Response to Articles Part 2

Journal I Hate You:
--I think it's interesting to hear someone confess to being obsessed with recording life in the form of journaling. The fear of waking up and realizing half your life is gone is way too real. As someone who believes 2010 was only a few years ago, I always become a little flustered when I realize that year passed six whole years ago.  I don't think it's a bad "problem" to have.


Navajo and Native American Identity:
--The author made an interesting point when explaining the importance of having Navajo scholars tell the history of the Navajo people. The Dine language is important to the culture and the elderly are worried about the lack of fluency of dine among the youth. Language is a huge part of any culture. The language a person speaks makes up who they are.

Response to Articles

I've been that person to get offended when sharing work in a writer's workshop. Hopefully it's never been obvious. As a writer it's natural to take critiques personally especially since we're usually attached to our work. It's hard to write for an audience at times. As I'm writing, some things make sense in my head, but as it's being reviewed in class I realize I haven't properly explained something that I thought was obvious. I found the article very relatable. I agreed with almost all of it. Good art should make you feel something. 

Responses to essay part 2

Conor: I appreciate how personal this essay is. The personal touch helped me understand the main points you made. I also really like the quote "journaling allows you to dialogue with the parts of your psyche that are frozen in time." You also mention release, the release of emotion/anxiety/depression which is what you say writing is for you.

Tilden: You explored the truth of personal essay in your own essay. I think it's very interesting when writers try to write from memory. Bringing up the idea of writers knowingly making up information to fill in the forgotten spaces. I never knew about the David Sedaris controversy. I personally feel that it is okay to embellish when it comes to personal essay as long as the writer stays true to their point.

Kelsey: I've read a lot about writing as a healing mechanism. It makes sense that writing which has a lot to do with control could be soothing for someone experiencing OCD. When writers craft they choose what to include. It's empowering. 

Response to Essays

Jeremy: I've never played a sport, but I can imagine the pressure. Honestly, I've never been a fan of group projects or group work. I can imagine a person on a team constantly comparing themselves to their teammates. I imagine the frustration. I must have been in the 2nd grade when I broke down because I couldn't sketch SpongeBob right. I was trying my very best, everyone seemed to to get it but my hands weren't doing what I wanted them to do. It was beyond frustrating so I broke down crying. Ms. Susman, the art teacher looked mortified.
It's very interesting that we don't teach about emotion. I think it's important that we address it. When I was younger I thought growing up meant growing out of feeling things. As we get older I think we are taught to repress our emotions, which is a shame.

Diego: The each/student relationship is a very interesting one. I've been blessed to have many good teachers in my academic career. Your essay reminds me of my sixth grade teacher Mr. Boyle. He thought I was smart and was always telling my classmates they should be more like me and read during their free time. It was embarrassing and flattering. I'm not sure how it started, but one day i walked him to his car. It became a routine of ours. After school, I would would go pick up my little sister. his car was parked right next to the playground where she would be waiting. So it made sense. I would ask Mr. Boyle a question and he'd go on and on; he really liked the sound of his own voice. I liked that he seemed to be treating me like an equal. Well I guess someone noticed because one day another teacher intercepted my path as I was walking to Mr.Boyle. They walked off together. I got the hint, the walks had to stop

Cindy: You say writing is a medium. I agree, I'm a bit sick of this subject. I like to think of writing as a kind of magic, and like all tricks it's ruined when you analyze too deeply and pick it apart. Writing is soothing, so it makes sense that it would function as therapy for some. I think a more inserting study would be why some people take to writing and why some people don't. What I've noticed is that those who enjoy reading usually are the writers. It's interesting.

Gaby: You're essay was really interesting. Life is interesting I guess. There's a lot of things that shape who we are as people. By things, I mean experiences. I especially how you explained what writing had to do with religion, death, puberty and other rites of passage. I love to read because at the end of a novel I sometimes feel as I have a better understanding of the world and people in general, which is a pretty amazing thing.

Morgan:It's natural to care about yourself and what has happened to you, It makes sense that when people are asked to write they pen a little something about their lives. it's interesting though, the need to release the bad that's happened. how we come we don' feel the need to write about happy things? the happiest days of our lives? 

