Framing the Graphic Imagination

Framing the Graphic Imagination

I was really impressed with the ability of these extremely short graphic novels to effectively set scene, tone, action and character within a few short frames. The ability of darker colors (grey, brown, dark green) to establish a ominous and creepy tone was especially effective in Laurie Proud’s piece “Aubrey.” The absurd size proportions of the Aubrey character against the backdrop of darker colors creates a nightmarish scene. I want to explore the ability of “Aubrey” and Scott Dessert’s piece “Cat Sitter” to imagine outside of the frames the authors create. “Aubrey” enters a nightmarish state and expresses the narrator’s imagining of Aubrey living in the derelict house. The story moves from scene setting and character inventory into the imagination of the speaker. The speaker’s imagining of Aubrey to eat seagulls and live in the derelict house actually occupy more page space than the speaker’s “reality.” Considering the brevity of the piece, this must be an intentional craft choice on the part of the author. Giving more space to the imaginative space of the speaker than the moments of narrative reality suggests takes the reader on a journey, somewhat indirectly, into the speaker’s mind. The ability of the speaker’s self to manifest real fear of Aubrey solely through imagination is powerful and disturbing. I’m wondering whether Proud intended this piece in part to showcase the intense power of imagination and its ability to disrupt ‘normal’ life. The shifts in the piece from the beginning scene setting, to the speaker’s mind and nightmares, to when they move away are sudden shifts. The narrative jerk at the end to the final frame where the family moves was unsatisfying, as though after the nightmares normalcy was no longer interesting.

            Scott Dessert similarly establishes elements of the absurd in “Cat Sitter.” Dessert uses mixed media and text overlay and these visuals create absurd perspectives and layers visually for the reader. Page 27 juxtaposed with page 28 pair this opposition of the cat sitter’s imagination and what most likely happens. Perhaps the cat sitter imagines the scene on page 27 from the train, it’s definitely difficult to discern exactly what is happening. The cat clawing and cat sitter revenge narrative on page 27 likely occupies the cat sitters imagination, and like “Aubrey” is an example of the author framing the speaker’s imagination, giving space to it on the page. The parallel storyboards in “Cat Sitter” help to create the narrative where there is little text / thoughts for the reader to work with. Page 28, the calm cat sitting scene where the speaker merely follows the (absurd) instructions and the cat does not claw the sitter. This juxtaposition of potential narratives heightens the drama of the piece through contrast. As far as crafting the imagination scene and the ‘normal’ scene, the author strategically employs panel size. In the imagination scene, the author uses irregular panel sizes that also just into each other opposed to the ‘normal’ scene where the panels are regular, consistent and have discrete borders.

Choices in Graphic shorts

Having never read a graphic short story before, I had no idea what I was in store for. I was presently surprised by the form and the content of each of these short pieces. The economy of words and the emotions brought forth by the pictures was amazing.

The variety of graphic short story surprised me. Not only can one tell completely different types of stories, but they can be told in varying ways. “Aubery” was a story with in a story. Laurie J. Proud, used the story and rumors of the kid they named Aubery to frame a story about her father that isn’t fully expressed. This works for me because of the mystery surround Aubery, the not-knowing of the father’s story is okay because Aubery serves as a metaphor of not knowing the whole story. The economy of words in this story is something to be admired especially because the pictures really tell the story.

“Cat Sitter” used mainly pictures and humor to get the point across. I thought it was funny and it really showed the power of placement of things. For example the decision to have the letter found after the cat starched the sitter and the letter to have blood on it was quite ironic and therefore funny. Also a cat in a crown wins every day in my book.

I thought the use of flashback was amazing in “Paint.” It help illustrate the point that in this form setting is literally seen and not told. For example, we talk a lot about grounding our readers when we shift in time and place. In paint the color of the protagonist’s hair, served as that grounding. Subtle changes made to the attire and face let the reader know where we were in time. Also, I don’t know if it was because the colors were so bright, but it was really easy to feel the love in that piece.

Out of all the short graphic short story the dark stunning brilliance of “In Room 208” stood out to me the most. It was hauntingly beautiful and it is complex and full of layers. I loved how the pictures seem to come full circle. If we look closely, the landscapes on page 77 and 81 look eerily similar. Which is on purpose because nothing is wasted in a graphic short story. Every letter counts, every stroke of the pen, every shade of color, is all purposefully used to convey the thought and emotion.  I enjoyed how deliberate it was in terms of the choices that were made. Not only the words used, but where they were placed on the pictures. Specifically on page 80 where the image of the couple faces after being in bed so long are staring to grow into each other, the picture is cute into three sections and the lines “When we grew” “too fat” “to move” are placed above each section, a rhythm is and it heightens the drama, and lifts the tension.  The choices made in Room “208” and all the pieces simply blew me away.

Best,

CF Pinto 

The lines are the narrative

1) Laurie J. Proud

The houses seem vacant of life, of people, of the family. There is an emptiness that gestures towards perhaps the loneliness emergent from father’s depression, or the way the family is displaced symbolically – even from home – as a result. The car, parked, unmoving outside seems relevant. In dream theory cars represent the sense of control one has over one’s life. The static nature of the car here works as a visual representation of the stuckness of the family.

The use of somber and muted colors, as well as the water-color form of the artwork match and emphasize emotional tenor of the story. The way in which the shed is depicted in the shadow while emphasizing the presence of is sunlight in the way it reflects on the neighboring house again speaks volumes to this emotion. The state of disrepair in which the shed is depicted maps onto the depression – the roof busted, like the busted mind/consciousness. It appears steeped in a wetland of darkness.

In contrast to the shed the frames that include Aubrey are initially lighter in their color – energetic. Aubrey, while a source of fear, is on his bike, an agent of movement, in juxtaposition to the family. The fixation on Aubrey is symbolic of, and heightens the disappearance/absence of the father. In many senses the narrator doesn’t need to tell the story of the father because the obsession with Aubrey maps onto the way in which a child’s mind forms narrative sometimes separate from the immediate events that are impossible to internalize, to generate a space for the emotion to be offloaded. We understand without needing the details. And so Aubrey’s smile, which perhaps seems symbolic of some kind of stupidity, as it statically remains, again in juxtaposition to the father’s depression. The focus on Aubrey’s grotesque smiling mouth in the later frames, generates an increasing sense of urgency within the work, and speeds up the pace of the very short story.

It is significant that we don’t see anyone until Aubrey. This demonstrates the centrality of his figure in the consciousness of the narrator. The pervasive threat and monstrosity that Aubrey seems to generate, the dream, the violence, stand in for the enormity of impact of the father’s depression – it’s ubiquity in the life of the narrator. Aubrey like the father is depicted as solitary – an unknown – a haunting ghost. Further the only family we see is Aubrey’s family – which act as stand in for the family of the narrator’s “family of circus freaks.” We can understand it as projection.

