Creative Nonfiction: Part 1
The first genre we will practice in this course is personal creative nonfiction, which is often referred to as creative writing rooted in “fact.’ I place that word in quotation marks because the source of fact in personal creative nonfiction is memory, and, as neuroscience has discovered, memory is a slippery thing. For example, sometimes we remember moments out of order, or put words in people’s mouths they never said (but that perhaps we felt they had said, based on our emotions in the moment). Traumatic memories are often fragmented and surreal, with parts blocked through dissociative amnesia.
But ultimately, as Brenda Miller says in her introduction to Tell It Slant, “Though the essay might contain some elements of fabrication, it is directly connected to you as the author behind the text’ (p. xiv). More, creative nonfiction “assumes a particular, creating self behind the nonfiction prose’ (p. xv). We will never know if our memories are accurate, but it doesn’t really matter for our writing practice: the way we remember (or misremember) moments reveals truths about our selves, which in turn help us to reveal truths about the world.
While some creative nonfiction may be more research-based, such as literary journalism, exploring our memory is crucial to the kind of creative nonfiction we’ll write in this class, which is the personal essay, or short memoir. Brenda Miller explains, “Memoir comes from the French word for memory. . .[memoir] mines the past, examining it for shape and meaning, in the belief that from that act a larger, communal meaning can emerge’ (p. 95) Consider also the example Miller uses by Kitchen (p. 97), and the way it “[examines] small concrete details to approach larger, more universal themes.’
You will probably instinctively want to start at the the large, looming kind of memory — a major experience with death, or the kinds of memories that Lucy Grealy is exploring in “Mirrorings’ — but often, as mentioned in my last post, it is sometimes the smaller, seemingly insignificant memory that more deeply reveals something about us and about the world. Miller points out that “the memories that can have the most emotional impact for the writer are those we don’t really understand, the images that rise up before us quite without our own volition’ (p. 5)
Sometimes we don’t really know why we remember some particular thing so vividly — why we hold on to some moments but not others — and our writing can help us “tease out’ the meaning from our seemingly insignificant experience. These moments that stick out vividly in our brains have been called “river teeth,’ an idea introduced by David James Duncan and discussed briefly in Tell It Slant (p. 5). The phrase ‘river teeth’ refers to the knots of dense wood that remain in a river years after a fallen tree disintegrates. Duncan uses river teeth as a metaphor for the
hard, cross grained whorls of memory that remain inexplicably lodged in us long after the straight-grained narrative material that housed them has washed away. Most of these whorls are not stories exactly, more often they’re self contained moments of shock or inordinate empathy….These are our river teeth, the time defying knots of experience that remain in us after most of our autobiographies are gone.
No matter how long or short, momentous or inconsequential, each memory is of an experience. Our job as writers is to translate that remembered experience into a literary experience for the reader, so that our readers can access and understand them. And how do we do that, exactly?
While there are many literary techniques writers use to create experiences for readers, the most basic one is to use the senses: sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. Take a minute and review “The Body of Memory’ chapter in Tell It Slant (p. 3-12). Here, Brenda Miller explores these senses in more detail, in regards to creative nonfiction, as well as introduces the idea of “metaphorical memory.’
A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things — a way of looking at something that reveals the way it resembles or calls to mind another thing — and by using a memory from our life metaphorically, and exploring why it has become a so-called “river tooth’ in our consciousness, we are able to reveal the “surface truths’ behind it. Miller’s example is her jar of tonsils, and though she as some trouble reducing it to a single meaning, in writing about it, she discovered that this was the first moment her bodily integrity was compromised, the “first time that my body was not necessarily a whole unit’ and that it would take courage to “bear this body into a world that will most certainly cause it harm.’ This revelation is what the memory reveals, is the idea that it represents. This is how you want to approach memory in your own creative nonfiction writing.
Memory is amorphous and fluid. Personal creative nonfiction is often about taking memory and giving it a shape of structure that leads to a revelation, or multiple revelations, for both yourself and your readers.