Essay

Lashanda Anakwah

Writing is a Tool

Ever since I first learned to write my name in kindergarten, I’ve been enamored with the act. I still remember my surprise in being able to capture my name down on paper. I felt cemented; and that, I’ve always thought, was the moment I became a writer.

Writing is a technology. It’s seems a bit odd to think of it that way. The act of writing is now second nature to those who live in literate societies but it was very new once upon a time. Plato, the famous Greek philosopher thought writing would create forgetfulness, he feared people would no longer rely on memorization, turning their brains to mush. In his work he expresses his distrust, “writing is simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product.”  Writing has in fact, done the opposite. Humans have created a technology that changes the workings of the mind. Walter Ong explains this phenomenon in his piece, Writing is a Technology that reconstructs thought.

If functionally literate persons are asked to think of the word 'nevertheless', they will all have present in imagination the letters of the word-vaguely perhaps, but unavoidably-in handwriting or typescript or print. If they are asked to think of the word 'nevertheless' for two minutes, 120 seconds, without ever allowing any letters at all to enter their imaginations, they cannot comply. A person from a completely oral background of course has no such problem. He or she will think only of the real word, a sequence of sounds, 'ne-ver-the-less'. For the real word 'nevertheless', the sounded word, cannot ever be present all at once, as written words deceptively seem to be.

Writing overcomes the passage of time, a privilege  oral societies don't have. The quote above explains how writing captures a word and takes it of time. The syllables are captured on paper and don't disappear when the next letter is sounded out. I do not jot down notes without first marking the page with my name. Once my name is written I feel as if I can then write anything. In fact, there is nothing that calms me down more than writing my name continuously. My middle school notebooks have pages upon pages of my name written over and over again.  There have been many studies that have shown writing as an effective stress releaser. Dr. Pennebaker conducted a study where 46 healthy college students wrote about traumatic life events for fifteen minutes on four consecutive days. Those students reported a decrease in their intake of pain relievers. Writing my name takes me back to my first accomplishment. It reminds me that I am here in the world, that I exist. The familiar motion is also calming. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago found that students with high test anxiety did better on test when they were given a couple minutes to briefly write about their thoughts before their tests.

            Writing does what speech can’t. The process of writing includes thinking, analyzing, and processing. It happens all at once. When something traumatic occurs people usually find it extremely difficult to express in words how the event made them feel. When people write it leads to discovery. ‘We write to figure things out. We write to discover what we know. We write to uncover what we don’t know.” In Tilly Warnock’s piece Language and Literature as Equipment for Living, Warnock theories that language and literature are tools that help people take on life. She studies different writers and analyzes how they use writing to cope.

In general, what I advocate is a rhetorical approach to writing and living that provides "strategies for coping" and "equipment for living." We live in a world that is filled with doubt and uncertainty. Our languages, identities, relationships, and values are in flux; we must read situations critically and choose among possible actions if we are to identify with and persuade others. Our readings of the world and our choices about writing are social and ethical actions with far-reaching consequences. While we cannot act freely, for we act within the constraints of others and of situations, we can learn to act wisely, so that we use language to get along, and stay alive.

   Language is a survival mechanism. It is only natural that humans have expanded it's use by developing ways to further improve it's usefulness. When we memorize a poem that we love it is because we want to carry it with us wherever we may go. And now we can carry books that have thousands upon thousands of pages in our mobile phones. Humans are continuously expanding language because it is essential.

 Works Cited

Ong, Walter J. "Writing Is a Technology That Restructures Thought." Typological Studies in Language The Linguistics of Literacy (1992): 293. Web

Essay on Emotion

                                  The Hill

        Haide is throwing little pieces of paper at me. It’s lunchtime and I’m starved. My little Styrofoam plate is almost empty; the food, questionable lasagna, isn’t particularly good but I want more of it. The cafeteria is at a low rumble; it isn’t chaotic but it’s far from quite. The lunch aides are walking around, looking for something, I’m not sure what. Today is just like every other school day; it probably wouldn’t be memorable if Haide weren’t throwing pieces of paper on me. Every day of seventh grade has started to blur together. I’m sitting with Bridgette, one of my only friends; she notices the tissue throwing. “Ummmm”, Bridgette likes to start every sentence with a long drawn out um, a habit I’m starting to pick up to the dismay of my parents. “Why is Haide throwing paper at you?” I shrug. I was hoping the little white particles that kept flying my way were a coincidence but Bridgette sees it too so there is no denying it.