The doorway at the derelict works is dark – and in the frame, almost see a shape – hearkens back to the broken down shed that the father is stuck inside of.

The last two frames are significant in the way that the body of the father is mapped onto Aubrey – particularly via shape of head and hair.

The traditional structure – equal sized frames – mete the story out in a measured way – and assist the reader in seeing how the perspective of the child is changing as particular images are emphasized. The images do so much for the sparse text – well matched.

I found myself wondering who is “we.”

2) Scott Dessert – Cat Sitter

Oubapo – multiple frames of different sizes that are not always distinct from each other combined with the collage format generate a sense of chaos.

The man and wall and phone and food are in black and white. Meanwhile the furniture and wine are in color – suggesting where the life in the work is – in the inanimate objects – juxtaposition says a great deal about the emotion of the character. There is a feeling of dreary isolation and stagnancy in the room. The socks are in color as if to suggest desire for movement. The prominence of the ringing speaks to the perception of the character – the noise being either exacerbated due to the wine or an irregular experience in the home. The second frame feels as though shift from a third person perspective into the perspective of the protagonist.

Later in the work the wine and socks seem to be foreshadow for blood – and maybe in terms of theme the risk of reaching out for connection.

The textured vibrancy of the color in the external world operate in stark contrast to the world of the room – even the train underground, has a kind of electricity to it that the first three panels lack… though in this underground the protagonist is muted against the background, again suggestive of emotional state? All of the color of the world seems to represent perhaps the rarity of this kind of movement for the protagonist.

The cat is white in contrast to the darkness of the man’s clothing, and the way he seems to be cloaked in shadow, so in this sense, the cat is set up visually as hopeful connection – this is the moment his isolation will be broken. What disappointment. The claws, the blood. Immediately following this moment of feline ferocity, the panel of the bathroom seems to match the man’s black and white. The tyranny of the cat. It is dressed as business man as if to represent power over – menacing, but the protagonist is determined to.

I appreciate the way in which this writer/artist allowed images to hold the narrative

3) Vivien McDermid – Paint

The almost childlike style of the imagery maps the centrality of the child to the consciousness of the protagonist.

The internal monologue felt unnecessary in moments. The protagonist’s face for example in panel 3 didn’t need the additional, “I feel awful” because the facial gesture is so expressive.

“I won’t mind a bit if everything gets ruined,” is gesture towards what’s to come – set-up for the character to undergo a transformation.

The nice things, “they are anchors,” is a telling transition into the story of the relationship with the romantic partner and father of Bertha. This set-up does something to signal us into how the protagonist is perhaps viewing that relationship. Before the romantic partnership begins almost all of the panels and events are all situated in the outdoors, meanwhile almost all of the panels in the present of the story, take place withindoors. A sense of claustrophobia, and constraint. We see how what is at the center of life has absolutely transformed.

I read this work as a story testifying in part to the isolation of motherhood – as the protagonist is trying to reestablish her identity, her artistry – separate from partnership or motherhood.

The absolute release at the end which is mirrored in both the use of color by the decision to engage in the act of “ruining” is powerfully an act of reclaiming. The last frame – a panoramic style view of the room – is the largest frame – symbolizing the openness and sensation of freedom that the protagonist is experiencing.

Stephen Collins – In Room 208

The opening four frames establish a sense of movement, while giving us a panoramic view of the world – the characters climb the hills, and against the environment they seem tiny. The hotel, shrouded in darkness with the whipping of the wind feels foreboding – almost like a horror. The world before they enter is wide and open. Incredible use of those first four frames to move us through time.

As soon as they approach and then enter the hotel on the first page the frames become tiny in comparison; enclosed, a foreshadowing towards the small room they will remain in. I find the way lines are used as a narrative element throughout the work incredible; at first a topographic representation of the land, then the sheets on the bed. The use of these lines cues us into the topography of bodies that the story is moving towards. Beautiful. Again Collins uses one intact image broken into two frames on page two to move us through time – from day into morning – and now the mapping of the hills onto the “linen landscape” is ever more visible. The first frame on the third page collapses time and demonstrates repetition. The drooping flowers seem almost gravitationally pulled by the laziness of the couple, reaching down towards the earth as if to quench the thirst of sleep. And then the perspective shift, as the tourists come to view them, the bodies become as big as the world, because they become the entirety of the world to the characters – all that there is, or should be. Wow.

Humanity in Graphic Stories

The four graphic stories varied by their style and tone. The first story, that was untitled by Laurie Proud, was a bit peculiar and harrowing. The main character, “Aubrey” or what the neighborhood kids call him is drawn in such a disturbing style, and the purpose of this story is to maybe tell a “legend” of some sort; the type of horror story or strange tale that is infamous in the town. The fact that this “Aubrey” character is always depicted smiling is creepy and uncanny. On page nine, the author writes that they had a “dream about Aubrey” and the weird distorted skin coloring and limbs is disturbing. It gets even more frightening on page 10 when his arms are all spider-like in one panel, and he’s hovering in the corner of the room in another. It leaves the reader with a sense of curiosity, on the same page when the narrator’s father is mentioned to go crazy and “burned the shed down” (10). I had an unnerving, unsatisfied feeling at the end.

The second story, “Cat Sitter” by Scott Dessert had a completely different feel to it. It was illustrated mainly by collage, and that was fascinating to look at all the details. There is a lack of words or type fonts in the story, besides the clippings of words from magazines. It is also strange because there is a lot going on in the art. But its tone is more friendly and inviting than the first story, even comical at times. My favorite panel is on page 28 when the cat the protagonist is watching/feeding is seen wearing a suit and looking at “his” watch. The comic is absurd and interesting, all at the same time.

The third story, “Paint” by Vivien McDermid, was beautifully written and the art was fabulous! The only issue is the thick cursive is hard to decipher and read sometimes. Other than that, it is was an adorable love story, depicting places and experiences by the author. I like the image, “the water looks like coke” (50) because it is an unusual description of water, which is usually described as clear blue or murky green. I enjoyed the end with the family and their home. It vaguely reminded me of rooms in IKEA with the simple furniture and bright colors. The late panel on page 52 is great because the mother decides to paint the rest of the house with colorful paint with her daughter instead of getting mad at her for ruining the walls/furniture/etc. This story was upbeat and childish in a way, compared to the others. It had a cheerful tone and a more conventional graphic style.

The last (fourth) story, “In Room 208” by Stephen Collins, was my favorite out of the four graphic short stories. The style was more fluid and sophisticated, and it was drawn all in black-and-white, which elevated it in some way to me. Its tone was more languid and melancholy (towards the end) as well as being wholly surreal. There was a mystical element to it as well. The art reminded me of woodprints, where wood is carved out, and then black ink is brushed over the surface of the wood (inverse) and then the artist prints it on clean white or cream paper (preferably light color so the ink will contrast nicely). The idea of never getting out of bed can be seen as universal. It could also refer to depression, and the inability to find meaning in life anymore.

