Dear Miles,
I think your idea is really strong already, but I thought that maybe if I tried to play devil's advocate it would become a little bit stronger, and maybe warrant a few things that you haven’t yet.
If you are showing us that Junot Diaz’s characters are just shells, that we can input our own meanings into them, then doesn’t that mean that this whole story is meaningless? What is the difference between this book and a choose-your-own-adventure book? Do they eventually come down to just catering to the reader, in what the reader wants or relates to?
One thing I think you most need to address is the quote by Junot Diaz that says he created this book in order to create a cultural mirror. To me, making a story to give a group of people place in the media is very different than making a story that everyone can relate to. And because this is a major argument people have been using, I think that it is something you have to acknowledge and respond to or at least warrant. Maybe you could find a way to make your idea fit within these reasons that he made this story. Like how a mirror (what Diaz compares it to) reflects who you are, regardless, and you are trying to prove that everyone gets reflected in this story.
From, Cale
Dear Malik,
As you said, it was late when you were writing your story and you made some typos, so I don’t really think correcting them would be very helpful to you. It seems more like something you would focus on in later stages. Instead, I’m going to focus more on your arguments.
One thing that I think you could work on that I mentioned in class is that you say the Junot Diaz quote is directed at people who are monsters. I don’t think Junot Diaz is calling would call his own people monsters, I think what he means by this is that he wants to stop them from becoming monsters, and he thinks it will help them to not be perceived as monsters if they have a cultural mirror.
Here are some possible objective correlatives within the story that you could work with: In the fantasy Junior has, the Americanized clothes his dad wears are maybe supposed to induce a feeling from the reader, although I’m not sure what. I think Mr. Garces Kiley also mentioned that the Ginkgo trees could be an objective correlative, so I think it would be worth checking out. Also I think as you mentioned in class, giving the mask Ysrael has might be worth a try, and I just thought of using the pictures of his father that he finds when he was young. To me these seemed really important, and maybe were added to create a feeling in the reader.
And I am still confused as to why the names Lucero and Aurora are objective correlatives. I think you understand why, but for me it lacks a warrant. So adding what warrants your thinking would clarify this a lot.
From, Cale
No comments:
Post a Comment