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Although these three short creative nonfiction stories had very different meanings, I feel I was able to get a better sense of what creative nonfiction writing looks like. Beginning with “The Mute Sense” by Diane Ackerman, I loved the importance that was placed on our sense of smell. This remined me of the Febreze commercial, where they blindfolded random people and took them to a dirty car that had been sprayed with Febreze. They all said the car smelled good and the opposite of what it looked like. With that in mind, it goes to say that humans heavily depend on smell to describe something and it is a powerful sense. On the other hand, in the story “My Papa’s Waltz” by James Brown, it demonstrated the value of writing about what one knows. I must admit the story was a bit hard for me to understand but I did take a few things from it. Such as, rewriting your version of the truth and not worrying so much about the accuracy of one’s memory to describe an old event. Lastly, the story “Westbury Court” by Edwidge Danticat, showed how using one’s senses could sometimes make the difference between life or death. In this case, had the narrator not been so focused on the show they might have caught the smell of the fire going on near them. I found the phrase, “I shouldn’t have”, to be a very relatable one that any reader could reminisce to a time they felt they shouldn’t have done something. Overall, the common theme in these writings was the use of one’s senses to describe a real memory.
ReplyDelete-Natalia Martinez
David Starkey provided us with three creative nonfiction stories to help us better understand what creative nonfiction looks like. He starts off with the short story “The Muted Sense” by Diane Ackerman, which tells us how the sense of smell is most memorable. The author states that there are different smells and we identify others by their scent. Smell is a muted sense, there is no sound, no taste, and no sight. We smell with every breath we take. The second story we were provided with was “My Papa’s Waltz” by James Brown. This story was quite confusing for me but I understood that the author included himself as a character in another writing that was similar to the situation he was explaining. He can’t seem to remember every single detail which doesn’t make his story a lie simply the truth was subjective. In the third story “Westbury Court” by Edwidge Danticat he depicts a childhood memory in which his neighbor’s apartment caught on fire. He states that his neighbors did not survive the fire. However, it was all just a memory and he was not sure if his neighbors died in the fire or not, but he told the story according to his memory and his perspective.
ReplyDelete-Maria Ramos
In “The Muted Senses” by Diane Ackerman it is described how important our senses can be but most importantly our sense of smell. After reading this, it sort of gave me the idea of the game where you are blindfolded, needing to guess what the thing is by simply smelling it. I was very intrigued in the way they used the language in this writing. In “My Papa’s Waltz” by James Brown, I understood it that it might have been written to give a sense of him wanting to let go of a burden he was carrying. “For dancing, I am too awkward, too timid and full of anger and blindness. But when I write today, when I write now, when I write this, the drunken smile on my father’s face no longer annoys me.” In “Westbury Court” by Edwidge Danticat definitely did have some relation with the “The Mute Sense” story due to it having a similar feel about how our sense of smell is very important and how it can be used to paint pictures through writings. Although it might have been just a memory, it played with me in making me think if it was real or not. “ -Ana Silvia Mears
ReplyDeleteBy including three different short stories, I think David Starkey wanted to demonstrate the “truth” of each writer and how they wrote it by using some type of sense. In the first story, “The Mute Sense” by Diane Ackerman, she uses scent to recall childhood memories of places and people based on what she smelled during that time. I liked that Ackerman mentioned how smell can be precise, but hard to describe to someone that hasn’t smelled it. In the past I’ve found myself in the same situation where I struggle to describe a smell to someone and it’s impossible to find the right words. In contrast to the other senses, we see what we’re able to see, touch when we’re in contact with someone or something, and hear when we’re exposed to sound, and it’s easy to describe what the sense is like. For “My Papa’s Waltz” by James Brown, he uses hearing and touch to recall his memory. I don’t really understand this story, only that he’s using Theodore Roethke’s poem and portraying himself as the character since he can’t remember. I liked when he said, “And the writer’s obsession, as I also come to understand, suggests something other than limitation or theme, that as storytellers we basically spend our lives telling the same story over and over, only we do it from different angles.” (page 302, 3rd edition). As a fiction writer, I find this to be true. I’ve read many stories or seen movies where they’re all the same plot but different. Like the Disney movies with the princesses. An example would be Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. “Westbury Court” by Edwidge Danticat was really confusing for me. I didn’t really get anything from other than he wasn’t sure what he remembered about the children next door when the fire happened. The only connection I could make was that there were times where I had trouble deciphering certain memories, but deep down know that it actually happened, just probably not in the way that I thought.
