Barbara Donofrio (1990/1997) stated that "[C]ommon cultural stories are often referred to as story frames, story schemata, or scripts." ( pg. 19) These story frames are told throughout our lives from our families, schools, and communities, and represent a "kind of blueprint" of what we are and what we can become. In this essay, we will examine the affects that story frames and culture have on us as individuals, how the story frames and cultures of others can affect our lives, and the positive and negative aspects of story frames and culture.

While growing up, we were told stories about the exploits of our relatives, both past and present, some of our own childhood experiences, and about life or "common cultural stories" which became embedded in our personal memories and personalities. These stories developed into our "story bank" and created the foundation of our individuality. We took those stories and

With the examples, we can see how "other peoples" story frames and cultures have an affect on as individuals by lending more stories and identifying different cultural aspects to our "story bank", which allows us to shape our own identities. This can be seen as both positive and negative, depending on the circumstances, and is something that we need to explore further.

Probably one of the most important statements about our story frames and culture we grew up with is, "The story frames provided by our cultures tell us what's important, what we should pay attention to, and what we should shun." (A. R. Luria, 1968/1997 p. 117) If our story frames are powerful enough to do this to ourselves, suppose what kind of affect they will have on others.

Now that we've looked at how story frames and culture affect us as individuals, let's take a look at the affect on how other people's story frames and cultures impact our life. It really

doesn't matter who we are talking about when we say "other people". The fact that we had no personal contact with an individual has no bearing on whether their story frames and culture could affect us. As an example I would like to introduce to you a young man who like you or I grew up being told about the stories of his relatives, his own childhood experiences, and the common cultural stories of life. He is someone that you probably know little about as an individual and more than likely never met or had personal contact with, but believe me; his actions had a large impact on you and your culture.

our tendency to forget unimportant details." (A. R. Luria, 1968/1997 p. 117) As Silko (1967/1997) points out, "The version of that first date or first day on the job that you remember may, in fact, only vaguely resemble the version recalled by those who suffered it with you." (p. 36)

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Approximate Word count = 1330
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)