If you are having a little trouble conceptualizing or writing your “I Remember, I Remember’ piece, a fun preliminary exercise may be exercise #2 under “Try It’ on page 13 of Tell it Slant. Here, Miller suggests writing for twenty minutes, using the phrase “I can’t remember’ to begin each sentence. As she notes, “You may find that by using this exercise you can back into the scenes and images you do remember but never know how to approach.’ Remember that your “I Remember, I Remember’ piece is due Wed. The assignment is explained under “Homework Assignments,’ and on Blackboard under Course Materials, which is where you should submit it.
For your reading response, respond below to “Mirrorings’ by Grealy or “After Life’ by Didion. Please focus on how either writer uses sensory details and the effects of those sensory details on you as a reader. What does the essay teach you about using sensory detail in your own writing?
Christy Barrett
I read the essay entitled “Mirrorings” by Grealy. I enjoyed her writing style and the imagery she created. One example of this is how she begin the story by telling us she stayed away from mirrors for a year. Think about this. How many of us look in the mirror multiple times a day, sometimes without even meaning to? She goes on to explain waking up from her surgery at nine years old in a “cocoon of pain”. I felt that. She learns from her time in the hospital how silence can be equivalent to strength in the eyes of others. From this she learns to be brave, and she uses this term to define her role. She explains the relief she felt when Halloween rolled around, and she could finally wear a mask to shield her disfigured face. Internally, she longed to be a “deep” person believing that developing her own philosophy would somehow make the suffering come to a halt. But she suffers prolonged self-loathing for twenty years. However, she learns through observation that most people complain about simple and ordinary things seemingly unaware of the suffering around them. She is told of a surgery in Scotland that can help her, and suddenly she’s hopeful again after being beaten down emotionally for most of her life. When she begin the tissue expansion process, I felt the tone of her story begin to shift. There’s hope here now. She hadn’t seen a mirror for a year, and she wonders to herself what she must look like to this attractive man she’s talking with in a cafe. She learns then that what she’d known to be the truth wasn’t eternal after all. She feels the warmth of the cup against the palm of her hand, and she feels compelled to tell her companion about these hopeful revelations she’s having that seem to be a shedding of her former self. She decides to look for her reflection finally in the cafe window.
Ainsley Smith
I decided to read the essay, “Mirrorings,” by Lucy Grealy. She uses a variety of sensory details throughout her essay; many associated with how she views herself and the world, the pain she felt as she went through surgery, and associated smell with her disguise from the world.
Grealy’s use of sight helped me to better understand the different insecurities Lucy had that I have had in my own life. Throughout the whole essay, Grealy had remained convinced that her appearance was nothing more than an ugly face. She uses the sense, sight, to tell the reader that she hates her facial appearance. She believed herself so much, that she avoided mirrors for almost a year. In the beginning of the essay, she didn’t want to see her face to spare her the sight and “realization” of what she looked like. She didn’t even recognize herself. However, at the end of the essay, she makes some revaluations about the inner worth of people. She realized that the outer appearance of a person does not mirror what lies within someone’s spirit.
Grealy also utilized the importance of physical touch in her writing, which is often associated with pain. The essay itself is an emotional piece, full of physical treatments that were physically painful. In the beginning of her essay, she describes how the treatments affected her while using descriptive imagery to help the reader visualize and empathize with her pain, such as, “I awoke in a cocoon of pain that prevented me from moving or speaking,” (Grealy 23). She goes further and explains the severity of the chemotherapy treatments she experienced using a sequence of visualization. She describes how painful it was that she would dry heave from the chemicals being inserted into her body, how her eyes would begin to throb, and her body would tremble from heat and cold flashes. Those sensory details not only me understand what Lucy was going through, but it also allowed me to actual feel the needle being injected into my arm and experiencing the side effects.
Grealy incorporates scent into her essay in a particular way that made me come to a realization about how she felt about her face. She stated on Halloween, she enjoyed the chance to wear a mask to hide her “hideous” face from other people. During this stanza, she wrote, “As I breathed in the condensed, plastic-scented air under the mask, I somehow thought I was breathing in normality…” (Grealy 25). I realized that her own face, acted as a mask that prohibited her from feeling the joy of everyday living. Also, I came to my own conclusion about how the metaphor of a plastic mask is now endorsed in so many cultures. People, even those who have beautiful complexions, still will put on a mask in order to feel “joy”; masks like make-up or plastic surgery for example. The scent of plastic unleashed a place where Lucy could feel safe behind a wall of plastic, much like people in today’s society. Although products used to enhance beauty is not at all bad, it does connect to the idea of needing other enhancers to maximize appearance. Using scent in the writing helped me to make contextual connects to everyday culture, which helped to better understand Grealy and other people.
