Personal Narrative: My Grandmother By Kendrick Lamar

Moving on to discuss another personal family tradition, I distinctly recall how my grandmother would always sing whenever she would cover over to visit. She possessed one of those deep, full voices that would resonate throughout the entire home, leaving no empty space untouched by her music. In total, she performed a rotation of five folk melodies, each of which were always sung a degree off key. According to the stories my parents have told me about their childhoods, my grandmother inclination towards singing was present even when my mother was growing up almost forty years ago. As a stubborn child, however, her near constant singing caused me great frustration, often driving me to leave the room whenever her voice would rise too high in

As a child during the Great Depression, and a young adult during WWII, it is important to take into consideration the difficult context that my grandmother was forced to undergo throughout the majority of her life. Similar to how famous African-American rappers such as Kendrick Lamar utilize forms of artistic expression in an attempt to “discover and create meaning and value against absurd, dehumanizing conditions”, my grandmother used song as a way to achieve her own complex subjectivity in a deeply stifling environment (Winters). Through his lyrics “But if God got us we then gon’ be alright”, Lamar constructs meaning that allows him to cope with the hardships of his own community, thus giving the African-American struggle a greater sense of ownership over their difficult situation (Lamar). The songs of my grandmother functioned in a similar way, allowing her to retain control over her life in times of great suffering. Despite their traditional function as folk songs, my Grandmother has altered their intention, through a sort of hermeneutical spin, using her epistemic resources instead as a form of perseverance and