ReplyDelete-Bethzaida Ayala
The three stories all revolved around memory. Reading the three essays, it made me feel a deep connection with how we connect situations with our 5 senses. In, “The Mute Sense,” the sense of smell is what is being heavily discussed. How smell is one of the only senses we cannot describe is very accurate. The other day I was at Kohl’s and I smelled a Yankee candle that was on clearance and it smelled exactly how I picture Christmas to be! If I would explain it to anyone reading this, I can’t exactly find the right words because like Ackerman mentions, “Smell is the mute sense, the one without words.” In the second essay, “My Papa’s Waltz,” Brown ties in with most of the 5 senses. How he was recalling the short poem of Theodore Roethke, the senses of sight as the kid recalls his drunk father, hearing his father sing, feeling his father’s sweaty hands, and the smell of sawdust and sweat. In the end, how the author couldn’t exactly remember the exact year he danced with his father is how memory is a crucial factor in non-fiction writing. In the final essay, “Westbury Court,” memory is also important as the author is overwhelmed with the idea of trying to remember what exactly happened with the children and their mother years after the apartment fire.
ReplyDelete-Karen Lamas
The Mute Sense was a story that I appreciated especially as a result of the utilization of symbolism. I trust Ackerman makes a great showing with using symbolism in the primary section. Through her utilization of symbolism Ackerman is capable catch how a memory can be activated by a solitary, short lived aroma in the accompanying expression, "Scents explode delicately in our memory like impactful land mines, covered up under the weedy mass of numerous years and encounters. Hit a tripwire of smell, and recollections detonate at the same time." I truly loved these sentences because to me they flawlessly portray what an aroma activated memory feels like. My Papa’s Waltz made me feel a bit sad and happy for the boy in the poem. One thing is sad because I always feel there is some heartbreak in drinking. Drinking alcohol or whiskey can be a problem that should be taken seriously. I also felt a sense of joy for the boy, because he has these memories of waltzing with his father. It is a very tricky poem in my eyes and makes me think about my emotions I have for this poem. I enjoyed reading Westbury Court because it was quite an easy read but it still had a really good theme to it. I liked how Danticat was not super descriptive in the short story and that her descriptions that she did have did a great job of showing just enough visuals of the events that happened to her when she was younger. I feel like it shows us just how much more “real” the story is because she is not trying too hard to remember every single detail. Another thing that I appreciated about Danticat’s writing was her way of showing us how she really felt at the time, again to where it was believable. I felt I can truly relate with her words because they felt organic.
ReplyDelete-Gilbert Sanchez
The book states on page 214, “Nothing is more memorable than a smell.” This is literally the first sentence of the chapter and I couldn’t agree anymore with it. Why do I agree with it you may ask? Well the smell of fresh cut lumbar to you may just seem like any other smell, but to me, it reminds me of being seven years old with my parents, sister and I as we were starting off our construction business. Being in and out of Home Depots and McCoy’s at that age really made the smell of lumbar stick with me throughout these years. My Papa Waltz confused me a bit. I didn’t really understand what was going on in the story. I couldn’t tell if he was telling a story or if he was writing a story about a story he read. Overall I didn’t like it. Westbury Court was a short story I really liked. I could picture just about everything as I was reading and I somewhat could relate with it. He talks about the apartment burning down and the children dying and how he still thinks about them after their death. What really stuck with me though after reading these stories was as it states on page 215, “Smell is the mute sense, the one without words.” To me this means just getting a certain whiff of a smell can take you pack to a time in your life without saying a word.
