Select 1 reading for this week and closely examine something you learn from it as a writer
9 thoughts on “Week 6 Reading Response”
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Select 1 reading for this week and closely examine something you learn from it as a writer
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The piece that stuck with me the most was “Mary When You Follow Her” by Carmen Maria Machado. I found that the one sentence structure of the piece was perfect for the story she was trying to tell– it conveyed that slow sense of foreboding with the missing girls and with Maria’s own story of leaving home and the various things she endures to do so. Machado puts so much detail and context in a structure that doesn’t seem like it should allow that much without getting long-winded. The long sentence somehow tells an entire story with a plot and a backstory and very believable characters without getting overwhelming, which I found to be incredibly impressive, and actually, quite easy to read, which made the whole effect all the more beautiful. I loved that the story seemed to fold in on itself– no piece of context was mentioned without somehow coming back again (her father as a “lapsed Catholic” and the increased sale of “Saint Anthony pendants,” for example). I think that Machado used the structure to inform the story in a way that another structure could not do as effectively.
My favorite of this week was Mary When You Follow Her. It reminded me of one of the first year seminars we have here, Girls Leaving Home. Carmen Maria Machado is an amazing writer, and I loved the way the whole story was made up of one single sentence and yet it didn’t feel cluttered or bothersome, and it felt incredibly real the entire time. My absolute favorite part was the last bit, “…she imagined that the missing girls were all living in the city in brick row houses on a single block, a well-lit block with gardens and parks and cafés and a sidewalk, where they all laughed and made art and dated and dined and fucked and danced and aged and married and had children, and at night told stories to each other about the last, long-ago time they’d truly been afraid.” It was a beautiful, perfect ending. I’m not sure if I exactly learned about how to accomplish this, but I want to try and emulate what Machado does here sometime, invoking such real emotion in an almost stream of consciousness style.
Mary When You Follow Her by Carmen Maria Machado was a thrilling piece. Eloquent without being verbose, I found the fact that the entire piece was one run-on sentence added to the adrenalized tone. It was just descriptive enough to where I could understand what the environment was in a given situation, but not so wordy that my own visualizations were discounted. I had attempted to do something similar with one of the last pieces in the nonfiction unit, splicing together two pieces into something new. The very last sentence was a run-on, and I did that to try to give it a scary but fervent mood. While my writing was a bit all over the place, this was much more focused, and thus harrowing. I would like to try doing a run-on sentence in my writing again, and I think this is a great piece to draw inspiration from.
Ron Carlson: Reading the Paper
I was really taken aback at the satire of this piece and brutal honesty. It sounded like a recollection of a crazy nightmare that someone had with all the the crime and horrible things happening to people. I was also surprised by how chaotic the piece is when it was started with something simple like longing to read a newspaper.
I read Dog Days by Judy Budnitz and honestly after reading it, I regret it. What’s weird is it held me captivated until the very traumatic morbid end. It left me questioning and I’ve realized that’s okay. I think the beginning of a story can leave you questioning at least a little. I think for sure it has to clear up a little otherwise the reader is just lost and confused. I think a story has to have an ending, but you can decide when that is. For example, this story totally could have ended earlier or in a different way. I also think it could have gone on longer with a similarly morbid ending.
“Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door”
What I enjoyed most about the piece was how fantastical the piece was, yet the writer was self-aware. I thought the writing was nuanced and captured the feelings of the narrator beautifully. The guilt they felt, the remorse about the course of events that took place eventually, and the highlighting of the narrator’s relationship with the father were put into words in the most brilliantly vivid manner, and the subtle acknowledgment of the fact that these events are rare truly made this piece a highlight for me.
Likable – Deb Olin Unferth
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I really enjoyed how the narrator didn’t reveal the reason why she was unlikeable until halfway through the piece because it allows the reader to use their imagination and make assumptions before hearing what the author has to say. At first, I assumed the narrator was just an unpleasant, mean, and crabby person. But when she revealed she was a 41-year-old woman, it was like a bomb was dropped. It didn’t make sense. How a seemingly self-aware woman can be so unlikeable in the eyes of so many. I believe Unferth is packing quite a punch in bringing awareness to problems that more mature women suffer from.
“Mary When You Follow Her”
This piece itself was beautifully written. Carmen Maria Machado did a beautiful job of incorporating a feeling of uneasiness in her piece. One part of her writing that I really enjoyed and learned from was how she used perspective and intimacy between her character’s vulnerabilities. Machado starts with introducing Maria, giving context to who she is, and what her life is like through the use of an important season. She seems distant yet revealing in the perspective she chose—even though she is writing in 3rd person, it feels as if it is in 1st. My favorite part though, is how there is a switch. The author uses indirect ways of describing a Dominican teenager who went missing, implying that it is Maria. It feels intimate because we aren’t directly giving her a name, yet so much of her life is being told. The usage of perspective and distance between names was very interesting. (I also enjoyed the fact that this whole piece was just one sentence and hyphens were used as ways of separating parts).
After reading Mary When You Follow Her, I learned that a story can be a sentence. While reading this piece, I was looking for the period. Looking for the pause so I could stop to think about what I just read, and jot down any comments I had. But that pause never came, and so I read it twice. The first time, without pausing, to get the full effect of what the writer was trying to portray. The second time, I stopped each time I needed a time for myself. I understand that by making her piece a sentence long, it shows how the life of the narrator is always on the run, never given the opportunity to take a breath. Another thing I learned from this piece is that the writer was able to create a fictional story that feels so real. I couldn’t believe that this wasn’t a true story, especially with the way it made me feel.