Blog #9: Reflections on Essay #1

Writing the first essay was very therapeutic for me. I wanted to express a lot of those emotions before but always stopped myself from writing them down. It also opened up many other possible topics for me to explore in the future. As far as form and content, I have some work to do in regards to length but the main idea of a journey coming full circle was definitely conveyed. I’m going to add another scene in the beginning and make the ending (my moment of realization) the fist fight between my cousin and I.
One point I want to hit home that may not have been too clear is this: I ran away from what I didn't want to be (angry, hateful), and I found that these feelings followed me to North Carolina- not just because they were saturating my cousin's family but because they had become a part of me.
Once I was able to make a rough outline of my ideas, it was easier for them to come together on the screen. I wasn’t as concerned with how the first draft sounded as long as my message was clear-now I can go back and polish it. I usually write a story in my notebook before typing it, but in this case I wrote everything on the computer so there wasn’t as much editing involved.
I have not decided what my next topic will be, but all of the things I am considering are directly related to the first one. It’s like an emotional domino effect; one door opens many more and I have rediscovered things about myself that I was repressing for so long. This introspection was much needed, and I’m excited about writing another one.

Bog #8: First Draft

Kimberly Castro
10/6/09
Personal CNF essay

High Point
New Jersey

I left for High Point, North Carolina on August 19th, my sister’s fourth birthday- the only time we had not given her a party. I didn’t know how I was going to survive for an entire school year without seeing my mom and sister, but I ignored my feeling of impending loss and repeated my newly adopted mantra: you’re getting away from all the bullshit, you’re getting away. I held my little sister tighter than I ever had wanting to hide her in the backseat when nobody was looking. I said goodbye to my brother Joey, knowing that despite our differences I did love him. I said goodbye to my Dad (did I?), I don’t remember. I relegated my problems to the back of my mind and concentrated on the ten hour drive ahead of us.
The night before had been rough. Another screaming match, more pushing and shoving, probably another hole in the wall or broken lamp, I’ve forgotten by now, who cares? I do remember running to the black car on the corner (our meeting spot) and jumping in. I got in with my boyfriend, at the time, and the biggest secret I had managed to keep from my parents for almost a year. He was a secret for more than one reason, partly because of his age (23) partly because I didn’t want him to see the problems I had and the rage I often allowed to consume me. He knew all along of course. We talked and hugged and said our goodbyes. When I got out of the car it was after midnight and hot, but I was shivering. I felt truly alone for the first time. I wanted to let him in and help me deal with things, but I wanted more to crawl into a shell and shut out everyone, so I did.

Delaware

I was exhausted by the prospect of another seven hours in the car. I slid a mixed CD of 80’s love ballads into the stereo. “My boyfriend made this for me.” It felt strange saying these words out loud to my mother. I had never spoken to her about Tom voluntarily.
“I like it”, she said tapping her fingers rhythmically on the steering wheel. My bottom was already sore from sitting and my face was numb from the blasting AC. I complain way too much. Just shut up and be happy. Be happy. It seemed like a simple enough idea but so inaccessible at the moment. I wanted to be excited about college and making sophisticated, intellectual friends, and having some independence. I wanted to be a normal functioning seventeen year old, but all I could muster was a stream of anxiety and regret punctuated by moments of panic. I could feel my mom’s eyes flashing from me to the road and back. She knew I was depressed and did her best to console me. “You know when we sell the house in Jersey and get settled down there, you can invite your friends over. We’ll have a barbeque in our new yard. It’ll be great. You can even invite your boyfriend to stay in the guest room. What’s his name again? Tomasquo?”
“Mom, he’s not a Native American.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s Tomasso.”

Maryland

As the mixed CD switched tracks, I thought of how my best friend’s sister had unceremoniously told my mom about Tom on our prom night. I felt guilty for being so secretive and knew I had hurt my mother by not sharing such an important part of my life.
“Why is your family the last to know about your boyfriend Kimberly?” she asked in between group photos. I was standing in the front yard in my pink dress feeling an equal mixture of humiliation and anger. I wanted to scream "well maybe if we had a normal family I could bring him home, but we don’t so you’re never going to meet him!" I didn’t say anything though. I shrugged and walked away to join my friends in the limo.
Why was I punishing my mom? Did I resent her for staying married to him even though she was miserable? I had no right to assume I knew her situation, no right to judge my mom, she had given me everything. It wasn’t her fault she had married a crazy person, he hadn’t always been like that. I remember we had been happy at one time. Life was simple; I knew who I was and what I wanted. His best friend died though and things changed, slowly but steadily growing worse. As I got older and reached adolescence, his role as the enemy became more evident. He lost his friend and I didn’t understand what that was like. I didn’t take the time to listen, just yelled. Is that an excuse?
The day she told me they wanted to sell our home in New Jersey was the day she said she was leaving my dad. I was relieved but mostly angry that we had all been cheated of something better. I never felt an ounce of sadness though. Later, when they had decided to “work things out”, I was furious. I felt betrayed by my mom and indignant that my dad had more or less won.

