Sierra's Digital Stories

Created as part of the North Carolina State University’s Campus Movie Fest in 2010, the digital story “Bones of Iraq” deals with ideas related to heritage, identity, and difference. The narrator starts off by explaining how the bones, unlike other body parts, cannot be seen but at the same time are the things that hold us together. She relates this to memories and discusses how even after the people that “hold” these memories are gone they (memories) remain, just like the bones in our body. In the digital story she discusses her personal struggles with reconciling a part of her family’s history and how it has impacted her identity. In the story she tells how her grandmother, who was born in Iraq but was sent to live in the States by her father, made the decision to pass on the Jewish traditions that she “inherited” by marriage and not her Iraqi heritage. The narrator also discusses how even though she was aware of Iraqi heritage it only “showed up” occasionally. For example, she talks about how it showed up in their clothing, etc but more importantly in her physical appearance. She is a dark-skinned, dark-haired young woman born into a family with blonde siblings and in her digital story she discusses how this was initially confusing for her as she tried to figure out who she is but now she has come to not only accept it but embrace it. As for the style of the digital story, I found that it was aesthetically pleasing. She used a variety of media (photos, artwork, etc.) It wasn’t busy and her choice in music didn’t take away from the story. She kept her story right under 5 minutes and even though it was longer than some of the other stories I have viewed tonight I still found it engaging/interesting up until the last second.



The digital story “Footbinding” begins with a discussion about beauty and the “extremes” that people go through to “achieve” it. It questions the lengths that people go through and also asks about the pain related to beauty. As the digital story progresses it uses different images that effectively illustrate the things we do to ourselves in order to “achieve” some ideal of beauty. After this initial “discussion” surrounding beauty in general the digital story begins to focus on the Chinese method of footbinding. Practiced by young girls and women for thousands of years in China, footbinding began at an early age and continued into adulthood. Within Chinese culture, footbinding is considered to be beautiful, submissive, and erotic. By crushing the bones in the feet and binding them tightly everyday with bandages, the feet were bound in order to give the appearance of smaller feet. According to Chinese culture, smaller feet were necessary in order to make a woman’s movements more feminine and dainty. The story ends by showing a variety of images related to current beauty practices and asks the audience how far they would go… While I viewed a lot of videos as part of this homework assignment and found many of them to be interesting and/or moving, I chose to post on this one because it was the only one that didn’t include narration. As the video began I initially thought that the “power” that could come from “discussing” this topic would be lost because of the lack of words but I quickly found out that silence can be just as powerful….