Red

One of the most interesting things that I liked with this book was the introduction. Amy Goldwasser the editor of the book Red also wrote the introduction. What I found so endearing about the introduction to the girls stories was that Goldwasser wrote "Truth is, these girls' delights and concerns are as existential as any adult's. They're just freer, more honest documentarians" (Goldwasser xv). I think this is absolutely true most of the times real stories about adolescence are written after the author has ceased to be classified in that stage, with this book though the reader gets the honesty that many look for included with dirty details and even some humilation. Another thought that crossed my mind while reading this was how interesting the chapter headlines are. I always look through the chapter titles before I read a book to kind of get an idea of what is going to happen the most interesting ones were Hey You, Freshman with the Face!, Mascara Wands Are Instruments of War and lastly Appeal from an Angry Not So Emo. Lastly another thing that made me really appreciate this book was how these young writers were able to make so many of their stories universal to everyone. The story Curve was one of those that could be seen as a universal story of struggling with the body that was given to you and not being able to control the fact that your too skinny or too fat to fit into the mainstream culture and even fit in with your friends.

My Adolescent Novel

My adult novel would be focused around and adolescent growing up in a small down and then moving to a larger city. The title would be More Cows than People because in the town that where said adolescent grew up in there were far more cows than there were people. I would discuss how much of a struggle it was to move to a completely different place than where that adolescent grew up. This could be similar to Sherman Alexie’s novel in the ways that Junior was ostracized for being different and I feel that I could tie it into my own experience as an adolescent and make it somewhat autobiographical. I feel that this is a universalized feeling because many times people go through moving from one place to another and things that they once cherished can be seen as irrelevant in the new situation and vice versa. However I would also write about the fact that the adolescent realizes that this was ultimately the best thing that could have ever happened because they would have been a completely different person if they had stayed in the small town. It would definitely be an innocence to experience themed novel. Even though there are probably many adolescent novels that are similar to this I would still want to write it anyways maybe I could offer up something to the adolescent literature world that would be worth reading and one day read in a classroom, if not then well at least I had fun writing it!

Sherman Alexie

What I really liked about Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, was how un-censored it was. If he was thinking about it, it was written down. I think that this is most prevalent in his writing about what the other Native Americans thought about him and also what the white students thought about him. Specifically the part where he discusses the most racist comment he has ever heard. I will not repeat it because it was really horrible.

The pictures were also another part of the book that I enjoyed. It is easy to forget how important pictures are to a book after I haven’t read a picture book in who knows how long. Like Arnold/Junior said everyone can understand what he is trying to say with drawing a picture as opposed to writing and I think the illustrator, Ellen Forney, did an exceptional job at it.

It was also interesting to look at another side of life that I had heard about but never really understood all that well and it was the poverty of life on a reservation. I am in no ways naïve but I never realized it could be that bad. When Arnold/Junior discusses what it feels like to not eat for 48 hours it is something that is incomprehensible to me. I have not and I hope not will ever had to endure something like that but how it was written helped me to understand.

Lastly I liked the description that Arnold/Junior gave himself about having water on the brain and a large head and how people stare. I myself have had people staring at me for the past month after I got hit in the face; it was a pretty brutal sight to see a huge black/purple/blue/pink eye and bruises all over a swollen face so I understand the stares that he was getting. Needless to say I related with Arnold/Junior at that exact moment.

Overall a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!!!!

Betsey Brown Post 7

One of my favorite things about reading Ntozake Shange’s adolescent novel, Betsey Brown, was her writing. The words flowed together so smoothly that I finished the book before I knew it. Her writing is absolutely poetic one of my favorite passages can be found on page 179 “Vida patted her heart and thought on her Frank, who was the last one to give her flowers so long ago. The melody of her romance waltzed through her soul: Frank and I would get together, when the music got ta playin… once I went to a roadhouse and danced on a dime… me and that handsome Frank of mine.” Shange has a lot of inner rhyming and rhyming at the end of sentences. I really liked that part of the book because not only does Shange provide imagery but she also creates a melody with her choice of words.