Virginia

Maybe I am being hypersensitive to things, everyone has family problems right? It could always be worse. Sitting there in the car I suddenly felt like a little child being scolded by her parents. Am I being ridiculous? Should I be grateful instead of bitter twenty four hours a day? Does my mom think I’m a brat and is it my imagination or did she just scowl at me when I thought that? Shut up, you’re crazy.
I was flushed with a new found optimism that told me maybe North Carolina wouldn’t be the hell I pictured. I would meet new, hopefully interesting people, experience southern life, maybe develop a drawl…okay no thank you. High Point University is a respected college with a beautiful campus in an up and coming city with plenty to do. This is an adventure! I cringed at how corny I sounded to myself. At least you won’t be fighting with your father. Yeah, that was definitely a plus. I would also be sharing a room with my cousin Ashley who, despite the temptation to strangle sometimes, was one of my best friends. Maybe everything will be okay. Maybe that’s not so crazy to imagine. Just breathe.

End of the Road, North Carolina

By the end of the first week I was a basket case. The slightest upset caused me to burst into tears on and off campus. I soon realized that my cousin’s family was just as dysfunctional, maybe more so, than mine. I had daily flashbacks of my parents hurling accusations and insults, doors slamming after repeated proclamations of divorce. Ashley’s contempt for my uncle and their violent encounters was both remarkably and sadly the mirror image of the relationship I shared with my dad. I was reminded daily of the things I had so desperately tried to flee. What made it worse was that I felt like an intruder; a charity case eavesdropping on ugly family secrets. At one point the tension erupted into a fistfight between my cousin and I, (I gave her a black eye, she cut my lip. I think I won.)
I began to question myself and my aspirations. What the hell was I doing down here? Is this what I really want or is it a stall? I hated having no friends and no car, and I hated being a burden. I hated myself for wanting to run away from what was mine, no matter how shameful and depressing it could be at times. Every phone call and email was a desperate attempt to reconnect to my old self, my old life. I wanted it but I still hated it. Eventually, a constant gnawing ache developed in my chest, not the metaphorical kind but the physical kind caused by excessive sadness and anxiety that makes you want to expel it by vomiting. I was left wanting. My condition had nothing to do with the place I was located; it had everything to do with the place I was in personally, it was all me and my hang-ups. This is the most accurate description of my initial college experience; I wanted to vomit. I needed my sister and my mom. I missed my secret boyfriend. I even missed the notorious garbage smell of New Jersey. High Point was my low point and I had to turn around.

Blog #7:

The line that sticks with me even now: "Happeningness is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may happen and be truer than the truth." All our lives we are taught to tell the truth, find the truth, know our true selves, but what if none of it suffices? There is no definite truth to anything because reality is not one dimensional and is not meant to generalize.
War is grotesque- this is a given, but O’Brien touches on a fascinating idea when he says it can also be beautiful and we are never more alive than when we are nearly dead. When the war is over-when the lines are redrawn, the bodies are counted, the land left to heal itself- we may also ask what is the point? The reason and the outcome almost seem superfluous to the experience. What matters is what the survivors are left with: grief, bewilderment, helplessness, profound understanding of what is important. Each soldier has a different story to tell, not truth or lies, but the imprint war has left on them. It only matters that each one who proffers his memory is heard. The greatest decency we can have is to listen, which not many do or can. No judgment, no questions, no doubts or accusations, only the opportunity for the words to be spoken and the experience to live again morphing when necessary.
O’Brien believes truth is a tenuous concept. What is true one minute can be realized to be imagination or hallucination the next minute. More importantly, truth should not be sought after as a means of justification/clarification, but recognized as an inherent part of every human utterance. Sometimes we cannot not even identify our own truth so who are we to look for someone else’s? So what is true about O’Brien’s story? Maybe everything, maybe nothing; the message is understood.

Blog #6: Some Thoughts About My Personal Essay

Getting the ball rolling is always so hard for me when I’m writing. I know what I definitely don’t want my essay to sound like, but that’s only half the battle.
Montaigne’s style is definitely out- that flamboyant language and references to philosophers is neither appropriate for most contemporary writing nor does it appeal to me. On the other hand, I don’t want my writing to be so succinct and straightforward that it’s boring to my audience. Orwell’s piece was enjoyable, but the form was a little to smooth and predictable for me; an unconventional, quirky form is always more interesting. I do like the idea of accumulation and also find it practical to write in “blocks” because it is easier to reflect on what is written if there is space/time between each portion.
I also really love Jamaica Kincaid’s style in Biography of a Dress. While some people thought it was redundant and uneventful, I found it to be rich in culture and personal history. It was fascinating how Kincaid could recall one detail that would cause her to go off on a tangent about something else (which is how I associate things in my life) yet all the while everything circled back to that photo and the little yellow dress. One seemingly frivolous object has traces of hundreds of individual emotions and experiences. No event in our life is a solitary or static experience- it informs and affects everything else we do and say as humans. I would love to convey this idea in my essay.
I’m thinking of writing about the birth of my sister Colleen, and how she completely changed the dynamics of our family (probably saving it), but this will involve a lot of background story and personal exploration. Honestly, this will probably turn into an introspective therapy session, but even if everyone hates my story it’s something I have to write down for myself.

