blog 5

The main point of "Alive" by Laurie Lynn Drummond is no matter what the main character does she will always be vulnerable or feel vulnerable. She can be alert, smart, and act quick but even that may not be enough to save herself sometimes. She spent the entire story panicking because there was a man she though was following her or evil, it was an irrational feeling and she even knew it earlier but could not help it. If she was in the same position two years earlier she herself said she wouldn't be afraid at all, the difference now is that she is no longer a police officer but a mere civilian. I think the story shows how her confidence has deteriorating and effected her actions and feelings in a negative way.

"Westbury place" by Edwidge Danticat is a story about a women reflecting back to the time she left her apartment. The girl was watching soap operas on television when a fire broke out the next apartment, forcing the building to evacuate. The fire was started by a young boy whos mother left him and his young brother alone. While alone one of the boys started playing with matches and started the fire in the building. The point of this story is much like the first one, to constantly be aware, smart, and take the proper precautions to keep yourself safe. The author in the story mentioned the her mother always warned her about playing with matches, if those two boys had been told the same than maybe the fire would not have started and they would still be alive.

I think these two stories are very similar as it deals with peoples fears and reactions to traumatic events. Each handled their situation in the correct manner and came away from these events physically unscathed. I think these two stories are more guidelines of what to do in an event than anything, even though both were entertaining. These stories seem like something your parents would tell you to scare you away from playing with matches or going to creppy towns.

Blog 4

The focuse of Schwartz essay is how many people fear change and are more comfortable and happy with what they are familiar with than something different. In this story Schwartz is a young modern Americanized women with an old school Jewish father who grew up in a town in Germany called Rinheim that he loved. But dring world war 2 the Nazi's drove him out of Rinheim to a Forrest Hills New York where he settled and had a family. He misses his home town greatly and won't give his adopted home a chance, he would rather stay the same than blend in and Americanize himself like his children have. During the story you see Mimi and her father gradually having finding some common ground and realizing that niether was knew were the other was coming from originally. Mimi found out the importance of her families history and why they are the way the are, and her father fond out that grass isn't always greener on the other side, his memories of how his how town was was different with how it actually was when he went back.

The first section was when Mimi was 13 and her father was showing her Rindheim, it was the first time back since the end of the war and her father wanted to show Mimi how great Rindheim was compared to Forrest Hills. But oce they got there they noticed Rindheim was not like it was once before, the synagogues were no longer there, all the jews had left to Israel or America, and the town was now multi-cultural like Forrest Hills was.

The second section was Mimi learning some of the history and traditions that she never understood such as how Jewish life was destroyed in Germany, and how Christians and Jew worked together to rebuild after the war. How her father knew the family had to leave Germany as soon as Hitler took power when nobody else knew they were in danger. And how her family had to gather as much money as possible so that America would even take her family. I think in this section she began to realize every thing her father went through, I think here she stopped being ashamed of her father and started being more appreciative.

Blog 3

Reading Montaige's "That men should not judge" and Orwell's "Shooting an elephant" I saw some clear similarities between those two pieces and some other pieces we've read earlier in class. I thought "Shooting an elephant" was similar to Jamaica Kincaid's "biography of a dress", although different from all other pieces. I also thought "That men should not judge" was most similar to Lott's "Toward a definition of creative nonfiction,", although different from all other pieces we've read in class.

What I found similar between "Shooting an elephant" and "biography of a dress" for one was the fact that it was a story abot themselves, some of the pieces earlier like Lott's and Montaige was not like that. Both stories was presented as one thing but in reality was a about something more important. For Jamaica Kincaid's story it was presented as a story about her second birth day and the days leading up to it, but in the backrond was the more important story of the relationship with her mother and how she was abused and hurt that her mother was ashamed of her. Like wise Orwell's piece wasn't just about him killing a crazy elephant but the backround of colonialism and treament of native people by a huge empire. Although I thought bother pieces were very similar I did notice one big difference between the two. I noticed Jamaica Kincaid's story she would alternate between the thoughts and perspectives of her as a 2 year old old and her as a older wiser women looking back and offering a different perspective on the same events. While Orwell's story only had one perspective, his at that exact moment he was a military officer in Bruma. So with Orwell's story you don't get the pespspective and changed view points like in Jamaica Kincaids story.