Sensory details is a great tool to use in writing because readers are able to comprehend the visions that the writer is trying to make. It helps me to understand the different concepts that are being discussed and it can help others to reflect the writing onto their own personal experiences. Using sensory details not only creates connections to the writer of a story, but also to make your own connections to the world around them. Sensory details are key components in writing for it gives the story a physical body where it can feel, see, tough, smell, hear, and taste the words that are written on the page. They help give the text life.
Andrew S.
“Mirrorings” by Lucy Grealy was easily one of the most depressing narrative essays I’ve ever read, and was incredibly sobering as my own problems seemed more and more insignificant with each page. This wasn’t just because of the grim, unfortunate circumstances that the author went through– the sensory details allowed me to view the situation as she described it, giving me insight into how her thoughts and feelings affected her. I was able to vicariously experience her situation through her senses, instead of viewing it from a standpoint of “how would I feel?”.
When the author went to the medical library during her early attempts to have reconstructive surgery, rather than saying “pedestals are grotesque” and leaving it at that, she utilized the sensory detail of sight to make the reader feel the discomfort that she did. Saying “there were gruesome pictures of people with grotesque tubes of their own skin growing out of their bodies” made me see what she saw– and shocked me in a manner likely similar to how she was at the time. Grealy used the same technique with hearing, such as when she described the whistling of catcallers, the insults and comments from peers and passersby, and her dry retching and crying before, during, and after receiving chemotherapy treatment. Instead of “the chemo made me nauseous”, she illustrated to the reader what she was going through– showing, not telling, by use of sound.
Grealy’s writing style taught me that sensory details add a degree of immersion that simple descriptors lack. Had she simply wrote “I felt [adjective]”, it would have taken me out of the moment if I couldn’t envision myself feeling the way she did. By being objective and describing her surroundings as they were, it created context– allowing me to better understand why she felt how she felt, and making it easier for me to empathize with her. To summarize, I learned that if I want to make my own writing more immersive and engaging, utilizing sensory detail is an effective tool for it, as it is more “show” than “tell”.
Devin Byrd
In “After Life”, Didion draws heavily from her own sensations during the events recounted in the piece. Her descriptions are typically concise and relatable, allowing the reader to easily empathize with her perspective while still maintaining the brisk pace of the story without the disruption of flow more flowery, bloated detail would have wrought. More notably, her mention of the absence of senses are effective in communicating her mental state, shock, and focus throughout the piece without the use of drawn out internal dialogue and musing.
Altogether, Didion’s style of sensory detail succeeds in immersing the reader in the events of “After Life”.
What I’ve gleaned from the piece is that concise sensory details excel in communicating the thoughts and feelings of characters within a piece without sacrificing quick flow and intensity. I believe the style would be most befitting of works or segments that narrate or speak of grim or or humorless events, where longer winded, more flamboyant styles of imagery and detail would muddle the proper tone.
katie hopper
In Joan Didion’s piece the physical sensory details were largely left out of much of her experience in such a way that created a more sensory experience for readers because it was her authentic memory of not really remembering what happened. It was very, ‘I did these things and they did other things and I was there watching, here is what I saw’ in such a beautiful way, tracing shock as it imposed itself in her body, mind, and experience of time.
Later she gets more into the little things moments that she remembers, to name a few: the textiles of the clothes that her husband was wearing when he died now bloodied, the psychosomatic choking grief forces on its sufferers, the dryness of her mouth around the word “obituary,” our imagined anticipation of what grief will be like and the absence it creates.
The sensory details woven through this piece are much more subtle than what I would initially think of as “sensory” “details,” which is encouraging. When we learn about writing we learn about “imagery” and how to paint a picture. I like that this paints the picture without drawing it all out, instead including tangents that enhance the image in ways other than adding nice adjectives to nouns. There are moments where a tempo is evident and it forces your heart rate to rise with hers in that moment. I found myself crying in and out as I read this remembering moments of my own where I’ve almost lost loved ones and that wasn’t because she described the room and how she felt, she set the scene from the inside, but still filled it from the outside in. This was immensely powerful and reminded me of the ordinariness of death, inevitable but always unexpected.