       “There’s a garbage can right next to you,” I say to Haide. I turn to look at Bridgette; I can’t believe I just said something so witty and brave.
“I am throwing it at the garbage.” Haide does a little giggle when she says this and turns and looks at the group of girls she’s sitting with. Her facial expression says it all. She is not used to this type of behavior; it is new and exciting for her. I am mortified; my face is hot and I don’t know where to look, how to breathe, embarrassment is like a slow death for me. Did she just call me garbage? I want to 2 2 ask this question out loud but I don’t want to speak the hurt into existence. Keeping it to myself will prevent it from being real.
        I don’t remember having any problems with Haide but lately she’s been craving popularity so bad I can see it in her eyes. I know Haide as the girl who is obsessed with the Jonas Brothers; her style can best be described as a cross between gothic and girly. Her eyes are always lined with black eye shadow, her lashes coated to the extreme with mascara, yet she never fails to wear her bright pink bow. With the constant, non-stop attention she gives Kiana and the rest of them, it’s a wonder she can’t see it. If she were going to be part of their group she would already be in it. Kiana and the rest of the girls have family ties, live around the same block and think the same way. They are four peas in a pod. There is something about them that has always unnerved me. They seemed determined to not be innocent. Haide can’t be in their group with her high-pitched laughter and agreeable disposition. I feel a mixture of rage and sympathy towards her. She’s been laughing at all their jokes lately and all their jokes are at the expense of other people.
       School seems to go on forever. I notice Haide making a great attempt not to look at me. We are split into groups to discuss a reading in social studies. The tables are made of a cheap looking wood; the teacher’s desk is some kind of metal. The chalkboard is a dark green, and the walls are a yellow tinted cream color. The lighting is a bit dim. The teacher Mr.Boyle is always red, as if he were blushing all over his body constantly. Kiana and the rest of them are huddled up and talking— definitely not about the reading. Every ten seconds or so, one of them looks up and eyes me. They are making plans that include me and at that moment I hate them; they are deciding things that have to do with me without my consent. They have all the power, and there is no explanation as to why, it is just that way. It’s 7th grade.
      While the teacher’s back is turned, Kiana walks up to me. I look up at her, expecting the worse. She doesn’t even know how to talk to me. She attempts a smile. “So um, if Haide wanted to fight you, would you fight her?” “Yeah.” I say it quick and confidently, the opposite of what I’m feeling. Kiana practically squeals and runs back to her table. Bridgette laughs, “Are you really going to fight Haide?” I explain that it probably won’t happen. Kiana and the rest of them are just bored. But by the end of the day the seventh grade is simmering with rumors of a fight after school. I’m getting excited myself. This is the most I’ve been talked about in all my years of school but I know, I’m absolutely sure, it won’t happen. I kind of feel bad for getting everyone’s hopes up. Bridgette is amazed by my calm; she keeps breaking out into fits of laughter and I laugh along. She is more nervous than I am. She starts giving me fighting tips. I pretend to listen. In no time, I’ll be on my way to pickup my little sister. Maybe we’ll go to the park and swing for a while. The bell rings, the sound that never fails to make me happy even though there’s not much happening at home.
       School is over and they’ve seized me. Kiana and some other girl are pulling on my arms, moving me forward. “I have to go pick up my sister,” I tell them in a small voice. They reassure me that she’ll be fine. They’re holding onto me tight, afraid I’ll flee. Kiana and the others have arranged all the details for the fight like professionals. I look around hoping an adult will notice what is taking place. They’re pulling me across the street. It’s a nice day, the sky is so blue. I want nothing more than to be on a swing, flying with the sun on my face. Won’t somebody help me? I’m scared. Fighting is wrong, fighting is wrong. I know that. Why don’t they? I cannot imagine that Haide wants to fight, but knowing Kiana, she’s whispered sweet promises of popularity in Haide’s ear. She’s convinced Haide it’ll be an easy fight. I can hear her in my head, It’s Lashanda, come on. There is no saying no to Kiana; I can’t even fathom the idea.
      There is already a sizable crowd gathered at the little space between the buildings on the hill right across from the school. I’m looking around nervously; Haide is in the corner, waiting. She doesn’t look at me. We stand there, unsure of what to do, like actors who have forgotten their lines. We both know the significance of this fight. Someone is shouting at us to fight. I drop my book bag on the pavement. Someone cheers. “Yo, Lashanda’s a G. did you see the way she dropped her bag?” Kiana shouts at Haide to hit me. She comes towards me and I’m suddenly very angry. I’ve been angry for a very long time. I’m pushing Haide into the brick wall suddenly, beating on her face. I’m trying to push her into the street. I’m trying to kill her. At the moment she represents all the times I wanted to do or say something but didn’t because I am a good kid. I was taught not to say mean things but I am stuck in a world where people do. People break rules and are praised for it. Kiana is the meanest girl I know, and the most popular. It’s as if my parents raised me to be a loser.
      Haide is rolling around on the floor, completely curled up in herself. The kids in the crowd are bloodthirsty. They cheer and clap, instruct me on where to hit. “Get her face!” “Beat her down!” Everyone wants a good view. I see my friend out the corner of my eye, Bridgette. She is cheering me on. She is ecstatic, ecstatic that I am fighting. Everyone is really happy, even though what I am doing is wrong. I must be winning. The crowd seems really far away. The sky is still so very blue.
       An adult is heading up the hill; the crowd disperses. Kids scatter every which way. I run up the hill to pick up my sister. I feel exhilarated. It feels so good to be bad; I had really been missing out. Haide should have known better then to mess with me, she got what she deserved. The day is so nice but there is no time for the park now. I need to hurry up and get home. An influx of thoughts overcomes me. Everyone will think of me differently now. Maybe Kiana and the rest of them will treat me with some respect. I have broken out of my mold and I don’t even know who I am anymore. I like it, the change. I’ve been the same boring me my whole life, the victim, and now I am the culprit. Oh my gosh—I’m cool.
       I’m walking faster now. I turn a corner and hear some one call my name. There’s no mistaking that voice, I think about running but there’s an adult calling me and I can’t make my legs move. I turn around. The figure calling me is tall and thin, with an impressive brown red goatee. He’s always reminded me of a cowboy. Right now he looks exactly like one. He gestures at me to come to him. It’s the dean and like the police, he has come way too late.