Another part of the book that I enjoyed was how raw yet believable it was. There have been many times in my family that it has been complete chaos in the house and how Shange wrote it, I could relate to it on many levels. Another ingenious use of words by Shange was how the Browns would sometimes forget to use proper English but they were not scolded for it until Jane came back from her absence. Just like any child and even adult every now and then we use words in the wrong tense or all together in the wrong context. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed Betsey Brown, at first I was a little shocked by the sort of obscene language used while describing the puberty and sexual scenes but I got past that and was pleasantly surprised by Shange's beautiful writing.

Paper Outline Rough Version

So here is the rough outline for my paper on adolescent literature.

Topic: The Comparison of Common Adolescent Themes found in Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple and how it can be related to the Adolescence of that time and of today

Information: Will be taken from class discussions, critical essays, from the books and from my
own personal experience with adolescence.

Questions to be answered:
What are the common themes between the two books?
What are the different themes between the two books?
What was going on during the time that these books were written?
How can these books be related to today’s adolescent?
How can these books be related to me?

I feel that this is a good starting point for the essay. Due to required reading for other classes I have unfortunately put reading Lucy Temple on the back burner. Fortunately it is not a long read so I have no doubt that I will finish it this week. From reading the introduction I found out that Lucy Temple is about three orphans and how they go through their adolescent stage. Lucy is the protagonist but I feel that I would like to touch upon the other orphans in the book; they seem to offer different aspects and personalities that could tie well with how this book could be related to today. I feel like the questions that I want to answer with my paper will provide plenty of information and will create a nice flow for the paper.

Huck Finn and Mark Twain's Approach

One of the items that stuck out to me in the back of the book was Mark Twain's own description of the adventure he found himself in when writing the Adventures of Huck Finn. I thought it was extremely interesting that before the beginning of this novel he knew that he did not want to write another boy's novel, he wanted an adult novel but one that still contained youth. He realized he could never do this with Tom Sawyer because he felt that he would have to make him older and then it would just become a lost cause. He came to the idea of writing a coming of age story or an ignorant to cultured story about one of Tom Sawyer's counterparts and he chose Huck Finn. Mark Twain's letters to his friends and editors were very insightful to the challenge that he had when he first started writing this book. He set it aside for awhile but then in a short amount of time it was completed. He seemed utterly surprised by himself for writing a vast amount of words in a single day and also working on Sundays! I also liked how he added in that throughout the book the adventure primarily lies around a raft and the Mississippi River. What made me appreciate Mark Twain’s view on his book even more was the fact that he felt so empowered by it and so sure that it was going to succeed. But he even said that if it didn’t he did not care what those critics thought he enjoyed it no matter what.

Charlotte Temple 4th Post

I know that this is super late but due to me being completely crazy when it comes to packing and getting ready to go on our softball trip everything else went out the window and then to complete this ridiculousness our hotel in Florida did not have wireless internet or any internet.

I feel that if this story would be written today many of the events would be the same. The idea of being seduced by an older man, falling in “love” and then getting pregnant and being left behind is what the Lifetime Movie network feeds off of.

I decided to write about the characters, plot, setting and description of the Charlotte Temple novel that I would write today. First of all the protagonist would be a man and his name would be Charlie Church, who is a naïve country boy from the mid-west who gets tempted by a seductress named Mandy Ville in New York City. At the club in New York City she drugs his drink and whisks him away to Paris. In Paris he is left in a hotel with no money, no identity and no sense of how he got there. Charlie Church wanders off into the French country side looking for Mandy Ville but he cannot find her. Luckily Charlie Church finds a nice country girl named Celine and she takes care of him and nurses him back to health.

I decided to change it up a bit and have a happy ending, not where one dies because of their sins. Maybe it is because I just spent a week in Florida and went to Disney that I am feeling this way.