Johnny Bishop
I chose to read After Life by Joan Didion. In this specific story she draws on imagery and sensory details on the effects on a person after a loved one has died. For me as a reader the sensory details that she uses enthralled in the story itself. I was more inclined to finish the story. It also made me realize how real the situation is for people and even myself. She uses the effect of the death of her husband in a way that we as the reader can truly understand her grief. How real her grief is and how it truly affected her in her daily living.
The sensory details that she provided in the story made me not only sympathize but actually empathize with her as well. Losing a loved one is not easy at all I can remember the feelings of dread and sorrow that I felt when my Grandpa died and I could feel those feelings when reading. As for my writing I think that seeing how sensory details can lead to a bigger reaction than just, “oh her husband died that’s so sad”. Without it I think the story wouldn’t be that interesting to the reader and they would probably stop reading halfway through it.
Nadia Finely
I am responding to Joan Didion’s “After Life.” This may partly be because I have read one of Didion’s works before and I was excited to read another, but “After Life” stood out to me. Though I was briefly intimidated by the paper’s length, I read through it pretty quickly.
Didion has a way of speaking to emotions through sincerity. The memories, the retellings, were all her own, given only in a way that she needed to give them. She said herself that she was writing to process what had happened. She needed to think things over through paper. So, she did.
From the beginning, Didion engages the reader. Though not directly calling upon any senses, such as touch, smell, taste, or sight, she brings the reader to her computer screen showing them a snippet of her thoughts from a time not too long before she wrote the currently discussed essay. She peeks into the “sixth sense,” as Brenda Miller calls it in “Tell It Slant,” giving the readers a sense that some big change has happened. Though the paper’s name (“After Life”) gives a pretty big hint as to what the change may be, this suspense of the looming unnamed event drives the reader’s inner sense of dread, bringing them closer to Didion’s own feelings of emptiness.
All throughout the piece, Didion uses descriptions; though, the descriptions she used tended to be more closely linked to emotions rather than direct sensory experiences. When she wrote about living with her husband, she brought the reader into scenes of warmth (describing their connection to the woodfire), and comfort (the house in California, the pool, the restaurant). Didion used the settings to emit an aura of comfort, while not writing about particular calming smells, smooth surfaces, or the like. As a reader, I internalized the emotion of these scenes. They enhanced the comfort, camaraderie, and closeness, that I felt as I read about the nature of her relationship with her husband. When she wrote about dealing with her husband’s death, a hole tore weightily through the dynamic connection I had experienced through her description of the confusion she went through as she woke up to a bed half empty. Scenes such as the lonely waiting room and the living room couch holding a forgotten jacket brought a feeling of unevenness, putting the me in a sensation of incompleteness. Didion also describes the utter irrationality of her thoughts scattered by disbelief of loss by writing that she wondered if her husband would be alive in California shortly after his death (she was in New York). I would argue that this also plays into giving a “colorful” description despite the lack of physical, sensory commentary.
Sometimes authors can be very descriptive, carefully placing adjectives and “ly” adverbs to paint vibrant pictures that stick with the reader long after they put the book aside. “After Life” is different. “After Life” is a piece written just as much, if not more so, for Didion as it was for anyone else. She turns the story over for herself, bringing out those things which she remembers. Sensory details such as whether the lights in the elevators were out or not during the dash to the hospital initially escaped her; however, she clearly recounts how far she felt from her husband as she had to wait for the next elevator down.
Jewel Blanchard
I chose to read, ‘After Life’ written by Joan Didion. I was highly intimidated by the length of the piece but once I sat down, it was not at all hard to dive into it. Sitting here and reflecting on Didion’s story, I realize that it was so easy to read because of the way she uses sensory details.
This is Didion’s story on the death of her husband and how she remembers it. She starts her story by stating a fact such as, “Life changes fast.” For me it was that fact that made me want to read it. With the title being, ‘After Life’ and her first sentence being that, it was enough to draw me in because I have experienced death too. I wanted to read how she articulated things.
