The Sociological Imagination at Work - Essay Example

Nevertheless, it is possible to explain how the occurrences in a person’s life have been influenced externally by evaluating the societal and historical events of the time. Particular events a person experiences may not be a random chance, but there may be external influences that manipulate this. We can evaluate the impact of external forces by using sociological imagination. My personal biography has intersected with history and society in the following manner. It illustrates how larger social forces particular to the time and place in which I have grown have shaped my life.

Through the context of my own narrative, I will use Mills’ idea about sociological imagination to show the intersection between my experiences and the historical and social forces in the society. I was born in Arizona, in the Southwest of the United States in January, 1990, being the eldest in a family of four. Throughout my childhood, my family lived in extreme poverty, struggling to make ends meet. Not only did we lack material assets, but food was also a rare stuff. I remember going to bed on an empty stomach for several days, and it was more painful as I watched my little sisters cry to sleep.

What made my nights even longer were the awful dreams that I experienced severally. Due to our poor living standards, we often chose to move frequently to relatives’ home to at least get a meal for two to three days. My mother is a housewife, but she never stayed around to watch us cry. She took the initiative of washing clothes, houses, and utensils for wealthy white neighbors, and she could be given a few cents to keep us going. However, it was hard for her to get a well-paying washing job in laundries of affluent whites as it was a further distance away, and she rarely afforded the cost of traveling to the venues.

At the same time, most of the cleaners in the cleaning industry and laundries were mostly lower class whites, and American Indians were a rare species in such places. I always saw my father go to work daily in the outcast of Arizona City, but I was not sure of his career. When I was about ten years, my mother told me that he was a businessperson, but we never saw any amount of money he earned. He sometimes left my mother with a few coins to be spent on days when he failed to return home. We all disliked our father’s behavior, especially when he got home drunk.

When I was twelve years old, my parents divorced. I had just completed my primary school level. My mother was fed up with the physical abuses he imposed on her and us, yet he wasted all his money on gambling and alcohol. Worst of all, it was that Sunday morning when my dad came home extremely drunk, and I was the one who opened the door for him. I remember when he pulled me violently close, in an attempt to rape me. My mother rushed me to hospital where it was confirmed that actually I had not been raped.

On her side, this was a great chance for my mother to pay a doctor to prepare a false statement claiming that my dad had raped me. She came back home and presented the false document to my father, who had no idea if it really happened since he was too drunk. He was forced to sign the divorce papers in order to avoid social humiliation and prosecution. This guaranteed divorce for my parents. While this narrative concerning my mother’s struggle to get a divorce is an individual experience, it was