First's and Spitler's enriching commentaries show the importance of recontextualizing, and taking other perspectives. As they widen the scope of discussion, I welcome these recontextualizations. In this “reply” I would like to show the difference different contexts and topics make, and how, even with three perspectives, the view of “Karnett” continues to be incomplete.

First, Spitler and I have different, though overlapping topics and contexts, in which different questions or interpretations become compelling. Spitler recontextualizes the discussion with voices from her college classrooms and African-American fiction and cultural discourse, and draws the connections among racism, scars, stories, pain, writing, and identity. She questions the powers and limits of language to materialize identity and the limits of my theoretical and racial perspective to realize Karnett's identity. First recontextualizes the interviews with Karnett with the insights of a “psychoanalytic listening.” She creates