How she uses her memory to tell her story and what had happened first starts off by some of the things she remembered and didn’t remember, and the emotions she had felt. Her honesty in how some of the things she didn’t remember or notice is what stood out to me most. How little those things are but how significant they are in telling a story. It is what makes the story’s significance. I never realized how not noticing or remembering certain things during an important time says a lot about the importance of what happened. Reading Didion’s story has helped me learn how to capture a reader by using honesty and sensory details. Also how not remembering things helps the reader understand what she was going through and feeling.
Sara Johnson
I’m glad that reading the essay wasn’t as intimidating as you expected, and that you got something out of it!
Miranda Reynolds
Didion uses stylistic sensory details to showcase a journey from detachment to understanding that would be very interesting to experiment with in my own writing. She starts with three detached sentences that shed little light onto her story, intentionally avoiding contact with her senses. This implies a resistance to thinking about this unknown accident. She juxtaposes her trauma to other, more famous events, which allows understanding of what her feelings might have been from the observations and sensations of those who lived through 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. However, Didion uses third person accounts to give even more distance to her situation; these observations of sight display her as living in a sort of internal depression and unresponsive to the world.
As she gets into the bulk of her narrative, she uses short snippets of facts, set off in mini paragraphs, to continue her denial of the events that happened. Yet, she is very descriptive here, almost as if she is using the factuality of sensory details to avoid any recognition of her own feelings. Slowly, these snippets of fact become longer, full-length paragraphs as she arrives at the main part of the action. She seems to gain a larger sense of attachment as the narrative continues, making use of observation to paint a visual picture of the environment complete with the smells and noises of the hospital and its differences to its other half in New York that she is more familiar with.
After her husband’s death, Didion uses memories of the months before to reach the center of her internal journey. One important memory, the note that her husband gifts her, uses tactile imagery to allow herself to go full circle in her story. She reaches a level of deep internal understanding and mentally lets go of him. I would like to experiment with using physical details, as Didion does, to create a more mental understanding of my chosen subjects.
Adeline Knavel
For our second reading response, I decided I would read Joan Didion’s piece After Life. Joan Didion’s piece is about her husbands’ death and the story of how she remembers it. “Life changes fast” was the first line in her story, something so simple yet meaningful. Her title is “After Life”, and with the first sentence being “life changes fast” it was clear to me it was about something tragic, the death of a loved one. Joan Didion used imagery and sensory details in her writing to define and understand how it feels to lose a loved one. Joan Didion uses sensory details in her story to write about what she could remember and what she couldn’t remember. The way Joan Didion writes shows us how real her grief for her husband was, she used her memory to write her story but was honest about how she could remember some of it but also couldn’t remember things. The small details of her grief and honesty that are written into her piece seemed small but were bigger pieces fitting into the story she was telling. After reading Joan Didion’s “After Life” I know that using sensory and imagery details can help capture your readers while trying to tell your story to someone.
Sarah Corbett
Reading response 2 – Mirrorings:
I’m choosing to respond to Lucy Grealys “Mirrorings”. I think the most obvious sense that she focused on was of course, sight. She wouldn’t look at herself, and she vividly described the way she would slowly try to catch glimpse of herself – in a metal lamp above her hospital bed, walking very quickly past a mirror, etc. She spent a lot of time explaining how she looked, how she felt about it, how others treated her because of it. The avoiding of her reflection was both how the essay started, and ended. But for me, that wasn’t the most powerful sense she used. For me, I was drawn to her sense of touch. She went into detail about chemo, about surgery, about the way her body felt after each of these many procedures. She talked about how she coped with that pain, and that part really tugged at my heartstrings. She held to the notion that silence equated to toughness – and growing up, I held the same idea. Even today, silence is still my default defense mechanism.
Her description of the pain she suffered really made me think more on how I might tell my own stories. I have a bad habit of just trying to give just the dry facts of a memory, worried that I might misremember, and then my story would no longer be authentic – and that I might be seen as trying to get attention. In my more recent memories, I might describe how a situation made me feel emotionally, but I never really get into the nitty gritty details. These very descriptive details of the authors hospital visits have inspired me to think more on the sensory details of old memories, because that is what brought Mirrorings to life for me. So going forward with our assignments, I’m going to practice writing out any sensory details I can remember in my memories, whenever possible.
