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Sample Lit Narrative
Saturday, September 25, 2010
So last week, my professor assigned the first essay of the term and I have no idea what I am going to write about. All I know is that if I write a 5 paragraph paper I am going to lose major points with her. She asked that we use a different structure of writing to show creativity in the way we explain something about our personal identity. So, in between Facebook and Twitter I am thinking of ways to formulate this essay and what I am going to talk about. Well bye for now, the bad writer is going to brainstorm for the writing of this dreaded essay…
Bria but really Bre (yes with an E “do not forget”)
Sunday, September 26, 2010
For 12 years I have been forced to write perfectly structured five paragraph essays, but college has changed that. I remember when I initially stepped on the campus of University of Michigan. As soon as I arrived in my composition class with instructor Amelie Welden, she told the class “I never want to see a five paragraph essay in this class.” I became very lost and confused because the only form of writing I have ever wrote was in five paragraph form. Usually I am breaking my brain trying to formulate the perfect thesis statement. Then, followed by three reasons to prove my topic, and a conclusion sentence to sum up the paragraph, and of course the introductory and conclusion paragraph. So now I am left in this lonely world of writing with no experience of any other writing form.
I have been sitting in front of my laptop chatting with my classmate for over an hour debating how we planned on writing our “new form” essays. It is quite ironic that we both complained of being subjected to always write 5 paragraph essays, but now that we have a choice we have no idea how to compose a paper.
Staring at these golden brown, maroon trimmed walls in my father’s living room is helps to formulate an idea or two. As I find each imperfection in the wall I begin to think of all the troubles that writing those “old essays,” also known as five paragraph essays, haunted me.
For example, the unorganized thoughts, misplaced punctuation, and weak thesis statement of the “old essays” never served its full purpose. My writing always proved its point, but was never structured inside of those “rules.” It seemed that my writing was always all over the place. I always earned my “C” though. For example, I remember writing my college essays the “old way” and once I submitted them to my teacher they would always ask, “What is this?” In September of 2009, I gave up on my writing skills because I never got high remarks on my compositions.
During senior year, I literally cried every day I was enrolled in Advanced Placement English because my teacher crumbled my first essay into pieces. She told me that my work of art that I planned to send to New York University was horrid and that I would be denied admission. My self-esteem took a huge crash when it came to my writing. I transferred to a regular senior English class. I went from having an A in an advanced placement class to an F in a regular English class. I lost all motivation, although I knew I needed to pass English to graduate. So my goal from that point was to get at least a D- and that I would somehow seek higher grades in all my other classes. That is what I did and my grade point average suffered, but I plan to take action now and use all the resources that are available to me. To this day I regret only completing one essay all senior year because I did not get the chance for my writing to be critiqued and strengthened.
P.S. A few more sentences and I will finally be done…
Signed —Bre
Early Monday Morning, September 27, 2010
Luckily for me my school has a writing center dedicated to helping mediocre writers like me. I am hoping to become a better essayist. On Tuesday September 28, 2010, I plan to walk into the CASL building and head straight to the writing center. Then I am going to sit down, and turn on my 13-inch Mac Book Pro, and proceed to email my professor Amelie Welden to alert her that I am attending a writing session. I am sure I will need those extra credit points. As I write these last few sentences I pray and hope that when this essay is returned to me it will not break my spirit and at least have uplifting remarks that will not bring me down. I am not the greatest author of essays, but I hope that by December I can improve my skills in a substantial amount.
Yours truly,
A hopeful author Bre
Friday October 1, 2010
So after the edits of my original essay full of paragraphs, I changed things up a little bit. I added a few elements, corrected a few errors, and prayed that I get good remarks.
Goodnite Bre
Why I Graduate School
By Joanmarie Bañez
I’ve begun working on Ph.D. applications. I’m pumped. I’m ready. I’m doing this. (I’m terrified, nervous, intimidated––all of these things.) Even at the beginning of this process, having to size myself up, to write my life on paper, to take inventory of my academic “accomplishments,” the same way we label the boxes we use when moving, makes me realize how far I’ve come in understanding my place in the world but also how much I’ve yet to unpack, like the boxes.
I was born to two mothers and two fathers: one who I’ve never met, two who were never truly mine, and one who carried me in her belly. I gained another father when my biological mother, Lita, married. I was six, then, the same age as when she stopped speaking to me in Kapampangan.
To quote poet Warsan Shire, “I have my mother’s lips and my father’s eyes; on my face they are still together.” I’ve had to come to terms with being a full-blooded Filipina whose father favored an abortion, that I have two white parents who were once my biological mother’s employers before they decided they liked her enough to inaugurate her into their family, bringing her to the United States. I’ve made peace with what used to make me feel ashamed: that I speak Spanish because of a childhood desire to find my voice in a language whose minority group accepted me as their own when I felt there was no one else like me––that I can merely understand my “mother tongue” because it’s become just that. My mother’s tongue, not mine.
I thought it was normal, that every little brown girl became the pseudo-daughter to a white couple for whom her mother worked. I grew comfortable with being the beneficiary of white upper-middle class privilege. My mother no longer worked for Annie and Steve, and like her, I called them my parents, too, because although we looked nothing alike, we shared the same life, the same home. So when Lita met Mike From Ohio, my now stepfather, I was forced to see myself outside myself.
And when Lita married, I went through what felt like a divorce. At such a young age, I parted with a relationship I thought was inextricably mine, struggling, retaliating so much in response because the person I thought I knew myself as wasn’t what people around me perceived me to be. Moving to Hiram, Georgia on a shoestring budget required Lita and Mike to work two to three jobs each, crystallizing to my younger self that we were anything but upper-middle class, and being a Filipina in the American South in town with a sparse minority population, I was reminded regularly of my non-whiteness.
My internalized perception of myself followed me, and still follows me, as an adult. At twenty, I moved to Malaga, Spain for a study abroad program through Georgia State University. I felt exhilarated and well-equipped for my travels, sure that in Spain, I would blend in. That wasn’t really the case. Even in Spain, I was clearly Asian, and when asked where I was from, I’d respond with, “I’m American”––had my passport to attest to that. When that didn’t satisfy the question, I’d answer the “No, where are you really from?” with “I’m Filipino.” This felt like lying. Although I was a guest in Spain, I felt like more of a guest within myself, conflicted with who I saw myself to be with who the world perceived me as. During my time abroad, I backpacked twenty European cities alone, fearing not going it alone but confrontation with strangers that required I had an authentic sense of self before I could get to know them.
Still, now, I grapple with my identity at the ideological epicenter where Double Consciousness, Generation 1.5, and Divorce Attorney meet Identity Crisis for a much needed intervention. My graduate research interests reflect this intersection in that I am determined to insert myself in conversations that interrogate the cultural centers of Western and critical race theory. Having renounced my ethnicity to my own identity’s periphery throughout my life, my goal in academia is to help empower marginalized voices to continue to cultivate and participate in inclusive, multiperspectival theoretical discourse.