Essay Packet 2

   As I first started to read the Mint Snowball Story, I automatically picked up on its vivid imagery. They set the scene really well and made me feel like I had been to the drugstore myself. I also found it funny how the daughter of the daughter was describing what her mother had seen. She executed it very well to not have seen it herself. when she started to tell us the process in which her great grandfather used, she was very detailed and descried how you could still smell the mint on his hands even after he was done.
   The mint snowball was described to taste like winter. How does winter taste? I think that was a very good description of the taste because we imagine winter as being icy, cool, and fresh. The story suddenly got kind of sad when the son realized that his father sold the recipe and the he wouldn't inherit it and have it for generations to come.

Maps to Anywhere

   I particularly liked the Maps to Anywhere section of the book. The first section, How to Draw is very fascinating because the author wants to literally teach you how to  draw. It also talks a lot about art. When learning how to draw, you have to understand art itself. It then goes on to tell us about her family and who likes what type of art.
   With the Utopia story in this section, I found it interesting how the author got me to identify and understand the character. I understood that he was strictly a routine man so he didn't like doing things out of the ordinary. The way that the character described the things that he was talking about, I could tell that the author had very vivid thoughts and that he was very good at putting his thoughts down on paper. This character liked perfection and I think the the author conveyed that very nicely in this story.

What Our Mother Always Told Us

     I liked this story. I thought that it was very intriguing. I kept trying to figure out why the young boys just wouldn't listen to their mother. She kept giving them warning after warning. The story started off emphasizing how much their mother said the word "don't". The fact that she told them what to do so much is part of the reason why I think the rebelled against her so much. It may also have to deal with the fact that they might  not have a father figure in their life. The story didn't mention anything about that.
     I didn't like that fact that once I got really interested in the story, and wanted to find out what she was going to do to her sons, the story stopped. I imagined the story ending several different ways but I wanted to read about how she ended it.

The Girl With the Blackened Eye

     I thought this story was very interesting. It started off telling us how the girl was very displeased with her black eye and how crazy she must have looked all the while having us wonder what happened to it. This makes you want to find out which makes you keep reading. It then went on to tell us a little about her past and how she was forcefully abducted when she was a teenager. I think that this was a twist that none of us was expecting. I sure wasn't! This story actually got darker than I thought it would.
     When she said that he was doing all these things to her and then she clarified and said that he was doing all these things to her body, it made me feel like she had emotionally detached herself from the situation so they she wouldn't feel any pain mentally. She stressed how she had little hope that she would live but she held on to the mere thought that she would. This story was also very descriptive, I felt like she described her pain very well, physically and mentally. It was a very deep, unexpected story for me.

Writing Fiction

   I've recently learned that writing fiction isn't as simple as it may seem. While writing fiction, you have to have a lot of things in mind. You have to consider imagery, details, and you have to try to evoke certain feelings and emotions from your readers. When you write fiction, you want your audience to feel what you are trying to get them to feel. When people are reading and they aren't interested, they often don't feel emotion. A good piece of fiction makes you feel emotion.
   While discussing the "Writing Fiction" packet in class, my group and I came to the conclusion that a good fiction writer must truly evoke and make you feel several different types of emotions all in one story. We also discovered that fiction writers need to use active voice and they must show significant details.
   While reading the story "Polaroids", we discovered that writing some fiction is is watching a Polaroid develop. It just says how you can ficus your attention on a certain outcome but it doesn't mean that that goal is going to be attainable. This packet helped me see writing fiction in a different light and it makes me realize that it isn't as simple as it seems.

Fiction Packet

    The story that touched me most in the packet was the one on the first page titled "Survivors". To me, it was the easiest to relate to and understand. The story was about two homo-sexuals lovers who both were dying of HIV/AIDS. I came to such a conclusion because they talked about T Cells and that's mostly related to the disease. The lover was talking about how he didn't want to die first because he didn't want to have to take care his lovers bird and hear from his lovers family. He just felt that it would be way simpler if he died first. This story was very sad, I feel like it played at our emotions.
    This story also talked about how the lovers family would blame him for the death of his lover and how they would disgrace his home. Towards the end of the story, the narrator talks about freeing the bird, I think that he feels as if it would help him get rid of the the pain quicker, just in case he doesn't die first. I feel as if the author of this story has had experience with this situation, or has seen it happen in some type of way or another.
    When they mentioned the Parrot in this story, that alone provoked a lot of emotions. The first thing I thought was "Why is this bird so important?". Then I thought about the fact that parrots are colorful and one of the symbols for gay pride is the colors of the rainbow. This may or may not have had anything to do with it but it's  just something that I thought of. The parrot was a small symbol in this story that carried a lot more weight than it may appear.

This week we talked a lot about poems in the book "City Eclogue". One poem that stood out to me was the poem on page 113 titled The"State as Body" Aspect of Eunuch Rule. The first thing that I noticed about this poem was that it talked about death very openly. A lot of the words used like kill,bodily, scalped, and sex provoke some very vivid imagery. It makes me think of a very turbulent crime scene. All in all, I was impressed by the intensity of this poem.