Sara Johnson
This is a good lesson to take away as a nonfiction writer/memoirist. Something to keep in mind is that memory is rarely totally accurate, even if we feel like it is. Sometimes worrying too much about the literal details gets in the way of the emotional reality of the story, which is just as important.
Zofia Sheesley
I read “Mirrorings” by Grealy. I found the story to be slightly lacking. I didn’t feel like I was there with her for most of it. I really appreciated the sensory details like when she was talking about her chemo treatments, she explained the sensations she felt throughout her body and that made me feel it with her but I didn’t get much of that from the whole story. I wish there were more sensory details when she was explaining her final surgeries with the balloons. That is an important part of the story that I feel wasn’t touched on deeply enough. I want to know what the hospital room was like, what her face felt like, what the balloon felt like getting inflated under her skin. I wish she talked about the 3 months she was in the hospital with deeper sensory details, with any sensory details actually. I felt like the piece was really lacking. I liked it a lot, especially the way her self discovery journey ended with a win, but overall I didn’t feel like I could feel anything with her except for the Chemo parts. I know that sensory information is incredibly vital to any creative writing piece and this piece in particular REALLY showed me how important they are and how a piece can really leave you without any lasting impression if the sensory details aren’t in there. I don’t want any of my writing pieces to make anyone feel as left out as this piece did me. I wanted more.
Sara Johnson
I’m glad you were still able to get a lesson from the piece. Sometimes as writers we can learn as much from something we found lacking as we do from something we found inspiring.
Kyleigh McArthur
I’d like to respond to Joan Didions “After Life” because it for some reason stood out to me and had me feeling as if I was a part of the family experiencing the loss of the husband John. Everyone responds to trauma differently, however, most of the time there is some form of hysteria. Not in this case. We are brought along to each event with the first collapse of John and then the paramedics arriving to try and restart his heart with the defibrillators. We are there watching this happen, while also in the exact headspace as the author. Maybe I can visualize this so well because I have watched a lot of medical shows, but never have I been brought into the mind of the person suffering the loss of a loved one. She brings us to the scene by describing her living room being turned into an emergency department and then describes what she hears the paramedics saying while they are attempting to save him. She describes watching them use syringes and trying to figure out what they are using, probably to distract herself from the inevitable truth about her husband. It all seems so real being there in the room, listening to paramedic talk, trying to figure out what it means along with the author. Didion brings us along with her going from her living room to the elevator only to have to wait for the second one because the gurney needed the room in the first one. She lets us right into her mind and allows us to think with her and to try and cope with this loss in the best way she, or rather we, can.
Curtis Wolfe
I chose to read “Mirrorings” by Grealy. Although I have never been through anything close to what she has gone through, I felt that I gained a sense of what she had to go through with how detailed her experience was. The senses that really stood out to me the most in her essay were touch and sight. She goes strait into the pain she felt from her tooth strait to the chemo. For a little girl back in the 1970s to try to endure all that pain and come out on top is pretty telling. Sight was another sense that stood out to me the most because of how she described her self. You could tell that she wanted you to place a picture in your head of what she looked liked. When she talked about her nightmare with the wigs to Halloween being her favorite time of the year because she was able to hide her face, you could tell how insecure she was. I think that reading this essay gave me some perspective on how important it is to be creative with using sensory details if you ever want to grab the attention of the reader.
Timberly Kneebone
I am writing in response to Didion’s “After Life.” This piece was longer than I had expected but when reading it I felt at ease. The story was written in a way that transported me. The amount of detail included helped the story feel natural. The title of the story automatically leads the reader to know what is going to be discussed, death. The simplicity of the title is reflected in the story. Death is never seen as a simple event, it’s seen as a tragic and emotional situation. The imagery and sensory details used in her writing gives the reader an explanation of what had happened through her memory. Normally we are only able to see what is happening through the perspective of an outsider. Because of Didion’s writing we see the event through the eyes of someone who is losing a loved one. One thing that really stuck out to me was the honesty from Didion throughout her writing. The story was nothing but her real raw memories. She was even honest when it came to how she could recall every single detail from the event. Her writing honestly brought me peace. It really shows how impactful imagery and sensory details can be.
Corbin
I chose to read “Mirrorings” by Grealy. The way that Mirrorings was written, I felt as if I was right there with her the whole time. The emotion that was put in this work was felt throughout the entire piece.
