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.