The author plays with this idea of what it means to be human. For example, on page 80 the couple somehow stays alive, while never getting out of bed, and the innkeepers install a glass window (viewing wall) where tourists could “watch” the lazy couple do nothing all day. On the next page (81) the last panel dives even further into magical realism, or surreal art where body parts and curling black body hair becomes displaced and almost non-human looking anymore. It is as if Collins has stripped his characters of their humanity, making them look like valleys and hills, rocks and grass. There’s an earthy quality to it. Could the steeple represent a tongue or tonsil, while surrounded by sparse teeth?

Color in graphic short stories

What struck me most about this set of graphic short stories was how much color choices affected the atmosphere of the narratives. The color palette did the work of setting development in written narratives. It helped orient us in space and gave us important clues that graphics have no space to explain in text.

The navy/black/gray of "In Room 208" established the mood of the piece as a sort of hushed, idle perpetual nighttime. This consistent sleepy color palette helped me to imagine the way that the many nights in the bed strung together as the couple continued to extend their stay. The dreaminess of it allowed me to embrace the narrative wandering into the imagined and impractical elements as it progressed.

Colors also served as important signifying markers for the reader such as the distinct red hair of the narrator in "Paint". By introducing us to herself as a bold red-head at the outset, we are able to follow her through changes of scene/flashbacks and feel grounded.

The muted watercolors of "Aubrey" invoke the foggy memories of childhood in England. I found that the dark colors made the panel with the fire stand in even starker contrast to the rest of the story and emphasized the intensity of the moment. The flames seemed such a bright orange against the dark gray smoke and made me think that this particular moment held a special significance in the narrator's life. There's very little back story about the father but just from seeing him standing there watching the shed burn brightly against the gray night we learn so much about him.

In "Cat Sitter" the playful use of color and mismatching patterns tips me off that this story will be more light-hearted. Even the use of the light wood on the floors in the cat-sitting house establishes a certain lightness of mood that sets the reader at ease and prepares them for the humor of the piece.

Our Ill Matching Teeth: Symbolism in Graphics

All of these graphics seemed to dig for a truth in daily life. The graphic that most moved me was by Laurie Proud. The drawings were fantastic, and I enjoyed the little details from WW2 life. The frame with the enlarged Aubrey dangling from balloons made me think of the anti-aircraft balloons Britain used to protect itself during bombings. Aubrey’s face is so grotesque; Proud really made me feel the terror the narrator had as a child. I was very interested about the father in the shed. I wondered what he was doing in there. Had he fought in the war? Was he suffering from some PTSD and that is why he never left the shed? I think Aubrey grew to represent the narrator’s anxieties about the father, especially when the narrator doesn't pick up pornography because they think Aubrey is watching them. It’s as if, in some scenes, Aubrey becomes a parental figure to the narrator. It was great how the graphic placed itself in a time period by the clothes the characters are wearing and the different objects in the panels. I would have known this took place around WW2 even if I hadn't been told such information because of the old schoolboy attire. Also, the colors made the whole graphic seem very somber, a feeling that I imagine encompassed Great Britain after WW2. Yes, they had won the war, but their major cities were destroyed and many of their citizens were lost as well.

“In Room 208” by Stephen Collins was very eerie. The story began almost like a horror story, especially with all the shadows and black and white in each panel. I felt the love between the husband and wife, and I enjoyed the imagery of their bodies being unknown landscapes. I really like this line on pg. 78: “Our ill matching teeth.” That line really made me think about awkward kisses and the idea that teeth need to fit together. I love it when images make me rethink my experience of love/my body. I don’t know what to make of the latter half of the story. I was pleased that there wasn't much fat shaming when the couple began to grow enormous. To me, Collins seemed to marvel at their extraordinary forms. With their fat, the couple seemed to become the Earth itself. I like the idea that heaviness makes us rooted to the Earth.

I'm not sure what "Cat Sitter" by Scott Dessert meant, but the graphics were trippy. The chaos of each panel really gave the story a surreal feel for me. I loved when the cat has dressed like a human; the cat was the business man and the king. The cat was definitely in charge, no matter what the narrator had in mind. The narrator seems to be lost in the first couple of panels. His face is all shadowy and sad. His room is empty and there's a spilled bottle of wine. Maybe he is an alcoholic? The world around him is chaotic, the people around him screaming while he is silent. He seems to smile when he meets the cat. The cat makes him laugh even when it makes him bleed. This could be a story about a man battling with his depression, The cat could symbolize his depression. Maybe it's actually about a man who finds a cat and the cat helps him become a happier person. Maybe the cat represents his battle with alcoholism? And the cat is there to help him get his life back on track. The cat taps him on the shoulder, reminds him of his duties.

Depression Arc in Paint

I most enjoyed the graphic story Paint by Vivien McDermid because I was able to identify and empathized with the depression arc in the story. It may not have been clear to everyone but I could clearly recognize the undercurrents of mental illness that were present in this piece.

Firstly I enjoyed how the use of color throughout the images seemed to directly conflict with the sad nature of the story. This resonated with me in how the images portrayed the struggle of people with mental illness to cover their issues with false happiness. The depression in this piece is masked by bright colors and the female character is also masking her sadness from her family trying her best to continue about her day. I found this to be an excellent use of the art of the graphic to convey a complicated concept that words cannot entirely express.

From the beginning of this piece there are indicators of a depression arc that continues throughout the piece. The mother gives her child to what seems like daycare and instantly feels guilty and awful blaming it on her ‘motherly anxieties’ and not wanting to give in to these anxieties. Anxiety is often coupled with depression where the littlest thing can become the point of severe stress that then contributes more to the anxiety.

The symptoms continue from here with the female character saying her back is ‘sore and tight’ indicators of physical manifestations of mental symptoms. This happens again when she says she is ‘aching all over’ I associated these specific types of symptoms as related to depression. Her pain doesn’t seem to have a specific cause and is located in multiple parts of her body. The feelings are of soreness and aches are very commonly reported by people with depressive disorders.

The middle section that takes place in the past then could seem contradictory but instead I believe it supports this reading. She talks about this time that was 4 years in the past where she seems very happy. She reports feeling ‘weightless’ during this time, or more importantly she ‘imagines she felt weightless’ she is trying to remember feelings she might of had of happiness but can only imagine these feelings because she doesn’t have them anymore. Saying she may have once felt weightless implies that she now feels heavy instead adding to the evidence of depression. The scene with Errol and the pond also interested me and I wonder if the darkness of the pond is a type of metaphor for the dark sadness she is going to eventually fall into. This may be reaching though.

