Through most of the semester, we chose a book out of multiple options to read throughout the semester to then write a paper on using one of the lenses we were taught about. My book was The Underground Railroad which won multiple awards including the Nobel Prize. The story is about an escapee slave named Cora who goes through a literal railroad in attempts to migrate to the north for her safety. The story uses descriptive language and dialogue throughout to set different moods and tones throughout the novel. Through reading this book it definitely increased my reading stamina due to the fact that if you miss something or start to skim through, doze off, etc., you'll miss something important. I wrote my critical lens essay from a readers response lens so that I could use post colonialism and feminism in my essay.
We didn't have a lot of time to write this essay, so my first and final draft aren't too different aside from additional contact and spelling/grammar checks. below is my final essay.
For our Imaginative Non-Fiction project, we started by interviewing two people in "Empathy Interviews". Originally, we were all going to do documentaries after watching I Am Not Your Negro, a film played in a Hillcrest theatre about black activists such as MLK and Malcolm X told through the stories shared by James Baldwin. We were using that as our inspiration in our story-telling. Later after the field trip, a lot of us said we had a strong interest in writing the stories similarly to how James Baldwin wrote a lot of his pieces, we were given the green light and got to work; I chose writing.
My first draft I wasn't loving completely, it took me a couple peer reviews to lead me to the decision of deleting everything and starting from scratch. After reading my first draft a lot of my friends and peers knew I could do better, and that the story could have a lot more emotion involved in it. When realizing this myself as well, I knew I could toss it all to the side and try again.
I was much happier with the end product and got much better feedback as well. Below is the final story:
The two stories that were intersecting based off the people I interviewed are two grandparents from separate sides of their grandchildren's family. One from the grandchildren's mom's side, one from their dad's side. Originally I told the story of each of their lives from their own perspectives, but instead in my final draft I decided to tell the story from the perspective of their oldest granddaughter and how their friendship positively affected her childhood and major decisions when she looked for support.