In high school, I worked at a local dry cleaner every Saturday. Before my sister went off to college she did the same thing. And recently both of my younger brothers have been working Saturdays as well. My dad has known the owner of the cleaners for like 20 years, and has a lot of stories to tell about him. On Monday night when I got home my family and I were sitting around the table and catching up, and my brothers started telling us about their shift at work last Saturday. They especially had some stories about our boss, and my sister and I chimed in with “Yeah, he does that” or just laughed at their stories. Then my sister and I were telling stories from when we used to work there, and my dad even started telling his own about his friendship with the owner. We probably stayed at the table for thirty minutes just talking and laughing. It was so nice because we hadn’t all been together since this summer and my siblings and I bonded over working at the cleaners. There wasn’t a question that prompted any stories, it was more discussion because my brother wanted to tell us about his experience. Ultimately I knew I wanted to write about this because after dinner I knew it was the perfect situation since one person telling a story opened it up to us all telling some.
Category: Julia Page 1 of 3
Last week we talked about a lot of important aspects of telling a story, especially how to start one and what questions can prompt someone to tell a story. I thought that listening to the article by StoryCorps was very interesting because it talked about the different ways to tell a story and how family stories can be preserved in the library of Congress for years to come. Additionally, I liked how we all brainstormed ideas of how to tell a story, especially focusing on how to start one. I liked how Professor Dolson gave many different options for which story we decide to write about in this week’s prep note.
I liked the video we watched about the boys interviewing their father because even though it was different from what we have seen this semester, storytelling often comes at unexpected times by unexpected topics or questions. Overall, I thought this lesson was good preparation for our prep notes and helping to think ahead for our personal stories that will be due in a few weeks.
I hope everyone had a nice and relaxing break 🙂
I loved watching and listening to Professor Dolson’s story. I liked how the visuals went along with the words and provided different context to what she was talking about. I found that the moral of her story is “don’t judge a book by its cover.” I think that if we look around and judge other people, or their homes, we lose sight of ourselves and how we may be doing the same things. The story also began with context about the house and her family, and I liked how the end of the story tied back into the beginning. Overall, I see the importance of having a story that you can pinpoint a specific theme from and use that to relate to a bigger picture in life.
After listening to Merlixse Ventura’s story titled “White Coats and Red Wigs” I understand how important it is to use this specific story structure when telling a story. She starts off by telling us how badly she wanted to be a doctor all her life, even when she was a young kid and her passion was different from everyone else’s. Then she talks about her experience doing an internship in pediatric oncology and how she was passionate about working with children. But during the duration of the internship, she found herself becoming attached to a young girl who had cancer. Then she realized she was doing what she wasn’t supposed to, but couldn’t help but continue to see the little girl. She then goes on and says she doesn’t want to be a doctor anymore because she cannot deal with not getting involved in her patients lives. I thought the narrative structure of this story was interesting because she focused on a person from her life and how those experiences changed the trajectory of her future. The only sounds I could hear were the audience and her speaking, but I noticed her voice changed in different parts of the story, like when she talked about her experience with the girl. The ending was not what I expected but I’m happy that Merlixse was able to make this realization and ended on a positive note.
Chapters 4-10 of Persepolis offered a lot more history into the conflict in the Middle East in the late 70s and early 80s. I learned a lot about that history from this book, which is just another reason as to why it’s easier to understand stories told in a graphic format because it helps digest a lot of complex thinking. I thought that these chapters were interesting because she tells it from the point of view of her older self and she is able to remember more, as well as discuss the heavy topics that came from her past. After attempting to make my own comic type story, I understand how difficult it is to pinpoint frames which you want to draw, and I can only imagine how hard it was for this author to illustrate her story. I’m not sure yet what story I’ll use for personal story, but I have a better understanding that it will be harder to illustrate my ideas exactly how I see them, and make them easy to visualize for readers. I also want to write about a more fun memory/story because I think that will be more interesting to draw and give me more options for the format of my story.
One thing I noticed about telling a story in a graphic format is that the pictures are able to say a lot more than just the text. When the author tells stories from their perspective and includes graphics to illustrate the story, it can change the meaning for the reader. This happened for me specifically when reading Persepolis because I was very unaware of the history which the author was referring to. However, looking at the images helped me visualize exactly what the author was trying to convey, and I didn’t have to use my imagination to understand what the author was trying to describe. Also, I think that telling a story in a graphic format makes it easier to follow along with and make harder topics more digestible for different readers. By doing this, the author is able to convey more metaphors and demonstrate exactly how they felt in the moment they are referring to.
(11/1/2023)
Looking back for a specific moment where this occurred for me was on page 27 in section 4, and the author illustrates her father taking pictures of the demonstration. I thought this most stuck out to me because the author used a collage type of format, and probably was inspired by the pictures her father took and added them into the graphics.
One thing I noticed about how the author tells her story is how she uses her illustrations to convey the story from her early life, but also the history of her country and how it was taught to her. Something that caught my attention was how she told her story, and made the historical aspect very personal to her own life. This not only helped to provide context but also to share her own experiences dealing with these heavy topics, especially at such a young age. I liked how the author used metaphors and narrates as if she is still 10 years old because it helps make her experience more personable. I thought that the illustrations conveyed the authors experience in a way so that the reader could understand her experience in that political and social climate, and how she as a 10 year old still played a roll.
My questions about the midterm portfolio are:
- How long should the two reflective essays be?
- How should we “quote ourselves”? Or should be add a quote from our writing and say how we would change it?
This picture was taken right next to the new monument that had been built by Richmond residents. In the middle of the image there is a small blue plaque that reads “Sacred Forest.” I thought this was a beautiful way to honor those whose lives had been lost at the jail. Obviously the trees are very young so they were planted recently, but I thought it was a beautiful symbol of bringing life back into a place where such dark things occurred. Trees that still stand were probably there when all of the prisoners were buried, so I found it symbolic that new trees and new memories would be made in this space, and people can honor those who lost their lives.
When first starting the annotated bibliography assignment I was unsure of what I wanted to focus on from RIH. When beginning my search I found it hard to pinpoint a primary source that I could really dive into. My first few choices were hard to locate on line and the library didn’t have copies of some of the books I would need, so I had to do even more digging. But when I finally found what I wanted to work on it was a lot easier to start building my bibliography. After class on Thursday I went through my resources trying to find secondary sources that would match with my primary one. This also took a little long because some of the sources were not available online, or I could not find information about the author(s). Thankfully, I did finally find two academic peer-reviewed sources that aligned with my research question and I was able to pull the whole assignment together. Overall, there were some rough patches while trying to find a topic and primary source and making sure there were enough secondary sources, but once things started to flow it was much easier to pull ideas together.