The first thing I did was try to consider things that held importance for me in my own life; things I thought were not necessarily specific to me but to anyone my age, regardless of ethnicity (i.e. acceptance, ability to pursue my passions, family history). From there, I chose a Mexican-American protagonist because it is something that I am familiar with, yet not directly connected to. Completing my poetic inventory was really helpful for me because the poetic devices I chose to employ from our relay novels were the things that I remembered immediately from them; what I perceived to be the most relevant things to take away. From Ceremony, I chose to take the central theme of “cultural disorientation” (see my definition; applies to Alex and Tayo). From Jazz, I used Morrison’s method of alternating between first and third person narration to guide my narrative. I’ve never thought that pictures should be used exclusively for children’s books, so from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I chose to incorporate various pictures, as well as other multimedia to communicate affect. I was able to create resonance through my narrative by paralleling narratives about Alex’s birth, a passage from the book Angel City, and also from the interview I included with “The Migrant Mother”. Finally, in order to try and bring my narrative more alive to the reader, I attempted to insert myself into Alex’s shoes and the exact circumstance I wrote him into, in order to see how I would respond to the situation. I included a very personal anecdote about being trapped on top of a building that you can’t escape from to further capture Alex’s experience.
Without question, writing another’s experience is one of the hardest assignments I have been required to complete. It is so easy while writing to write in a biased or judgmental way, get so creative with your narrative that you stray off topic, or simply don’t embody the affect that needs to be communicated. I hope I actually did do each of these things and that you like my project.
