Description of the site

With Liberty And Justice for All is an autobiographical site by Carmin Karasic that deals with the political, social and personal aspects of growing up as an African-American female, first abroad in France as her family is stationed in the military, and then later in the United States. The site deals with just a slice of Karasic's life, from age 5 to teenager.

The site is arranged as three sets of popup windows that are entitled "Story," "American Dream" and "My Life" respectively. Each window is numbered and leads to the next, and the three windows are hooked together, with all three changing and displayed on the screen simultaneously as you follow the story from page to page. "American Dream" and "My Life" are a series of photos, while "Story" is a text narrative, provide background and snippets of memory.

Karasic's story starts out talking about herself as a little girl and telling how on the first day of school, her mother told her it was permissible to not recite the Pledge of Allegiance, as it "wasn't meant for us," in other words, not meant for Black people. Karasic uses this a way to talk about assimilation (she wants to say the Pledge so as not to stand out; on the first day of school, then, she encounters a conflict between her family's reality and what is expected by the larger society) and finding her identity throughout her childhood. Her memories as a young child center on her experiences growing up in France as the child of a soldier. Later, she moves back to the U.S. and confronts a different reality, that of being Black in America:

"Back in the USA, I went to a Black elementary school for a few months. Except that it was unusual to be in a place where everyone was Black, I liked the Black school out in the country. Once my parents realized that they had been 'duped' into sending me to an all Black school, they enrolled me in an integrated school for the next year.
Studying Virginia history meant studying slavery; a cruel reality for the single black girl among 7th grade Virginians in 1967. I could feel everyone staring at me.I felt that they thought in some way I too was a slave."

Photos from With Liberty and Justice for All

"Some of the boys teased me. The teacher told me that the class had lively discussions when I was absent. 7th grade left deep scars.
The scars still flare up at times."
from With Liberty and Justice for All

In the 1960's, as Karasic comes of age in her story, the pictures in the "American Dream" sequence increasingly reflect social and cultural icons and concerns -- the Watts riots, The Supremes, Thurgood Marshall and Volvo are all represented in these later pictures, as both the iconography of the '60s and as elements of Karasic's conciousness during this time. Finally, Karasic claims her identity once and for all, as she changes her name to Carmin, identifies with the hippies, and ends her story while she is in high school and popular. The narrative is progressive; her ideas and observations when interspersed with memory get more advanced as she grows older and becomes an individual.

"I was a teenager. I wanted change. I decided I was introverted, but would become extroverted over the summer. My persona changed. I had started fighting with my parents. My dad would ask, "Whose name in on the door?" Our family used his name, and it was on the door; that meant we had to follow his orders. I changed my name to Carmin. I didn't know any other Carmins, so I didn't use his last name. I was separating from my parents, becoming an individual. Becoming extroverted. The plan worked."

The story is simple but effective, as we trace pictures of Karasic and her family, pictures of the icons and realities of the "American Dream," and Karasic's sometimes fragmented and disjointed narrative of her childhood memories, three elements that contributed to Karasic's childhood experience. Sometimes simple sentences hint at a much deeper reality: "My mother was only 17 when she had me. So she sort of grew up with me" and, "Every family has secrets behind closed doors." At other times the tale reads like a family album, with stories of going to visit friends and having picnics on Sundays.

This site has both an autobiographical and a political dimension. As an autobiographical site, it raises the general question of autobiography as a medium on the internet. Autobiography has long been popular in print and it seems to be even more so online, as almost all personal 'home pages' have an 'about me' section and online journals and family pages proliferate. How valid are these sites, how useful? As a political site, Karasic's page raises important questions about race, patriotism, and identity that are presented in an accessible manner, that of her life story.

Finally, Karasic's page is artfully done and presented as a coherant narrative (for all its fragmentation) that seems to be meant to be read in one direction, as a continuous and linked story through pictures and text. Is this the most effective way of presenting this kind of narrative? I will look at a similar site, Collette Gaiter's "Space/Race," as well as other sites, to try and answer this question.