ReplyDelete-Noe Ramos
After reading these short stories I have a better understanding of how writing creative nonfiction works. The first one mute sense talks about our way of smell and how a certain smell can take us back to our childhood. I like how it ventured into different types of smells and how our sense of smell is very extraordinary but you also can’t describe the smell to someone which is very true. I think the whole point of this is saying how it explains the main part of this writing because it says quote “smell if the mute sense: the one without words” which means how without actually knowing what something is you can’t identify as an example, if you’ve never smelled it before. The second reading really is the prime example of what writing creative nonfiction is all about because it’s a little exaggerated but just good enough. It talks about the dad of the writer and how their mom is in jail who might or might not come back home. A family that consists of their dad, them and their siblings in a one-bedroom and it just explores how the author was conflicted and how they never got to finish a novel because they just thought it wasn’t what they wanted to write. They were inspired by the person who wrote ‘My papa’s waltz’ and from there you can see a certain change of how the author viewed their childhood. The last writing is very sad I would find this reading very specific and detailed despite it happening during their childhood. Their memory must be very good especially when they put a quote their mom said.
ReplyDelete- Yaretzi Diaz
After reading all three short stories provided by David Starkey, I was able to grasp an idea of what creative nonfiction writing looks like. Not necessarily how it should be written because they all are very different, but very similar in a sense. Even though the three stories talked about a certain sense or a memory, the delivery was not the same. In “The Mute Sense”, Diane Ackerman talked about the importance of smelling by providing many examples on how smell is used and if without it one could surely die. “Cover your eyes and you will stop seeing, cover your ears and you will stop hearing, but if you cover your nose and try to stop smelling, you will die.” I never actually thought about it that way and never truly appreciated that sense. In “My Papa’s Waltz,” James Brown really got you thinking on what parts were fiction and what parts were nonfiction. He provided memories from his past but would confuse you with saying it was fiction. Maybe because he would share what his drunk father would tell him. Like how Brown states, “as storytellers we basically spend our lives telling the same story over and over, only we do it from different angles.” Which could be a huge map/directory for creative nonfiction writers. In “Westbury Court,” Edwidge Danticat talks and reminisces about his childhood in his old apartment. I’m not sure what Danticat was trying to tell us with his story, but I grasped the fact that creative nonfiction can be about memory alone. And reading all these stories it really got me to realize that creative nonfiction can be about anything if the reader is captured and wanting to know more about whatever truth or fact is being told.
ReplyDelete-Miguel Garcia
When reading these three short stories I noticed they all had one thing in common and that is the author’s remembering about their past. “The Mute Sense” by Diane Ackerman focused on smells. We all have a “land mines” of smell and if we “hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once.” We could randomly smell a perfume and the smell will take us back to summer camp. “My Papa’s Waltz” by James Brown focused on truth. In the short story, he mentioned that he sometimes confuses real life with how he imagines the story really went. On page 217 in paragraph 3, he talks about how although he doesn’t remember the correct details about what year it was when he was in the apartment, his age, and even his mother. He also talks about how hard it was to create a story and how much time it took away from him. “Westbury Court” by Edwidge Danticat focused on memory. He was remembering his old apartment and how he loved living there until the fire happened. He remembered from him leaving his high school, picking up his brother, what he was doing when the fire started, and all other little events that happened after. His memory really impressed me considering these events happened in his childhood. All these stories are very different, but they have one thing in common and that is they are all creative nonfiction.
ReplyDelete-Melissa Garcia
I appreciate the just and differences of all three of the readings. I am going to try my best to explain myself and how I relate to them as well as how and why I agree with some things stated in them. I have always felt using your senses to describe something is always a plus as those are characteristics everyone can relate to. Although it allows the reader to make what they want of your work. Such as saying something has a crisp scent you can think of something that might be crisp to you but wont be the same to me. Using your sense of smell in your writing also has a plus as one can put together of imagery through this sense. If you say a fresh crisp morning; I would personally think of a bright beautiful morning sunrise with a sense of freshness.