Chapter 12

I understood this chapter better than the others but I couldn't help but roll my eyes as I read. I don't know if it's the job of schools to teach people how to get in touch with their feelings. I also didn't understand the narrators anecdote in the beginning, he claimed the more academic he became the less in touch he was with his feelings. I feel that the more I'm forced to think about different subjects, the more in touch with my feelings I become. Whenever I learn about something, the first question I ask myself is how I feel about it.


I've been taught to keep family issues and personal problems to myself. When people talk about deeply personal information or family issues I can't help but think they're betraying their family and themselves. No one should know every single thing about you. I've said this in class and I still believe it. 

Chapter 9

I recently reread ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. The part where Dina states her mother's fear of her father is what killed her stuck out to me unlike before. Illness is a not only terrible because of what it does to a person's body but what it does to the person overall. How does it feel to be sick? Besides the aches, pain and discomfort there is a large emotional aspect to illness that the author, Hawkins describes as being left out.

 It is admirable to create something out of pain.

"The pathography itself can be seen as a reformulation of the experience of illness, as the artistic product and continuation of the intrinsic psychological act of formulation: It gathers together the separate meanings, the moments of illumination and understanding, the cycles of despair, and weaves them into a whole fabric, one wherein a temporal sequences of events takes on narrative form."

"Writing and Healing and the Rhetorical Tradition"

Post-Tramatic stress is very real. I never knew how extensive the damage trauma does to a persons' brain. 

