An analysis of Coming of Age in Mississippi and Herculine Barbin

It is interesting to compare two very different texts.

The following is my second course autobiography that I wrote for the course I am taking this semester. I would appreciate your feedback. I am having some difficulty incorporating the required “elements of pedagogy” without making it sound forced.

The Power of a Movement

Coming of Age in Mississippi and Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite) tell the stories of two individuals whose lives are greatly impacted by the bodies in which they were born. While Anne Moody’s life is influenced by the color of her skin, Herculine Barbin’s is shaped by the presence of “abnormal” genitalia that make it impossible to determine her “true sex” at birth. One of the elements I would ask students to analyze if I were teaching these two texts is the differences the two authors faced as one of them suffers her trials alone while the other’s story takes place within the context of a greater movement.