ReplyDeleteThis also goes hand in hand with the over ending debate about "truth" in creative non fiction. So to me truth goes as far as one's own personal beliefs, thoughts, experiences and even morals can play a role in one speaking their truth. If someone describes a feeling about someone of being "rude" for the sake of them speaking their mind others might find that so good because they are being "honest" or up front.
Natashia Mata
Each of these readings transcribe the literary element of imagery. Ackerman uses a sensual element such as smelling to coordinate a memory, state, and object from a past interaction. The Mute Sense did not grab my attention. I felt disengage with the piece because it didn’t propose a story line like the other two stories to follow. Moreover, Ackerman describes the use of sensitivity elements found in creative non-fiction. The excerpt felt informative rather than a short story. Brown’s excerpt demonstrates the contrast between creativity and autobiographies by interlacing the sub-categories with a personal experience. My Papa’s Waltz gives readers the coordination of altering non-fiction creativity. However, at the beginning of the reading I was not too sure about the background information to My Papa’s Waltz, the navigation through the story line and personal experience gave me a better understanding of the underlining Brown was conveying to his readers. Lastly, Danticat’s “Westbury Court” underlines the various interpretations readers can scope based upon the fictional elements provided in the plot. Thus, leading readers with “Sometimes it is too late to say, “I shouldn’t have.” (Starkey, 220) This story was nerve wracking with the possible “what ifs” that could have been adapted into the story line for the two children from the fire.
ReplyDelete-Antoinette Villanueva
In The Mute Sense, Ackerman does an unbelievable job of explaining and describing the powerful sense of smell. She just doesn’t blandly say, “Smell is a mute sense cause when you smell something it brings up a memory, thanks to your nose”; she goes above and beyond on her descriptions. Right off the bat in her introduction, from page 214, she conjures up a beautifully descriptive example of a childhood summer beside a lake or a passionate time at a beach. She actually takes her time to write it out in detail, not just a simple, “The bushes had a lot of fruit near the lake and the flowers made it smell nice at the beach”. It makes me think about how truly creative nonfiction can get with its descriptions. The event is something real; a memory like in My Papa’s Waltz, where a boy recalls of letting go of the table and dancing with his father while the song “Crazy” plays from an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. That was the main part of the story, yet Brown takes his readers time traveling by showing us his recollection of his youth and creates an analogy by using Roethke’s poem, in order to fully describe his story and how important/unforgettable that memory of dancing with his father was to him. Similarly, Danticat does a magnificent job thoroughly describing the burnt apartment and its appearance, from her story Westbury Court. In page 219, she just doesn’t say, “The wood was weak and burnt”, she describes it to a perfection. It made me feel as if I was standing beside her and witnessing the picture she eloquently painted. That’s the beauty of creative writing in nonfiction.
ReplyDelete-Jasmine Hinojosa
The Mute Sense brought out a detail that I usually have no opinion on based on my focus on other details: a person's sense of smell. With me, my sense of smell is pretty lacking. I can not smell average scents like most people can, instead it can only detect scents that are black and white. What I mean is I can only identify really good smells or extremely harsh ones. So, when Diane Ackerman describes precise details certain scents give off when in particular settings, I feel a sense of missed out opportunity due to my poor sense of smell. But one thing I do enjoy is the memories certain scents can have on a person's thoughts. Most people might brush off these types of descriptions, but everything we experience can have an impact on our lives. My Papa's Waltz presented something that I, as a writer, struggle with from time to time. That is wanting to focus on your imagination instead of reality. At the end of the second paragraph, the narrator says that they are struggling with their writing skills and that they worry about the time they have left. I also experience this issue on an occasional basis. While I don't have the harsh life, the childhood spent mostly outside, nor the issues of a separated family life, I do experience life different from the every day person because of my creative outlook.Finally, Westbury Court brings up the idea of "What if?" To give a better explanation, the idea occurs based on the actions we as people commit to or the action we could have committed to in certain situations. The narrator constantly thinks about what if she could have saved the dead children. She also thinks about the many horrible events that take place around her apartment complex and what could happen if anything horrible where to happen to her family. Many people, including myself, have gone through these thoughts either from hearing a devastating new article or a tragic event in our personal lives. People want to have a peaceful carefree life, but whenever something goes off the path, we can't help but wonder what could have been different.