"Thus, the Greeks of this era viewed all disease not just what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder as open to the curative powers of language. But it might be more correct to suggest that the Greeks viewed the onset of disease as a form of trauma. In other words, what Entralgo calls the "primitive" character of disease might best be understood as the traumatic character of disease. This pre-classical notion of illness as possession by a punishing spirit perhaps what Receveur, in the poem quoted at the beginning of this essay, refers to as "small still-born terrors"jibes well with the twentieth-century notion of possession by a traumatic memory or an idee fixe. In fact, as Herman points out, part of what makes the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder so difficult is the stigma that attaches to its victims"

The ancient Greeks thought that words could take away evil disease-causing spirits. It's fascinating that Burner and Rogers belief in the healing power of words mimics such an old belief. Yet is also correct. 

Misunderstood

I remember being lost in Manhattan, I was going to my writing program and I had made a wrong turn. I was on an avenue with small expensive looking boutiques on every corner. It was cold, so I thought it'd be a good idea to walk into the store. I'd make a call and ask for directions. I walked in and before my foot even touched the red carpet (cornballs) everyone turned to look at me and quickly looked away. I froze, unsure if I should leave the store or wander around and eventually make my call. The owner, I'm not sure how I could tell, was giving me a pointed stare as I walked further into the shop. I glanced at some of the addresses and pulled out my phone. I could tell the owner was counting every second I was in the store.  I left when I got some feeling back in my fingers. She clearly didn't want me there because I didn't look like her average customers, rich, white, woman. I don't know, maybe she thought I was there to steal something. I was very awkward then when it came to situations like that.

Stories

  For a good portion of my life, there's been a central story that has described me--or you can say, has been told about me. I'm the caretaker, the good girl, the nice girl, the sometimes quiet girl, the sometimes loud girl, the careful girl and some other things. My parents don't believe in praising their kids directly, but I've found out from aunts and uncle's how much they appreciate how respectful I am.They think I'm a good kid, and I am. I've never been in any trouble, my teachers never had any reason to call home. In fact they always has good things to say about me.

I've had to be responsible as an older sister, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm still messy and disorganized. Most people don't think of those characteristics going together.

In college I have a friend who think I'm bold, I've never been described as that before. She think I come out and say what I'm thinking. Which I guess is true compared to everyone else I've met here in Ithaca. We ask a lot of direct question in the Bronx, I sometimes feel people in Ithaca are annoyingly polite. It gives off vibes of disingenuousness, but that's just my opinion. I like this new characterization I've been given and sometimes find myself trying to live up to that description when I'm around her.

There are things I don't do because of the story my parents tell about me, even though I am far away from home. I'm still an older sister, setting an example even when my younger siblings aren't watching. There are things I don't do because of the stories I've been told of the unlucky ones, the ones who face the consequences their friends got away with.

Maybe it's a Ghanaian thing but I look at some of these kids who are willing to climb rocks and jump from high places. And I wonder a bit aghast, how are they so carefree?  Do they not have parents who care about them? It's been ingrained in me that I'm not just living for myself, This rugged American individualism doesn't apply to me. Ghanaians, well at least my family, understand that you live for family. What if I was to die? Who would take care of my parents in their old age? What would the kids do? All the love and money and investment my parents have poured into me would die with me, a waste. Fair or not it's all up to me. No one has to tell me this, It's the story I tell myself.

Warnock

           Warnock writes, “Indirection is the way we find direction; only rarely do we live by the straight and narrow, travel he direct route, or know where we’re going before we begin. Ours are not single-copy, single-voice, or single-identity lives” (46).

   I usually write without a clear idea in mind; I'm usually driven by a feeling or an idea I want to get across. But it's usually not enough to drive the story forward. For example, I might want to write a story about how people fail to communicate with each other.  And I might think of a scenario which depicts that idea and is worthy of a story but I won't have any specific characters in mind, a setting or much of a plot. Most of the time I give up. But when I do choose to write on, I somehow fill in the spaces as I go along. When I do have a set story in mind it almost always changes by becoming bigger or more specific than I anticipated. I've always thought that (and I know this is going to sound horribly cliche)  the stories find the author. I've always had the theory that the kind of story an author writes successfully can only be written by that author because it is written from their unique imagination. Everyone sees the world slightly different and what might appeal to me to write about won't appeal to another author. We all have subjects we feel we need to write about.