Before I got too far into the memoir I started to relate in the opposite way that Grealy was explaining. I remember walking home every day from school checking myself out in the same car window that I did every day. I would look to see how my chest looked like. I was extremely overweight and I carried most of it in my chest. It was an obsession that I had, and every time I was subdued by it.
When Grealy was explaining the rough chemo she went through, she was going through intense stress in her home life. The feeling of never being good enough from her mom had to have been a big burden that she endured on top of the pain of being judged by the doctors that were feeding her the medicine. Grealy described the pain of what happens when the chemo was administered and then the pain of being judged when she cried after her mother told her not to.
This essay was extremely well written; it was hard for me to diverge from the story and try and extract how I felt about the sensory details. The main thing I got from this essay was that I need to get myself into gear and quit making excuses. This essay taught me that I need to put strong emotion into my writing. I need to feel what I want my audience to feel with my writing.
Gabriel Miller
I choose to respond to After Life by Joan Didion because I thought that the way it was structured made it very engaging. The opening with a deliberately avoiding the topic directly makes the story feel a lot more personal because it conveys the hesitance in talking about something as personal as the sudden loss of a husband. Didion uses sensory details to make the whole account visually vivid, whether that be her surroundings or through metaphor. The element that makes the sensory details most effective is the minimalism because it adds to the realism of the account.
Instead of being overly poetic and verbose, Didion often used a simple sentence or two and vague details to allow for reader’s to better engage through imagination and relative focus. For example, focusing on the emptiness of the apartment and the blood and syringes on the floor focuses all details around the death and nothing else. This makes the apartment seem more dreary then what it would have been if fully described. Another example is the description of mistaking the husband’s fall at first for a gag because it not only gives a richer and more nuanced image than one that describes position alone, it also gives more context to the two’s relationship and personalities. In both cases, it shows that minimalism is an effective writing technique due it enabling the creativity of the reader to make up gapes in a narrative.
Katherine Spencer
For my reading, I decided to take a look at the essay “Mirrorings,” by Lucy Grealy. She uses senory descriptions and details throughout her essay when talking about the things she went through such as the surgeries and how she felt when people would throw nasty words at her.
This reading was easily one of the saddest readings I’ve ever read. Her pain flows off the pages and the amount of detail she describes everything in almost makes you feel that same pain. When she talked in detail about her surgeries, It almost feel as though I was there feeling everything she was. The imagery we were given when describing her pain was utilized well. She would describe the pains she felt while going through chemotherapy and the after effects of it as well. The needles, the shooting pains, it was so well done you could almost it all.
The imagery that stuck out to me most however, was the mental side of it all. How she would describe herself, how she was told she was “brave” for not crying in pain. She stated multiple times that she was ugly and that she enjoyed wearing a mask so she could hide her “hideous” face. She talked about her silence was considered brave, but she didn’t want to be brave anymore, because it hurt too much. “I didn’t want to be brave anymore. Yet I had grown so used to defining myself as brave i.e. silent- that the thought of losing this sense of myself was even more terrifying. I was certain that If I broke down I would be despicable in the eyes of both my parents and the doctors.” (Grealy 24).
Her detail in this essay was immaculate. Her imagery and sensory details made me feel every bit of her pain from the emotional to the physical.
Anna Johnson
“Mirrorings” by Lucy Grealy left me with a whole new perspective on self-image. With no previous knowledge of what she was diagnosed with, I would say I have a good understanding of what she went through. Her use of sensory details really helped me understand her feelings and the pain she went through.
Grealy’s perspective of herself throughout her life was very negative until she was nearly finished with her final treatments told in her story. She referred to herself as ugly throughout the entire story until the very end when she was having a surprisingly good conversation with a guy.
There were times when I would feel uncomfortable with the descriptions of needles and balloons blowing up in her face under her skin. They were so vividly explained. I also could not help but imagine what she looked like as she kept describing herself. With as many treatments as she had done, I wondered what she looked like
Now one of the key things about her story is how she avoided mirrors. She goes on for so long without looking at herself and I could not brush my hair without looking in the mirror. It is a very interesting concept and something I could not do. I learned such a deep part of a stranger’s life.