ReplyDelete-Raul Salazar
Each of these readings are fantastic when it comes to presenting description towards imagery. These reading are showing us about literary elements of imagery. They way that we can present it in our creative writing. Ancker man presents his ways that we can describe sensual elements which is smell to go into detail of how to present it in creative writing. Diane showed us how it can be brought into detail. Showing us how the senses are important. She goes out of her hair to present that to us. Some memories come out from the smell description it triggers memories. I remember when I would see a whataburger commercial and I was starving that commercial came to life for me. I could literally smell the burgers and the fries from whataburger. I feel that while I was reading her works I can sense what she is writing and she brought it to life. I believe that if you make your story very detailed it can help grasp attention to the readers. I tend to enjoy when someone is telling me details about certain ways to do things while communicating or while I read it like in a cookbook recipes. All these stories had a very unique similarities and differences but are all creative nonfiction.
ReplyDelete-Max Garcia
In “The Muted Space” the author, Diane Ackerman describes how important our sense of smell is, and it reminded me of when my professor had us take a photo to class and asked us to smell it, feel it, to help us truly look at the photograph. It was crazy but true, when I tried to remember the smells in the photo I chose to write about it was as if I was back in time. There is something about smells that truly do stick with you forever. For example, when I smell a certain cologne I think of my grandfather and even though I rarely smell it, when I do it always connects to my granddad. I never thought something so simple could bring so much muse and excitement to my writing. I have stated before, I don’t take fist in my writings so doing something like this was unique, weird, and fun. All of the stories were put into the book to help show us, the readers how different authors use different senses to help them write. Next time I am in class and I have to write a creative nonfiction essay I will definitely try and remember what I felt, smelled, thought, and tasted to help be as detailed as possible.
ReplyDelete-Daniela Rios
ReplyDeleteIn reading these creative stories, I get a different perspective as to what creative writing can stand for. My favorite of the 3 would have to be “The Mute Sense” the first sentence explains the whole short story. Ackerman could have just said “nothing is more memorable than a smell,” and her point would have been made, but the fact that she continues to explain through the story all the imagery, and descriptiveness she uses to support her claim that nothing is more memorable that a smell. Reading the paragraphs, I could even try and figure out what she was smelling, but it is true “it’s almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn’t smelled it.” Just like you can’t really picture something you have never seen. “cover your eyes and you will stop seeing, cover your ears and you will stop hearing, but cover your nose and try to stop smelling, you will die.” She makes such a valid point but yet she makes a fact that you really can’t just hold your nose because you will die, yet she uses it as a metaphor. In “My Papa’s Waltz” I could also even get the idea of smell across from the descriptiveness of the first paragraph when Brown describes his father, and the breath of whisky, he smells on his father. He describes the tunnel that he tries to escape from and in detail how he always thought about escaping.
Michelle Rodriguez
I feel like I did not connect with these stories as well as I have connected with others in the past readings. I do understand that maybe these stories were just examples of the broad range that creative writing can have which i understand. I think the mute sense was the one that I liked the most because it talked about how the sense of smell can be very powerful. People relate the sense of smell to point and time in their life and I find that to be true with cologne and perfumes. For me a certain fragrance will take my back to a particular time in my life. I also liked it because I feel like describing a smell is one of the more challenging aspects of writing and analysing this story gave me some insight in simple ways to do that. I feel like not only for story telling or formal writing but to describe a scent is a real challenge. One of the more common ways and one of the ways we see the author of mute sense kinda help us understand what she is saying is similees. A figure of speech can help the author lead the reader to have the same idea of what a certain smell smells like.
ReplyDelete-Alex Rodriguez