Do you believe writing and reading are critical to our ability to live? What kinds of things have you written to cope? And do you think that there is room, in academic spaces, for this kind of writing (writing that focuses more on revision and process,   writing as a strategic tool to help us better manage our lives versus writing as product... written  to rest at its deadline)?

I don't think that reading and writing are essential to our lives. People lived perfectly fulfilling lives without doing either but I do believe they greatly improve our understanding of the self and the world. I've been in poetry and creative writing classes that encouraged revision but of course we needed to turn something in at the end of class. I've had teachers who've reminded me to keep revising beyond the end of the assignment. Have I done so? That's another story. The kind of writing that calls for revision and rewriting has a place in the creative arts but I don't see scientists embracing writing as a tool to help them manage their lives.

Warnock explains, “For years, I remembered not my father’s encouragement about my writing, but his warning that I put my family first. By identifying and untangling the threads and by retelling the stories, I can create new patterns and in part rewrite my life”(45).  Warnock seems to be speaking to the process of selective re-examination:  of finally being able to take the microscope into our own hands in order to zoom in and focus on a different part of the slide. Can we,  in revision, symbolically, rewrite our lives?  How and why or why not?

I honestly don't understand Warnock when she talks about using writing to re-write life. The examples given in the chapter examines people using writing to affirm their hopes or using writing to heal. "I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window." Could she have thought that and achieved it without writing it down? Of course but is her sentiment more concrete because she wrote it down? I think so. 

Do you think, to some extent, this might be partially the point of writing – to find common ground, to imagine that we are not so different from one another in that we are, each and every one of us, fallible? How have you embraced the ‘comic corrective’ in your own writing? And how have you rejected it?

I think writing helps us see how human we all are. I've always written from the point of view of someone who is misunderstood, someone who is clearly different in some way and I've attempted to tell their story. I write about characters I like or identify with. I've always given character traits I dislike to characters I try to depict as the antagonists, in that way I reject the comic corrective. 

Finding my voice

I've grown a lot as a person, my voice reflects that.

It's funny, as a youngster I remember having trouble reading. In 6th grade my classmates called me a bookworm. I didn't mind. My head was always in a book because it was middle school and everyone sucked. I preferred reading about other people's problems, it helped me escape my own.  I was blown away with how well the authors I read could create another world that was capable of completely immersing all my senses. I wanted to do what they did.

As the oldest of three, recently four. I've been playing the role of caretaker for as long as I can remember. As an older sister I've always known what it was like to order people around and be in control. I had a voice in the house. My parents were always working so it was Lashanda this, and Lashanda that. Once I was outside alone, I was the dorky little girl with few friends and no power. I was quiet. I was quiet when my parents were home. I was only myself when I was alone with my siblings. Fast forward to High School. I was now the "smart" chubby, dark-skinned black girl with few friends. I read a lot, but never dared to write anything. I thought of writing as a talent some were born with and others admired. I joined an after school writing program, which made me think writing was something that could be worked on. I didn't write much because I was so intimidated by what my writing skills were compared to those I read and hoped to emulate.

I've always had very strong opinions about certain matters. When it comes to blatant injustice there is no way I won't speak up. Thinking back to how upset I would get in elementary school when one of my classmates would skip me in line I realize I've always had a strong feeling that things should be fair. They would tell me to relax, we were all going to the same place--but it wasn't their skipping that bothered me, it was their disregard of my dignity. Of course in 5th grade I didn't have the words to explain it.  Because I wasn't considered important the popular kids who were always the one doing the skipping, didn't think it was necessary to ask my permission before they slid in front of me. That's exactly how the poor and anyone who isn't a rich white cis-gendered male is treated in society for the most part. What I'm trying to say I've found my voice in politics. And it fearless when it comes to such matters.

Honestly I don't read as much anymore, college that ironic effect. I don't pursue  all the ideas that flicker around in my head, and they have a way of utterly disappearing. I'm still intimidated. 