Blog #5: Structure/ Focus in Drummond and Danticat

Laurie Lynn Drummond (Alive) and Edwidge Danticat (Westbury Court) both examine human vulnerability and our constant struggle to feel secure. Although each woman is writing from a different context, their experiences parallel each other because each is forced to re-examine her own mortality. Laurie approached the idea as if we are constantly keeping death at bay and nothing can prevent it, only prolong the chase (not even having experience in law enforcement and the knowledge to guard oneself). Drummond’s final statement about being vulnerable simply because we are alive is striking, but somewhat hopeless. If we all had this mentality, would life even be worth living in the first place. Laurie’s final thought is a tragedy because in a way she is letting the stalkers/murderers/perverts of the world win by poisoning her mind.
Danticat’s take on the idea is somewhat more optimistic, which is ironic because here the author did confront death and for a while actually felt responsible for not hearing the screams of her burning neighbors. She gives the impression that death is random and indiscriminate. It could have been Edwidge and her younger brothers who were overcome by smoke, but they were unharmed despite being the last tenants to evacuate. After this incident the author is tainted in a way, and becomes hypersensitive to other crimes and tragedies around her (murders, illnesses, the theft of her father’s camera), but I never detected an air of desperation of hopelessness. Yes there is evil in the world and we all experience pain at times, but that is part of being human- to escape all pain is to stop living.
Alive has an ominous tone and the pace seems to speed up as the story progresses. Drummond forms the paragraphs in a very interesting way, larger blocks at the beginning followed by alternating single sentence “blocks” and slightly longer ones. The shorter statements give the illusion of rapid movement as Laurie is trying to flee from her stalker. If I had to identify this particular form I would say it is a combination of parallelism and pattering, but I’m not completely sure. I say parallelism because most of the blocks start with a personal action (“I grab”, “I stop”, I reach”) and I guess this is simply repetition so maybe I’m still not clear on the forms yet? Danticat’s piece does not have an unusual form but this might be considered accumulation because she builds upon each scene to reach the climax with some reflection thrown in.

Blog#4: Form and Focus in Schwartz

The overall themes of Mimi Schwartz's essay, My Father Always Said, include memory, the importance of family history, and the difficulties faced/gaps left by cultural assimilation or cultural translation. Mimi focuses on her journey "through time" to visit the Rindheim of her father's pre-Nazi Germany childhood, as well as the impact her father's history had on her growing up as a first generation American. Mimi eventually learns to accept and appreciate the rich though seemingly irrelevant traditions of her parents after seeing the suffering and displacement they experienced and the loved ones they had to leave behind.
The prose, simple yet impactful, reads like a typical autobiographical novel/essay, and closely resembles the structure/tone of Beard's Out There. Schwartz uses her parents’ harrowing experience of the Holocaust to make a commentary on the strength of familial love and the bonds that flourish despite the hatred that surrounds us.
Schwartz uses gaps in the storyline to indicate either the passage of time or the movement from real time events to exposition and reflection. The first section introduces readers to Mimi’s German-American household, where she struggles to reconcile her Jewish extraction with her Queens environment. She is frustrated that she has to forgo outings with friends to honor the Sabbath and embarrassed that her parents cannot say “moder” and “fader” without showcasing their non-American origins. The following sections include an account of the family's return to Germany and Mimi’s introduction into the world of family graveyards, cannon fodder, and Kristallnacht. Something shifts inside Mimi when she sees the stone remains of her family, multiple generations, some who led fulfilling lives and others who were robbed. Those who perished at the hands of Hitler's Germany have no legacy; their daughters will never wear lipstick at twelve or go bowling with friends, and more tragically, never honor the Sabbath or know the story of their people. These scenes bridge Mimi's "gap" on two levels: the first is the transition from child to young adult, the second is the incongruency between a disconnected German-Jewish girl and her ideal American self.
Mimi continues by punctuating the story with her father’s bittersweet memories and the ride through his hometown, then shifting to events taking place 40 years later where, in hindsight, she can thoroughly evaluate the situation and understand things on a deeper level (such as the realization that present day Rindheim is not all that different from the illustrious Forest Hills Gardens). I think this particular form is extremely useful and gives the effect of a camera rolling through the scenes of Mimi's life. Readers are drawn in and can both visualize and perhaps empathize with this Jewish -American girl's plight, the yearning to belong to the present without sacrificing the history of self.

