a child... [She] knew she didn’t belong among people” (97) and was “emotionally crippled” (97), her bitter tone stems from her empty stance in the world as a
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