There are a few more subtle indicators of a depressive disorder in this piece. In the scene with her painting the still life the female narrator says that ‘one of these days’ she will throw a party. This to me is very recognizable, a person with depression wanting to one day do things when they are happy. She also comments how the objects around her are merely ‘anchors’ this seems a blatant reference to putting emotions into objects when relationships and people are harder to connect with. Thee frame in which she is lying in a fetal position she comments that she could lie there all day but has to ‘get some work done’ the only thing seeming to keep her from sleeping all the time is the fear of failure and the need to support her family. She later comments that she ‘can’t get up’ and her husband only brushes her off saying she just needs to shower and she’ll feel better. This is common in those around someone with mental illness, there is a sense that someone can just snap out of their depression. She even tries to employ this method when she comments ‘I’m going to be laid back and whimsical today’ if she just tries to be happy it will naturally come. This sadly is common and hardly ever works.

The final scene when she chooses to join in with her daughter’s painting is then a really powerful moment. In this moment she is actually able to be momentarily happy she welcomes this feeling an embraces it, painting with her daughter trying to be happy. This, to me, aids in making this a depression arc and not just a story of depression. She tells of when she was happy then the present and then ends with a moment where she seems to be able to embrace happiness again even if just momentarily. In the process of recovering from mental illness every little victory is important and this comic shows the importance of her little moment painting with her daughter. 

How Laurie Proud and Scott Dessert Used Mixed Media to Tell Their Story

There is something about graphic novels that seems so personal to me. Maybe it is because there is an extra level of "telling" in the piece- the visual level literally allows the readers to see what the author has experienced- or maybe it is because the author has gone an extra step to tell their story, mixing medias. In the graphic stories that we read for this week, the four authors used different story telling aspects to their pieces, as well as different visual styles.

In Laurie Proud's "Aubrey", the readers are introduced to various aspects of Proud's life in just a few pages. The grayness of the images throughout the graphic story reflect the aftermath of the war as well as Proud's father's depression, which can be assumed to be brought on by struggling to adjust to life after the war, as well as possibly developing PTSD and recovering from the horrors of war. Aubrey himself could also represent an aspect of life after the war; he is treated differently from the other children and Proud mentions that Aubrey "-couldn't speak properly and that made him scary to us kids" (Proud 7), and while Aubrey's speech patterns could just be different due to a speech impediment, it is also possible that Aubrey is one of the many who immigrated to new places after the war.

Another aspect of "Aubrey" I found interesting was that Proud's gender is never mentioned. I gathered details from specific pictures, such as the scene where the missing boy in Proud's class is shown. There are only boys in the image, and they are all wearing uniforms, so I assumed that Proud was male because of uniformed, private school feel to the image. In his bio, Proud is identified by he/him pronouns, but we actually never see him in the piece. Aubrey and the missing boy are the only ones who have appearances from the front, but the father has an appearance from the back. The father's appearance from the back represents his withdrawal away from the world outside his mind, and the burning of the shed represents destroying the mental prison that Proud's father found himself trapped in. Interestingly, the brightest splash of color in the whole piece comes from the flames surrounding the shed. The fire forces Proud's family to move locations, so the flames in a way represent a new beginning as well as freedom from the grayness of one's mind. England also has a reputation for being cold and gray, so the flames can also serve as a direct contrast to Proud's surroundings. Just like Aubrey's different style of speech and appearance made him stand out to Proud, the intense color of the flames stood out in Proud's mind, enough to be the most colorful thing in the piece.

In "Cat-sitter", the situation at hand, just like in Proud's "Aubrey" is an everyday interaction. But instead of with a strange boy, Scott Dessert's piece focuses on a man looking after a cat. This is not his cat, so it can said that "Cat-sitter" is actually not based on an everyday interaction for the author. The art style, which consists of what appear to be magazine images, can be representative of Dessert's sudden shift in his daily routine in taking care of this cat. The cut and paste images are from a life that is not his own, and the sharp images pasted together represent an uneasiness that the authors feels, and one that the readers can feel.

Taking care of a cat seems like a mundane, regular thing to do but for someone who does not usually take care of an animal, especially a cat, it can be nerve wracking. The idea of handling someone's else beloved pet and the chance of something going wrong is enough to make the person responsible worried. The cat in question is shown to be an especially finicky animal, and the author is not used to the behaviors of cats. The splatters of blood on the list of what to do and not to do with the cat is a grim reminder to the author that taking care of an animal is not just something he can wing. Once he reads the list and follows it, the cat responds positively to him, but Dessert does not respond well to the cat's wants and needs. In the final image, the cat is portrayed as a monarch and Dessert as its subject, which highlights how ridiculous Dessert feels the list of what to do and what not to do to be.

Best,
Dani

Magic Realism in the Graphic Story

One thing I really love about graphic stories is the ability to expose deep emotional weight through surreal, fantastical or exaggerated representation. In many of these stories, not a lot really 'happens', but what lingers is the potency of experience, of looking at something (seemingly) mundane as signifcant, twisted or weird.

In 'Catsitter' for example, a man gets a phone call, takes a train and feeds a cat. Its an extreme close up of an everyday situaiton. The lack of captions or dialogue made the story seem outside of time--it is a representational exploration of the power dynamic between human and cat. The cat becomes a business man, and a king to show who is in charge.The collage-y imagery gives kind of a captive/ransom note/muffled undertone. It's also super bizarre and funny.

Laurie Proud's story is a meditation on a moment in childhood. She shows the way that she and other children turned a boy into a supernatural monster. The majority of the images themselves in this story are pulled from her imagination, breaking down the boundaries of what is real and what is percieved. The  story focuses on the fear of a lurking creature--but the undercurrent of her depressed father post-WWII--gives it meaning. The images in this story are especially revealing--the house they move into is dark and lifeless, there are no people. The feeling of isolation and alienation that comes from the dark, foreboding images adds another layer to the children's cruel fascination and alientation with 'Aubery'.

The author is very present in the graphic novel because we are drawn in psychologically through both text and images. As a reader, the boundaries of perspective and its constructed nature are evident in the graphic story. Personally, I feel like there is a kind of a safety for the reader in the graphic novel--we are witnessing the dialogue of word and image that is both resonant and contained. The narrative distance is apparent. I don't know about you guys, but I think that reading graphic novels/stories is such a pleasant and satisfying experience, even if the material is difficult or heavy. To me, it feels like I am entering a world parallel to this one--where the rules and possibilities skewed. The impact of this world is explained through a metaphorical, parallel one. That just feels so cathartic and complete.

In these stories the author narrows in on a moment, gets so close up that the only way to explain the emotional truth is through vivid, jarring imagery outside what is expected. In Room 208 by Stephen Collins, a pretty normal honeymoon becomes fantastical and grotesque when the couple stays in bed, becoming bloated, transforming into a landscape with a graveyard of teeth. The stark black and white imagery clues in the reader, from the beginning, that the story has an ominous tone. Because the 'believable' scenes (checking in to the hotel) continue into the 'unbelievable' scenes (people looking in on the huge world's laziest couple) with the same quality and tone, they are given the same weight of 'realness'. But, when something happens outside the constructs of normality in such a matter-of-fact tone it forces the reader to question its meaning. Is the narrator representing what the rest of their relationship felt like? What does it mean that they seem to be transversing their own bodies? I think there is a lot of room for nuance in the graphic story.

In 'Paint' by Vivien McDermid, the surreal element comes at the end when the narrator and her child paint the entire house. There was an undercurrent of nostalgia, of feeling 'trapped' or stuck throughout the story. I felt like the ending spoke to the image earlier where the narrator says "its nice to have nice things but they are like anchors". She and her child are irreverently destroying/reimagining/transforming the aparatment. Again, I feel like the ending leaves open a more than one reading. Is it sweet? Sad? Beautiful? Crazy? All those things? Overall, I think that the use of magic realism allows for many possibilities to exist simultaneously, representing the complexity of being human.

reading graphics

The link: http://www.theguardian.com/books/interactive/2011/nov/06/graphic-short-story-prize

These 4 stories and examine all their elements

Laurie Proud, Page 7

Cat Sitter, by Scott Dessert Page 25

Paint by Vivien McDermid page 49

In Room 208, by Stephen Collins, Page 77

Longing for induction

Now that I’m on the other side of having handed in the first draft of my thesis, I’m thinking a lot about all of the things: form, structure, voice, character development, relationships, place, geography, socio-political implication. But perhaps more than anything, I am finding myself concerned with the feeling of a work. So I’ve been doing something a little bit different while reading Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost A Woman. Rather than map theme, or source her use of imagery, or follow my normal compulsions, I’ve been instead tracking my emotional reactions through the text, and simply noticing what has brought me into or kept me out of the story. In the following I will document some of my reflections.

I didn’t emotionally enter the work until the bottom of page 50, when young Esmeralda finds sanctuary in the candy store of the elderly couple outside of Junior High School 33, after she is beaten up. There is something about the kind of vulnerability that opens up/is exposed, in the exchange between young Esmeralda, as the wife cleans her wounds, and the old man exclaims his anger at the injustice of the incident. Something about the way in which they notice her wounds gestures towards a kind of care that she does not receive at home (even under the guard of over-protective of her mother). That moment of incredible tenderness elevates the isolation her character is experiencing, and makes visible a deep need that her character is wrestling with, to which words have perhaps been applied earlier in the work, but the directness of which drains emotional impact. This tiny scene represents a gentle use of juxtaposition for the way it is set against the entirety of her life. The softness unveils a whole world of feeling that the character has been bottling up and hiding, even from us as readers. There is a release, and that release makes room for a moment of direct contact with the heart of that character’s experience. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t see the struggle or stakes until page 50, but it is in that moment that my heart communes for the first time, and the most.

What this makes me wonder about is the way in which Santiago is perhaps unintentionally Indicating throughout parts of this memoir. Indicating, that approach so shunned within Method Acting, is defined, in part, as, "behaving or emoting without being connected to a truthful impulse." (http://www.jbactors.com/actingreading/actingencyclopedia.html#IAnchor)

What page 50 cued me so poignantly into was a sensation of emotional disconnect particularly through earlier parts of the work, in part as a result of the flitting between moments in time/scene, the half-constructions of characters, and the introduction of events that seemed as though they could hold potent emotional consequence (Franky’s illness and death for example); each that were afforded little treatment. I had a sense that specters lurked through out the disconnected scenes, where a whole world of human feeling was living, but I couldn’t tap in.

Other elements that contribute to this are the many moments in the work where Santiago mobilizes over-explanation – intellectually – and/or repetition of simple language that simply reiterates an idea or a feeling that has already been stated/explored, which for me stunted revelation of meaning, felt heavy handed, and generated an energy that made me feel as though her narrator was withholding and/or not trusting the scenes, environment, bodies, to hold the story she was intending us to encounter through the text.

For example, “So in addition to having to wait ten years after graduation to make a living in my art, I also had to find a new name, since Esmeralda Santiago was clearly to long to fit on a marquee, hard to remember, and definitely foreign.” (68) when the implication was already present in the paragraphs preceding.

It felt defended.

Another aspect of the work which created distance for me was the use of generalities. For example, Puerto Rico is a dominant fixture in this work as a source of identity and against which her life in NYC is continually placed against, and yet, Puerto Rico is given so little definition, rolling hills, mud, sand, images that feel static and one-dimensional. It’s not that I don’t believe the attachment is there, but it is that the language and nuance she chooses to utilize don’t transport me into the center of that feeling of longing. The loss is that I don’t know what these places then truly mean to the character. An example of this: “The skyline of Manhattan receded like an enormous wall between us and the rest of the United States.” (42) I don’t know how to locate the feeling in this because I don’t know what she is attempting really to indicate.

I wonder if part of Santiago’s strategy was an attempt to accurately portray the perspective of the character of for example her 14 year-old self – that perhaps was not tuning into nuance but rather reacting to large ideas/images/feelings without much specificity…

I also wonder what forces Santiago was responding to, perhaps consciously and perhaps unconsciously that guided her to build the work with so many walls to protect it – which I understand could be a natural defense resulting from the risk that it takes to offer stories normatively set outside of/expressly unwelcome within the canon of dominant American narratives.

So many more thoughts, but I’ll leave it here.

Narrative Confinement in Almost a Woman

(Andrea and Beck wrote this post collaboratively after hours of heated discussion and reading the book together. We found the book to be challenging in its opacity--an impenetrable wall of minutae and hours of tedium, navigating through a life without many choices trapped in the mind of a narrator who seemed to be withholding vital parts of her emotional landscape.)

As a critical reader interested in creative craft, while reading the book we searched for authorial craft choices to thicken the story. We felt as though these intentions were either lacking or lost; there were no dramatic perspective changes, aside from a flew flashes, the narrative is mostly linear. Desires as a reader: the boring, repetitive, regimented nature of the narrative and of Esmeralda's life embodies her feelings as trapped in a household and society full of conflicting expectations. From a young age she was thrust into American society with an immigrant identity. This double consciousness plays out in expectations of American standards of whiteness, cleanliness, and class in conjunction with controlling family and longing for Puerto Rico as a place and as a culture. At school she faces not living up to American childhood standards especially when her classmates physically fight her when they see her being successful by her acceptance into performing arts high school. Her symbol to them, as an other, as an outsider, as a lower class immigrant, gives them evidence that she should never be successful.

Race shows up overtly in these pages as Esmeralda navigates through school and the working world as a white-passing child of immigrants. It also shows up more implicitly, as in the leitmotif of how her skin color looks with different clothing colors (both in her junior high graduation and much later, socializing with Bill), a subtle reminder of how her race is perceived as Puerto Rican to some, not Puerto Rican to others, "other" on welfare applications. Another subtle moment where there is coded commentary on Puerto Rico-as-colony is when Esmeralda acknowledges the Vietnam war (in passing). From the images she sees on TV, the landscape of Vietnam resembles the landscape of Puerto Rico. Esmeralda identifies strongly with the resistance in Vietnam and represents a commentary on colonialism.

Esmeralda faces criticism and arbitrary rules at every turn, in school, at home and even after she turns 18. There is some extremely loaded dialogue between Esmeralda and Otto the first time they see each other after her parents had show up at Otto's sister's party. "'They treat me like a child.' 'It is good,' he consoled. "You are not American girl. They are free.' "'I want to be free,' I hinted, but he didn't get it" (189). There is just so much coded between this short exchange. Otto views her parents' overprotective and controlling behavior as a 'good' thing and that she shouldn't worry about anything because her family is 'free' from Puerto Rico. She is "not American girl." Esmeralda does not view it this way, she often longs for Puerto Rico and says that if she ever gets enough money she'll go back there, a constant desire for a place that at this point in the story exists primarily in memory as most of her family now lives in New York.

There is a lot of logistical stuff in here about their living situations that doesn't do much. it seems like an inventory of the many number of places they lived, but it's an empty inventory since Esmeralda never gets attached to them. The emptiness of these descriptions contributes to her sense of placelessness.

He's also dismissive of her expression of a lack of agency in her claustrophobic family. The controlling treatment of her family towards Esmeralda beyond the age of 18 is probably contributing to the sort of mature child tone that never develops into a critical adult looking back perspective, although we kept hoping that it would. She did not have a lot of models of what other lives were like, and didn't spend time imagining them as we've seen other characters do. Her call center job is a moment where she is able to escape the drudge of her own life into others' stories even though they're not positive stories. "'I hope you never have to go through what I went through,' a woman began her tale, and I paid close attention. Each life was a message I had to decode, clues for what lay ahead. Not a blueprint, but a road map from which to choose a path." (197)

When Esmeralda is younger, her matter-of-fact tone fits her age. She knows as little as a girl her age ought to - when father leaves, she reports that he "wrote to say he'd married a woman none of us had ever heard of and had moved to a town none of us had ever visited" (30). In this case, the lack of information communicated more than the actual details would have: it expresses that her father has moved on into the world that is unknown and inaccessible to her. But the voice doesn't change as she grows up, but she doesn't seem to be a child trapped in the body of an adult in the way that a trauma survivor might be. Her voice just sounds sheltered, which is surprising considering how much raw real world shit she is exposed to. Despite all of it, though, Esmeralda is a disciplined adult who balances the demands of school, work, and family.

Our theory is that this is possibly a book that was written too soon, as we have discussed in class, that can have an impact on the story. In this case, it seems the impact was that Esmeralda didn't have enough distance from her life in order to tease out a story arc that would compel a reader. Characters and experiences show up and pass by without ever reappearing, giving us no incentive to become emotionally invested in anyone. The only character that evokes feeling is her poor mother, who is perpetually pregnant, sad, and in poor health. While Negi plods through life, her mother remains stuck.

Similarly to Winterson and Zeus' Daughter, this memoir loses cohesion toward the end. It speeds up, disintegrates, looses some of the little drive it had as Esmeralda slogged through her adolescence. Even the title seems to reinforce our theory - Almost A Woman is so generic it could apply to every coming-of-age story of a FAAB or female-identified person.

–––––––

Beck: "What the fuck...she was 18 in the '60s living in NYC and she didn't do any hard drugs. I guess you can grow up in the face of adversity and still turn out to be a total square."
Andrea: "Ugh. She probably passed Patti Smith on the way to work every day."

Narrative Confinement in Almost A Woman

(Andrea and Beck wrote this post collaboratively after hours of heated discussion and reading the book together. We found the book to be challenging in its opacity--an impenetrable wall of minutae and hours of tedium, navigating through a life without many choices trapped in the mind of a narrator who seemed to be withholding vital parts of her emotional landscape.)

As a critical reader interested in creative craft, while reading the book we searched for authorial craft choices to thicken the story. We felt as though these intentions were either lacking or lost; there were no dramatic perspective changes, aside from a flew flashes, the narrative is mostly linear. Desires as a reader: the boring, repetitive, regimented nature of the narrative and of Esmeralda's life embodies her feelings as trapped in a household and society full of conflicting expectations. From a young age she was thrust into American society with an immigrant identity. This double consciousness plays out in expectations of American standards of whiteness, cleanliness, and class in conjunction with controlling family and longing for Puerto Rico as a place and as a culture. At school she faces not living up to American childhood standards especially when her classmates physically fight her when they see her being successful by her acceptance into performing arts high school. Her symbol to them, as an other, as an outsider, as a lower class immigrant, gives them evidence that she should never be successful.

Race shows up overtly in these pages as Esmeralda navigates through school and the working world as a white-passing child of immigrants. It also shows up more implicitly, as in the leitmotif of how her skin color looks with different clothing colors (both in her junior high graduation and much later, socializing with Bill), a subtle reminder of how her race is perceived as Puerto Rican to some, not Puerto Rican to others, "other" on welfare applications. Another subtle moment where there is coded commentary on Puerto Rico-as-colony is when Esmeralda acknowledges the Vietnam war (in passing). From the images she sees on TV, the landscape of Vietnam resembles the landscape of Puerto Rico. Esmeralda identifies strongly with the resistance in Vietnam and represents a commentary on colonialism.

Esmeralda faces criticism and arbitrary rules at every turn, in school, at home and even after she turns 18. There is some extremely loaded dialogue between Esmeralda and Otto the first time they see each other after her parents had show up at Otto's sister's party. "'They treat me like a child.' 'It is good,' he consoled. "You are not American girl. They are free.' "'I want to be free,' I hinted, but he didn't get it" (189). There is just so much coded between this short exchange. Otto views her parents' overprotective and controlling behavior as a 'good' thing and that she shouldn't worry about anything because her family is 'free' from Puerto Rico. She is "not American girl." Esmeralda does not view it this way, she often longs for Puerto Rico and says that if she ever gets enough money she'll go back there, a constant desire for a place that at this point in the story exists primarily in memory as most of her family now lives in New York.

There is a lot of logistical stuff in here about their living situations that doesn't do much. it seems like an inventory of the many number of places they lived, but it's an empty inventory since Esmeralda never gets attached to them. The emptiness of these descriptions contributes to her sense of placelessness.

He's also dismissive of her expression of a lack of agency in her claustrophobic family. The controlling treatment of her family towards Esmeralda beyond the age of 18 is probably contributing to the sort of mature child tone that never develops into a critical adult looking back perspective, although we kept hoping that it would. She did not have a lot of models of what other lives were like, and didn't spend time imagining them as we've seen other characters do. Her call center job is a moment where she is able to escape the drudge of her own life into others' stories even though they're not positive stories. "'I hope you never have to go through what I went through,' a woman began her tale, and I paid close attention. Each life was a message I had to decode, clues for what lay ahead. Not a blueprint, but a road map from which to choose a path." (197)

When Esmeralda is younger, her matter-of-fact tone fits her age. She knows as little as a girl her age ought to - when father leaves, she reports that he "wrote to say he'd married a woman none of us had ever heard of and had moved to a town none of us had ever visited" (30). In this case, the lack of information communicated more than the actual details would have: it expresses that her father has moved on into the world that is unknown and inaccessible to her. But the voice doesn't change as she grows up, but she doesn't seem to be a child trapped in the body of an adult in the way that a trauma survivor might be. Her voice just sounds sheltered, which is surprising considering how much raw real world shit she is exposed to. Despite all of it, though, Esmeralda is a disciplined adult who balances the demands of school, work, and family.

Our theory is that this is possibly a book that was written too soon, as we have discussed in class, that can have an impact on the story. In this case, it seems the impact was that Esmeralda didn't have enough distance from her life in order to tease out a story arc that would compel a reader. Characters and experiences show up and pass by without ever reappearing, giving us no incentive to become emotionally invested in anyone. The only character that evokes feeling is her poor mother, who is perpetually pregnant, sad, and in poor health. While Negi plods through life, her mother remains stuck.

Similarly to Winterson and Zeus' Daughter, this memoir loses cohesion toward the end. It speeds up, disintegrates, looses some of the little drive it had as Esmeralda slogged through her adolescence. Even the title seems to reinforce our theory - Almost A Woman is so generic it could apply to every coming-of-age story of a FAAB or female-identified person.

–––––––

Beck: "What the fuck...she was 18 in the '60s living in NYC and she didn't do any hard drugs. I guess you can grow up in the face of adversity and still turn out to be a total square."
Andrea: "Ugh. She probably passed Patti Smith on the way to work every day."

Esmeralda and her Mami

The memoir, Almost A Woman by Esmeralda Santiago was beautiful in the way that it portrayed artistic youth and growing up Puerto Rican in Brooklyn, New York in the 1960s. There was powerful language embedded throughout the text, and important themes of identity and sexual identity, racism, class differences/class struggles, transition, and family dynamics. There was so much meat in the story, and the author portrays the ups and downs of growing up poor with an abundance of siblings. Esmeralda’s devotion to her mother, called simply by: Mami is adherent in the story of her adolescence. She is perpetually embarrassed by her, and yet admires her completely.

It is interesting to note the theme of transition in the text. Mami goes from one man to another man, as the protagonist does as well in the second half of the book. Mami also is in this perpetual cycle of pregnancy and birth, and as her family grows larger, Esmeralda seems to distance herself from them. The protagonist also goes from love interest to love interest, as the novel progresses. Her mother seems to be overprotective when it comes to her dating life. But, at the same time she also protects her daughter with the utmost care. That one chapter, where she turns up uninvited at Otto’s sister’s party, was amusing because it reminded me of something that my own, “helicopter” overprotective mother would do. She also works various jobs, and the progression of jobs and movement to new apartments and houses is also a form of transition.

A line that demonstrates her life time and time again is seen when Santiago states, “In the cramped, noisy apartment where my mother struggled to keep us safe, where my grandmother tried to obliterate her pain with alcohol, where my sisters and brothers planned and invented their future, I improvised. When it hurt, I cried silent tears. And when good things came my way, I accepted them gratefully but quietly, afraid that enjoying them too much would make them vanish like a drop of water in the desert” (89). Good and bad events happen to Esmeralda, but she seems to find her identity along the way of discovering her talents and who she is as a person, and as a young woman.

Her family is full of hypocrites as well. There’s a scene when the grandmother tells her not to drink or smoke, while she herself is drinking hard liquor and smoking. Mami also tells her daughters that they have to be married (in a white dress in a Church) in order to be allowed to move out from the house, when she herself has had multiple lovers and eleven children out of wedlock. But this discipline that her guardian ensure is good advice overall, and benefits their daughters. Not one of them drops out of High School pregnant or gets into drugs etc. and Mami truly cares for her children’s well-being.

The term “algos” is repeated frequently in the text. It is meant to signify “trouble” or bad situations that young girls can find themselves in. what is puzzling is that even though Esmerelda is extremely close to her mother, she never tells her (or anyone else) about the street harassment she faces almost daily, and the bullying by the girl Lulu (which is mentioned a bit earlier). The word: Algos means “pain” or a “painful condition” in Greek. Whether or not the author knew this meaning or not, Mami uses this word as a precaution for all of her female adolescent children when they go out dancing together, or even go places unchaperoned.

Esmeralda sometimes doubts her artistic talents. “An artist should sacrifice for her art, I knew that. A part of me loved the romance of being a starving artist. But the voice that spoke loudest asked what chance an undertrained Puerto Rican Indian classical dancer had of supporting herself” (207). It was the Brooklyn and Performing Arts High School in New York City that truly inspired her love of acting, but most of all dance. There is so much related to dance in this novel, and it is much appreciated. The inclusion of art and dance in the novel is wonderful. It highlights how much she has learned, as a person, and how much discipline and bravery she has to have in order to keep on auditioning and performing her roles.

One quote that really spoke to me was when the narrator says near the end of the book, “Mami drilled into me that I only one asset. I wasn’t the prettiest of her six daughters, or the strongest of her children, but I was, she often said, intelligent. It was the power of that intelligence that I trusted” (287-288). Her distinct intelligence shoes up in many different places in the text. It shows up at the beginning when she first learned how to read/write/speak English, and translate for her mother in order to receive welfare. She also helps her mother by speaking perfect English to a white police officer in Manhattan one night, which initially saves their skin. Her intelligence also shows up when she goes to High School and later, to community college.

It is puzzling the way that she is entrapped by her (final) lover, Ulvi. He is the only boyfriend of hers that she gives up that intelligence and independence for a time. She loses touch with Nefttalí and Otto, rejects Sydney, Avery Lee, Jurgen and some others. Ulvi is her ultimate (sexual) secret, but he forces her to make the hardest decision in her life: whether to stay or go. But on the final pages, it is assumed that she chooses her Mami instead of going off to live independently with Ulvi. This shows her devotion to her family, and how romantic or sexual love is less important to her than the love she has for her family. This is all summed up when Santiago writes: “Over the years of watching Mami, La Muda, my aunts and cousins as they loved, lost, and loved again, I’d learned that love was something you get over. Of Ulvi left, there would be another man, but there would never, ever be another Mami” (310).

The self in Almost a Woman

            I loved Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago. It was felt very honest and true. Santiago’s ability to tell the mundane minute details of a person’s life weaved together so expertly made for a very enjoyable read. I very much enjoyed the fact each chapter, started with a quote and I found myself searching the pages of each chapter looking for the lesson or punchline that was coming with it. My favorite being the chapter titled “I don’t care if the whole world is going.” I truly believed this was another moment when Esmeralda pushed the boundaries between being “American” and “Puerto Rican.” When it turned out to go even further up the matriarchal food chain I marveled at Santiago’s ability to show the mother acting just as the daughter. It created a bond for me as a reader that was intensely strong.

           One of the things I followed while reading this text was the effect that moving had on the self. Esmeralda and her family moved a lot and with moving one has the chance to reinvent oneself or is forced to find the self that fits into the new environment. Because of this Esmeralda has trouble with the self. One of the first times we see this happens on page  83 “My secret life was in my head, lived at night before I fell asleep, when I became someone else. In my secret life I wasn’t Esmeralda Santiago, not Negi, not a scared Puerto Rican girl, but a confident, powerful woman whose named changed as I tried to form the perfect me. Esme, I was once. Emme, another time. Emeraude, my French class name. I tried Shirley, Sheila, Lenore, but names not based on my own didn’t sound quite right. So I was Emma, Ralda, or just plain E.” Here we see something that happens time and again. Esmeralda wanting to be someone else, to reinvent herself, but at the same time not straying too far from who she is, “names not based on my own didn’t sound quite right.”

              This want to be alone and the fear of it is seen later on page 106, “Whenever I so much considered going against her wishes, a little voice went off in my head to remind me that between her and the rest of the world was nothing but hostile eyes and low expectations….if I didn’t have Mami, id’ be alone. and at seventeen, I didn’t want to be alone.”

            The fracturing of the self and Esmeralda’s ablity and need to live in completely different world does have its tolls as seen on page 169, “I wiped off my makeup, then stripped. Esmeralda Santiago remained in the folds of each garment I took off and put away. Naked, nameless, I lay on my bed and slept. Half an hour later, Negi emerged, dressed in the comfortable clothes I wore at home. Another performance was about to begin, this on in Spanish.” This scene is so telling because it shows the true nature of her situation. She is never herself. In public she is acting, in school she is acting, at home she is acting. The constant movement and necessity of being in two places at once fractured Esmeralda’s self to the point where she almost doesn’t have one.

Best,

CF Pinto

Santiago Stradling Polarities

Esmeralda Santiago's Almost a Woman is aptly named as it chronicles her collection of almost-identities. In it she is almost Puerto Rican and almost American, almost an adult and yet still a child, excited by her body's potential when dancing in clubs and in school, while also deeply fearful of its sensuality and of seeming indecent. She is both the vital link between her family and the English world of the welfare office, and a 'traitor' to her native tongue as she practices vowels to erase her accent. The book captures her constant struggle to navigate the nebulous boundaries of her multiple selves. 

Santiago is constantly inhabiting contradiction. This book is crafted so that we may inhabit this muddled middle-ground where we feel what it means to be stuck in the in-between. As the story progresses and the narrator grows older, we are consistently confronted with new instances of this feeling so as to emphasize its ever-presence in her journey to understand herself. Santiago's narrative voice is extremely earnest. It does not stand at a distance from the reader, but is rather willing to show us those spaces within herself where she is least comfortable and least resolved. 

She questions the appropriate expression of sexuality and wonders how to manage just the right mix of two extremes she is warned not to be:

"There was a midpoint between a puta and a pendeja that I was trying to figure out, a safe space in which decent women lived and thrived and raised their families...One false move, and I ran the risk of becoming one or being perceived as the other"(15). 

She grapples with how to be faithful to her home country while living/surviving in her adopted one:

"Mami made it clear that although we lived in the United States, we were to remain 100 percent Puerto Rican. The problem was that it was hard to tell where Puerto Rican ended and Americanized began"(25). 

She wrestles with a racial identity at the center of two extremes that is never simply read by others:

"I wasn't black, I wasn't white. The racial middle in which I existed meant that people evaluated me on the spot"(242).

We (the readers) grasp the weight of these dualities on young Negi when she invites us into her "secret life"of imagined in dreams where she is blissfully absolved of her duty to constantly straddle these polarities. In it she has no particular identity,  her skin is "no particular color," and she speaks  "every language in the world" so that she is "never confused". To young Negi, this lack of confusion, represents a huge relief from the burden of her every day life where she is tasked with somehow rising above her current circumstances while never abandoning her roots. 

Otherizing Esmeralda: Enough of the Cleopatra roles!

The tension between mother and Americanization was interesting in Almost a Woman. Esmeralda is seemingly destined to disappoint/betray her mother when her family moves to the United States. To remain safe from peers and gross men on transportation, Esmeralda must learn how to blend in with the crowd, which means in part to learn English and to dress like the other girls at school. With help from her brothers and sisters, Esmeralda learns to speak English and is able to get into a fancy performing arts high school, but still her mother refuses to allow her to dress like American girls. Her mother believes that American girls wear too little clothing and their freedom puts them at risk to be murdered. Ironically, Esmeralda is way more likely to be victimized just by being an outsider (like riding on the bus alone). Just the color of her skin makes her a target because the men who violate her are confident that she has very little resources just by looking at her.

At the performing arts high school, I thought it was very telling that Esmeralda was only cast as Cleopatra. There are so many instances in this memoir when Esmeralda is otherized/rejected by the people around her. Her mother thinks she is becoming too American. Her siblings have trouble understanding how depend their mother is on Esmeralda--they wouldn't eat if Esmeralda didn't learn English so she could talk to the social workers. The kids at school think she thinks she's too good; they beat her up and terrorize her because she wouldn't be attending the same vocational school as them. Later, Avery seems to view her as more exotic than a fully realized person. I wish Santiago had focused more on the narrator's confusion concerning her lack of belonging. Esmeralda seems to remain grounded despite all the changes in her life, which might just be because of her close kit family, but I imagined a character under so much pressure would crack more. I'm not saying that Santiago doesn't address this, but I thought there was something emotional lacking in her tale.

The way Santiago ended chapters was very interesting. She has the ability to sum up/frame the chapter in a way that really brings home why she chose to write these scenes. For an example, on pg. 58, she writes, "In Puerto Rico I didn't know they were in reach. But in Brooklyn everyday was filled with want, even though Mami made sure we had everything we needed. Yes, I had changed. And it wasn't for the better. Every time Mami said I had changed, it was because I had done something wrong. . . . When she said I had changed, she meant I was becoming Americanized, that I thought I deserved more and was better than everyone else, better than her." In the chapter, Santiago writes about Esmeralda buying a yellow dress and refusing to consider her mother's more conservative choices. She is graduating from junior high school and is about to attend the performing arts high school, which is mentally and symbolically distancing her from her mother/family. And I think Santiago does a terrific job at cutting right to the heart of the conflict: Mami is uncomfortable because Esmeralda is not growing up to be like her. Yes, Mami wants a better life for her children, but she wants that better life on her terms, not theirs. And Esmeralda dressing like American girls and becoming an actress who must wear tight fitting clothing on stage is not what Mami had in mind for Esmeralda. Also, this is the beginning of Mami losing control over Esmeralda; it's extremely hard to control a child who lives in a world completely foreign to you. Mami can't control Esmeralda, and therefore she can't protect her. And that's an extremely terrifying thing for a protective parent.