Reflection on Shame

             Shame is something that's done to you. Something that happens to you, or something you do that you later regret. Shame happens. It's a feeling that creeps into the body, unwelcome but heavy. I find that since writing is an extremely active action, it eliminates the passivity out of any story the writer is recalling. Even if the writer is telling a story about how they did absolutely nothing, the writer is claiming the action of nothing by writing about it. And that's something. The writer chooses what style to write about the event--there are all these choices that come with writing. Writing is all about agency. Even though it may not be the writer's intention to share what they experienced, they may be writing for themselves writing still somehow becomes a social act, no matter how personal it is. People read to feel less alone; when we read we connect to other experiences. A writer writing about their personal experiences can be speaking someone else's truth.

          Writing allows people to analyze their experience in a way that no other art form can. A writer can write ten pages about what was going on in their minds during a ten second span. It allows us to expand on intricate, delicate emotions and concepts. A reader can sense the writers mental state based on what they write. When I shared my personal essay in class, people pointed out things I didn't realize myself. People thought that I had misplaced guilt, guilt that I thought was deserved. It's interesting how people get different readings of the same work. I think that has to due with people bringing up a part of themselves into what they read. 

Gere

          Writing serves many purposes. The self is political, people make up society. A person's gender, race, and sexual identity is political. So writing about personal experiences still manages to be political. In Gere's piece she discusses coming to the realization that writing could be done with people and reading could be shared. I'm surprised it took her so long to realize half the fun of reading it is discussing what you've read with other people. I understand where she's coming from. A lot of people think of reading as an escape from their lives, a way to go elsewhere. I read when I want to leave my life and it's magical. I can be immersed in someone else's problems and go through the ups and downs of their lives while I'm lying down in bed. Ten years can pass in two hours, it's a sort of emotional time travel when I think about it. After I'm done with most books I feel as I've gone through such a journey. I've only recently began to discuss books maturely. Before I'd randomly find out someone had read a book I loved and we'd gush about how tremendously good the book was. My writing classes have forced me to intelligently unpack what's going on in a book. That kind of work, I'm finding, gives books more value. Hearing another interpretation of something you've read helps one realize that there are many ways to look at the text you've enjoyed just through your interpretation. Someone else interpreted it differently and loved it as well, the same text and that's pretty amazing. 

             Gere talks about the trend of autobiographical and personal writing leading to a more social and public context. Although I can't think of any specifics I know that essay writing (personal essay) usually starts of personal and broadens to the social or wider context. Joan Didion does that a lot. What do I mean by that? By that I guess I mean connecting the self with the larger picture. 

Shame

 

I have family I don’t talk to. And they’re not just distant relatives. They’re not the distant relatives everyone has; the kind you’re really not supposed to talk to but once maybe twice a year. I have family I don’t talk to, family that I should probably live with. Family I should love like the family I do live with and love unreasonably. My mom, the one who raised me, did not give birth to me. A detail we’ve all easily forgotten. I’m the oldest, the siblings I live with have always had me in their lives. And what child thinks about what came before them, before they came into existence? So questions are not asked about why I look nothing like mommy.

I have family I don’t talk to. Two sisters and a brother that I put out of my head right after third grade and didn’t think about until the summer of 8th grade. I went to visit. In their living room was a picture of us all together. Jane had driven up with the kids from Ohio to visit a friend in New York. I was in sixth grade maybe, we met at the mall, ate Chinese and and took a group picture-- a family picture. I had more or less forgotten about that day but there was the picture, framed in the living room. There was a couple of pictures of me in the third grade. I spent that year with them.

Jane let me know that Sherrie, my sister, went around showing people pictures of me. She wanted everyone to know she had an older sister. There were years where I didn’t even think about her. But I was young, I was eight, eight. Tensions between Jane, the woman who had given birth to me, and my dad made it so she never called the house. There were siblings in the Bronx to watch and play with. There was homework to do and shows to watch, and I was young.

We didn’t grow up together. The closest Sherrie, Sunshine, William and I got to love was familiarity. After the summer in eighth grade Jane reached out to me my sophomore year of college via Facebook. I guess she lost my number. I wasn't mad. I actually felt guilty and thought she was justified. In the summer of 8th grade she let me know it was either my dad or her. I went back to the Bronx. I'm very much an absentee father when it comes to my other siblings. I'm working on it.