The other piece I thought were similar was Montaiges piece, and Lott's piece. It should come as no suprise since Lott specifically mentions Montaige being the pioneer of creative non-fiction in his own piece. I think what was so similar is that neither piece was written about themselves like the other pieces we've read. Instead both were about answering the question "what is creative non-fiction". Both talked about being truthful, looking back at a persons entire life before making a judgement, speaking about life expierences with outing preaching or grand standing. Neither writers piece was a creative non-fiction piece, but instead a piece about creative non-fiction and how a writer writes it.

Blog 2

I think Jamaica Kincaid's story "biography of a dress" show cases many aspects of creative non-fiction writing that was not seen in the other three stories we have read. What I thought she brought to the table that was missing in those other stories was the extraordinary amount of detail and perspective she provided in her story, both physically and emotionally.

The story was alternating between the perspective of 2 year old Jamaica Kincaid who was actually going through the experience being written about, and the older Jamaica Kincaid chiming in from time to time with her perspective as a much older women looking back and providing information and detail that a two year old wasn't able to provide at such an early stage in life. It really helped the story because there were several times in the story where two year old Jamaica Kincaid was not able to emotionally understand something but was articulated for the reader by a older and more mature Kincaid. What you get from the comments from the older Jamaica Kincaid is the emotions, such as the shame she felt that her mother was trying to turn Jamaica into a small white child she saw on a soap advertisement. The hurt she felt because she thought that her mother never really wanted her to begin with and when Jamaica was born she just tried to make the best out of the situation that she didn't want to be in to begin with. She was able to provide detailed emotions so that the audience knew where she was coming from.

While the the two year old Jamaica Kincaid was able to vividly describe the physical pain that she suffered and the improvised upbringing she lived at that early age. She gave the audience the visual picture to go along with the emotional description that the older Jamaica Kincaid provided. I thought this story was far superior to the first three we read because it actually induced emotion like creative non-fiction is supposed too, while the other three stories you just read them and never thought about it again.

As for Lott's discussion on creative non-fiction, it was the opposite of what I believed to be creative non-fiction was supposed to be. But looking back at Lott's premise it does make sense in the fact that creative non-fiction seems to be pretty abstract. Everybody seems to have a different opinion on what it is so chances are that it is different for everybody. Lott's believes people must look inside themselves to find out what creative non-fiction is and why people write it.

Although I agree with many of lott's points I also feel he contradicted himself a bit in his writing by trying to pigeon hole and put rules on what creative non-fiction is after earlier in his writings suggesting that there really wasn't a right or wrong anser to the question "what is creative non-fiction"? By him saying in creative non fiction the author must not grandstand, be self serving, and laying out a restrictive guideline that in my opinion lessens the ability of the author to be creative in a genera of writing that should be creative. I believe my opinion of creative non-fiction was much looser and allowed for much more freedom for the author. I believe the rule athuors must follow in cretive non fiction is that it must be truthful, period. I think that is a point Mr. Lott in I agree on, but with in that I also realize that creative non-fiction is entertainment and thus the author may use writing techniques that enhance the entertainment value of the written piece with in the frame work of truth and reality. That is a point where Mr. Lott and I disagree, I believe in creative non-fiction it is OK to embellish, grand stand, and spin things to get a reaction out of the reader while Mr. Lott believes thats not truthful.

Mr. Lott's criteria for creative non-fiction is to rigirous in my opinion and goes against the very name of the genera. I beleive in sticking with the original idea that creative non-fiction will always be defined differently by people.

What is creative non fiction?

To me creative non-fiction is writing a story based on truth but using creative methods to make it more interesting to the reader. Usually it involves the writer talking about their life, observations, and experiences to their audience. But that definition alone sounds more like a autobiography than creative non fiction so their has to be more to it. In my opinion creative non fiction requires a bit of embellishing on the part of the writer, yes overall it has to be truthful but at the end of the day it is entertainment. So to be entertaining the writer has creative leeway to try and create a scenario that is the most appealing to the audience.

I think the the main point of creative non-fiction is for the author to induce emotion in the reader whether its suspense, horror, comedy, or any thing else.

First Blog

First of my series of blogs.