Thursday, November 12, 2015

Ephron Micro Essay

     I was the youngest out of five daughters in a makeshift family--my older sister, Abby, and I inherited three step sisters at the marriage between my dad and his new wife, whose sugar-blond hair and sweet pea cheeks seemed to me the pinnacles of womanhood and secrecy.
     It was never a competition between my sisters and myself because I always came in last. I was last to buy a bra, last to get my period, last to learn the language of flirting. Even at fourteen, my toothpick arms met at the center of my plank board chest. I wore a 28AA.
     I never really chose to be an outsider. I wanted to hang out and talk about boys. I wanted to make weird home movies and have inside jokes. There's a family photo of us: the camera captures the backs of three of my sisters, all holding hands walking down the sidewalk, me in the grass trying to keep up.
    With my nose pressed against the window, I grew up watching them thrive and rage their way through adolescence. There would be glimpses--moments of acceptance into their pack--a trip to the pizza shop, a pleasant car ride on a family vacation. But it was at this brink between knowing my place as the unwanted little sister and the hope of their acceptance, that my stance would teeter, unstable. I'd say or do the wrong thing and fall back over the edge, back again to the outside of the window looking in.
    To this day, it's rare for me to have female friends. A very small handful. It's always been easy to make the initial connection with other women--an extroverted personality makes for quick acquaintances. But it's always in that in-between moment, the teetering between acceptance and watching from my window, that I retreat. I say the wrong thing, I start acting weird. The ghost of my fourteen-year-old-self stirs somewhere deep within me, telling me to keep my distance, that I don't know what I'm doing and it's not worth the risk of a likely rejection.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

"From Trauma to Writing" Response

Marian MacCurdy's essay on healing through writing was exactly the type of essay I've been looking for to include in my research for the pedagogy of writing and healing. MacCurdy addresses the delicate balance between an emotionally-literate writing class and therapy. Writing about trauma doesn't necessarily (and usually isn't) about the most emotionally-charged or intense experiences. And if they are, they need to be approached in organic, natural ways. She claims that "once students get beyond the clichés that can undermine the power of the experience, I have found that those emotionally charged topics can generate sharp imagery, clear sensory detail, and thematic sophistication" (MacCurdy 159). She moves on to examine how writing about trauma actually helps students master literary devices more than traditional academic writing. Because trauma is non-linear, non-verbal and imbedded within images, sensations, etc., learning how to "show don't tell" is essential to convey an experience effectively. It's a win-win scenario. Writing about trauma helps take a chaotic event and help recover from it by making sense of it and being heard, while also more effectively teaching a student how to write.