While reading this essay the first thing that I connected with was “That in school, everywhere I turned, and often when I closed my eyes, I saw blonde blonde blonde?” When I started kindergarten I noticed all the little “pretty & sweet” girls, that got all the attention, had blonde curly hair and blue eyes. I was terribly envious, I was the little girl with mud colored straight hair & hazel eyes, a far cry from the Shirley Temple I wished I was. I really didn’t like those little girls with their curls and their dresses; I was the complete opposite, I to this day can’t wear a dress and feel comfortable. At the end of that school year we did a sort of superlatives, every class member being voted something. My friend Van got fastest runner, one of the little blonde girls got sweetest, & I much to my surprise got best hair. Funny enough, that day I found out while I was envying their golden locks, all they wanted was my long straight hair.
I thought that the author did an excellent job capturing every person’s attention with this topic, because no matter who you are, you have felt uncomfortable and self conscious in a situation. She also did a very good job interjecting select important events in the whole general timeline. Her use of dialogue made it easier to picture how she felt in the classroom and at home as well. I feel her emotion as she weaves the story from age three to the conclusion when she was however old. The transitions were never abrupt or really obvious, but I would’ve preferred her to paint a better mental image of the people she was around, more physical descriptions and personality descriptions as well. It would’ve helped me relate to her situation even more.
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3 comments:
Hey Sadie, I agree with you, I think she did a good job at catching everyone’s attention and drawing the reader in with something that everyone can relate to. Her transitions flowed well and she did well picking out what events to include in her essay and what to leave out. She said just enough to get her point across and not too much.
Hey Sadie! I can really relate to how you felt about the blonde girls in your class. All my life I had been around Mexican women, and when I entered kindergarten I was exposed to my first blonde girl. I couldn’t stop staring at her because I had never seen blue eyes before and I envied her for them. I was raised in LA county though, and most of the people I grew up with are far from blonde, and so I learned to see that not only little blonde girls who look like Barbies can be considered beautiful.
I agree with you in almost all you had to say about the characteristics of Nguyen’s essay except what you had to say about her characters. I think she painted her characters really well, they where easy for me to picture in my mind. Maybe one of the reasons she didn’t develop the personality of a character too much was because she didn’t know them well since she was isolated all the time, and she wanted to convey that isolation.
Hey Sadie :)...I also really relate to how everywhere you turned there was blonde girls with blue eyes. It kind of traumatized me a little bit at the beginning of school because I was always the loud girl, and always had something to say about everything. They were always well dressed and my mom let me where anything I wanted. I agree that she used good imagery too. Well I'll see you in class tomorrow, have a good night!
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