Arts Of The Contact Zone Summary

The Mission of an Autoethnography
In Mary Louise Pratt’s essay, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” we are introduced to the idea of contact zones, autoethnography, and new ways of looking at common ideas. I wanted to see some examples of what she was really talking about. After reading John Edgar Wideman’s “Our
Time” we can see that Pratt’s ideas and terms are accurate because they can be applied to this reading as well as others. "Our Time" is an autoethnography because it uses diffeerent points of view, not just oneself, to give information about someone's upbringing and cultural growth.
In Pratt's essay, she often referred to the term autoethnography. These emerge from contact zones. Autoethnographies are used as a method to oppose the views of
He ends up starting off with a story explaining the death of his brothers’ friend, Garth who died of a disease because he did not receive proper treatment, due to being black. This can be considered a contact zone because the dominant culture represents themselves as the superiors in this situation, showing the diversity of the contact zone. Not only does this paint a picture of the world they live in, but also gives us some back round on reasons why Robby ended up living a life of crime that eventually lead him to jail. Garth’s death shook Robby and his community. They knew he had been treated unfairly and because of that they had hatred towards the dominant culture. This could be a reason why Robby chose to rebel against it, and dive into the Homewood community and culture— which showed him the life of crime. Garth’s death is one of the many instances in which we see the community that the brothers lived and grew up in. Wideman writes this section using
Robby’s point of view as a way to try and understand why Robby ended up like he did, which