I wrote my essay before reading the assigned chapters in Telling True Stories, which I wish I had done because a lot of what Phillip Lopate writes about in "The Personal Essay and the First Person Character" resonated with me when I reflected on the writing process.
It took a lot for me to resist the urge to justify my and my grandma's behavior, and want to analyze my feelings about black men as a result of that conversation in Mexico. Lopate writes that it's these quirks that make for the best characters on the page, so we shouldn't smooth our edges and spare everyone's feelings. Lopate's essay settled some of my fears, but still I walked away from the piece nervous that my jaggedness bordered distaste and the truth would turn some readers off.
Ultimately, the message I tried to send is that children are malleable, not resilient, and they carry these seemingly minor experiences with them their whole lives. In the end, I had to let the young version of me and the young narrator take over and let the readers come to their own conclusions, no matter my anxieties about its reception.
A note on genre: my SIP was 80 pages of memoir, so I wasn't surprised when this piece turned into a lot of the pieces I wrote for my SIP. This class is about writing stories, and memoir certainly fits into the realm of narrative journalism and creative nonfiction, but I'm also walking away from this piece wondering if it fits under "personal essay." I hope that in class and in workshop we can talk through questions of genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment