It wasn't too hard for me to decide that I wanted to write my Essay through a Feminist Lens. It's something I can relate to, being a female myself. and I usually look through stories with that lens in the first place. The first draft came fairly easily to me. I remembered three different instances of the top of my head of oppression that women faced in Homegoing. I gave these three woman their own paragraphs, and they became my body paragraphs. The revisions, however, really scrambled me. I had to delete the parts where I am recapping the story, which was more than half of my essay at this point. I also did not have it set up like a critical lens essay, and basically had to rewrite the entire thing.
Imaginative Non-Fiction
I created one list of questions that I used for both of my interviewees, but got very different answers for each one. They were so different that I had trouble combining nuggets from both of their stories in the beginning. One thing I looked back on for help was the movie I am Not Your Negro.. The movie had blended the stories of several blacks' rights activists superbly, it helped me in deciding that the most similar nuggets in my interviews would make my story blend well. I had somewhat of an idea for my story after both of my interviews. I knew the story would tilt more on the melancholy side, with a somewhat sweet ending. My first draft felt very incomplete, like part of the story was missing. I nearly stopped the story all together, and started to write a more cheerful one. It wasn't until the third draft that I had nearly doubled my writing with more details and additions. I spent quite a lot of time on my essay, even going to the point of having it peer critiqued so many times that eventually people just stopped finding things that could be improved. I couldn't be happier with the final product, but if you asked me to read that whole story again, I'd probably gag. You can only see something so many times before you grow tired of it, and let me tell you, I was ecstatic when I finally finished this story. I felt as if I had pulled more nuggets out of my first interview rather than my second. The nuggets I had taken from my first interview was having her father die from cancer, choosing all honors classes, going to a community college, working two jobs while have children, going back to school, and getting breast cancer. From my second interview I had taken parts where they had to move around a lot because their father was in the navy, not having a lot of friends as a kid, and a specific incident where they hurt a fellow student they thought was a bully.
Self Reflection of the Intersectionality and Perspectives Project
At the beginning of the semester I had really hoped to work on my writing skills, and I have to say I believe I had plenty of practice for that. Between our Imaginative Non-Fiction, our Critical Lens Essay, and all the writing assignments we had after Serial episodes I would say I was able to refine my writing. Something I could work on my senior year is taking more challenges. I was going to take the honors course for my English class, but was scared out of it at the last second. I ended up being the only student who had not taken it, and felt disappointed in myself for the rest of the semester. I want to take more honors courses next year than I did in this one. I believe it will be more beneficial to me in the long run.