Blog #3: How Do Montaigne and Orwell Compare to Others?

Modern prose does not follow nearly as stringent guidelines as during Montaigne's sixteenth century or even Orwell's early/mid twentieth century. Although these authors come from very different periods and contexts, there writing reflects a certain understood etiquette that existed when writing or speaking formally.

Elements such as colloquial speech and fragmented sentences/non-sequential ideas seem more typical of contemporary authors, which makes sense because that is how the mind thinks. Montaigne uses lofty prose which was more common in his time than it is today (if someone wrote like that in 2009 we would say he is pretentious or antiquated).So what exactly makes these two pieces CNF? The authors' ability to make their own stories resonate with the audience. The shortcomings and anxieties of the men are illustrated to comment on a larger sphere of human concern and folly ( the devastation of imperialism and the apparently tenuous concept of happiness).
Montaigne's piece is historically founded rather than springing simply from a personal event (although pondering his own death couldn't be more personal). He also quotes scholars and philosophers, which I don't think we've seen in any other writing so far. Also, Orwell's piece was much more politically charged while at the same time commenting on his own nature and that of the "white man in the East." This technique falls in line with Lott's idea that one should write about himself in relation to an experience or larger population, not just list the facts as they occur. Actually, all the pieces that we have examined so far meet this criteria, whether the author is front and center or positioned as a casual observer, the pieces are all telling about aspects of the human condition.

Blog #2: Kincaid's Yellow Dress and Lott's Guidelines

Everyone has a story to tell, no matter how small or spectacular. Each day and each interaction we have shapes us as human beings, and more importantly leads us to discover things about who we are both as children and later as adults. Jamaica Kincaid makes this clear in her short story Biography of a Dress and she sets a much different tone than we have seen in the other readings. Kincaid gives the impression that she is writing for herself alone, but more precisely writing from the perspective of a mature self to a younger Kincaid. The author has a wisdom and understanding of the world she did not posses(obviously) at two years old or even at 20 or 30 years.
Kincaid's account of her second birthday and her mother's excursion to buy materials for the yellow poplin dress is not about entertaining her audience so much as recording the facts and examining them. Elements such as repetition seen in the story mimic human memory- we remember minute details over and over and they seem to resonate in our heads, yet we may have no recollection of other more important events. Kincaid is writing about herself in relation to an object(dress) rather than a situation, as seen in other readings. However, within that object there is a lifetime of secrets, misunderstandings, and family history waiting to be examined. Something as commonplace as a birthday dress and a worn black and white photo evoke powerful emotions equal to those in, for example Jo Ann Beard's Out There, yet the premise has a subtler appeal. The material is understated yet the prose is somehow haunting/ magical.

Brett Lott presents an amalgamative definition of CNF for us, but what we should remember is there is no perfect definition, only certain guidelines those writing should consult. As Lott points out, the only way to unequivocably know what CNF is, is to actually try it. His discussion on the definition of CNF reinforced the idea that writers should not feel compelled to embellish their lives to make them traumatic or something other than the truth. A CNF writer should not feel deprived of material simply because they had an ordinary or uneventful life because every one's story is worth writing down and sharing. It often takes greater skill to develop a seemingly mundane story into one that , as Lott explains " shapes and forms what it is to be seen". Self is the creative element in CNF and because we all have a self to write about, this genre is a powerful and universal means of communication/self examination.

Blog #1: My Definition of CNF

When I hear the phrase "creative nonfiction" I automatically picture a columnist or some other Carrie Bradshaw-esque character jotting down thoughts about...anything really- work, sex life or lack thereof, or how they cheated on their low- carb diet yet again. It can be serious and philosophical or light and facetious, but the most important element is the creativity and value of what is being written. Obviously I would be more inclined to read about somebody's near death experience than I would be to read about their trip to the grocery store. So that raises another question for me- is all nonfictional writing (diary entries, love letters, suicide notes) considered creative non fiction, or are there specific criteria for CNF?
Until now, I have never bothered to start my own blog because I have a hard time believing that my daily musings are of any interest/importance to others, and I admit that I view "blogging" to be in the lowliest echelons of writing and I'm not really sure how I came to feel this way. Maybe its all the stupid live journal entries my friends made me read in high school,but I hope that I change my mind by the end of this class. What I'm trying to say is that a nonfictional creative writer should have a greater agenda than simply offering her audience a slice of self glorifying monotony. All great writing, whatever genre, strikes a chord within us, shifting the way we see ourselves or those around us, even if the change is imperceptible to anyone but us. If I write -I want it to mean something.

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