Journal 3
I liked the way this author used the dialogue in this particular piece really helped bring alive the character development. This made the story move forward the way it was used. It made it more realistic than just solely the descriptions. It interested me because it purpelles the story forward. There is a big difference between thinking you want something and saying it. It touches my senses as a reader. You can hear the despair in the mothers voice and in her vocal voice in the story. Like when she thinks the new boy is her son and it is not. The kid is a different boy that looks like her son. And what the other mother says to her is so sad and it really empathizes how she is feeling. And what she has said and been doing through actions and thoughts. She refuses to leave the place she’s been imprisoned in when the lawyer comes to her. The dialogue is used to show why she won’t leave the place.
Overall, I think that this is one of the best short stories I have ever read. What caught my attention immediately was the author’s use of voice throughout the story. The tone of the story was dampening at points, but was also hopeful during others. The author chose to use different types of vocabulary which made the story seem so real. By using modern day language, we as readers were left with the impression that something like this could very much happen to us, or could be an ongoing issue throughout the world today. The author included dialogue throughout the story, which further adds to the main character and her own point of view. As I continued reading, I truly felt like this was an experience I was actually living. Cristina Henríquez had great awareness of the five senses, further submerging readers into a sense of body awareness. One specific section I was most intrigued by was when she thought the boy who arrived back at the facility was her son. Henríquez writes, “Her nose in his hair, the smell of him almost unbearably sweet. Her hands cupping his shoulders, the same slight shoulders, as small and breakable as eggs” (Henríquez, p. 155). As human beings, we can truly feel the same emptions as this character. When we miss something so much, we are more aware of how that particular thing smelled, felt, and changed our emotions when we were presented with it again. Her descriptive language of his shoulders also makes us picture a very small child, most likely undernourished, and so fragile that we may not want to touch them. Henríquez’s third person perspective (with uses of He, and She) was yet another brilliant choice she made. With this perspective, we feel empathy for the mother and hopeful when she thinks her son has finally come back. In the end, the descriptive voice this author used as well as her continuous flow throughout the entire story were results of her amazing use of tone.
The short story “Everything is Far from Here” by Christina Henriquez is now one of my favorite short stories. The plot of the story is so powerful to me of a woman having hope of finding freedom in America with her son but getting separated along the journey. She ends up in a detention center and waits to see her son everyday, scanning every new face that walks in. This to me represents the mind of a mother and shows how mothers don’t rest until they know their children are ok and to me that’s so powerful to show how someone can care so much for another person. The plot of the story highlights the mistreatment of women, race and people who decided to leave their home to find a better one. This story gives awareness of what is happening to people now. The mistreatment of women, in the story was powerful when the protagonist left her home and was raped by boys and was scared to still live there. She ends up talking to a lawyer about what she has gone through which he responds with “Boys will be boys” which to me is the most aggravating words someone could say because I look at it as an insult to boys and I wish others did too.. But the most powerful thing to me is the loss of hope that the protagonist went through after being brave enough to leave home and find better for her and her son and it not working out is something that saddens me.
How this author was able to generate this piece is unfathomable. A tormented mother by the absence of her son is portrayed so elegantly. There is so much delicate yet muddy imagery woven throughout the story. We see the mother in this warehouse for refugees adorned with advertisements, while she can’t even afford a one-dollar tampon. How dire her situation is, all the while worrying about her missing son, who she fears she is overlooking. The idea of leaving the building is treacherous, for fear of leaving Esme behind and never seeing him again. The reader sees the weary and exploited people surrounding this mother, feeling their hurt and suffering in all corners of the building. She is frantic and desperate for a glimpse of her child, asking anyone who will listen if they have seen him, but all are dead ends. The reader also feels the fear of the abuse of power many of the “authority” figures exhibit. Despite that, these “authorities” are merely boys taking advantage of women who are alone. We see how she has been beaten down and degraded in no way someone ever should have to experience. Yet she partially blames herself for wanting too much – survival and asylum – a basic level of protection for herself and her son. Viewing the Americans who see themselves as righteous heroes for protesting the refuge of others in such obscene circumstances, meanwhile, they live a life of luxury in the mother’s (and all refugee’s) eyes. This piece captures a heavy subject with such distinct details and imagery, transporting the reader into the mind of a grieving mother.
In her short story, Henriquez uses intense details to create the setting from the beginning and helps the reader live in the moment with the woman. We can feel her pain and everything she has lost to get to where she is. As the reader, we can feel the woman’s relief when she reaches the safe place, and yet we can understand the need to search for perhaps the only thing that kept her going: her son. As the story progresses, the reader can visualize how little this woman has. The author gradually tells more details about what this woman has gone through. She has lost her husband; she fled her home; she was threatened at gunpoint and raped by multiple boys that she knew, and upon arriving at the safe place, they took many of her belongings and only source of protection, and all she wants is to find her son. The reader can feel this woman’s desperation when she gives up her only valuable possession, her ring, to get information about her son, hopefully, only to be disappointed. We can feel her agony from waiting daily for something that may never come. And then, finally, the reader can see her son in the boy who arrived; the reader can feel the joy and relief with the woman, only to have that happy ending ripped away because she was so delusional she convinced herself this boy was hers. The reader is brought back to reality as the story ends in a less-than-pleasant way, as this is merely an example of real stories that happen daily.
One aspect of this story that is worth noting is the character development of “she”, the main character of the story. Throughout the story, her overall attitude towards her place of confinement changes from relief, to increasing anxiety, to, finally acceptance. She feels the relief directly upon her arrival, after what appears to be a very harrowing journey. Finally, she will have a place to simply rest. However, during the third paragraph, she inquires about the location of her son, and becomes worried when she does not see him. During the fourth paragraph, she starts to become senile, cracking up about an absurd possibility. This likely has the effect of taking her mind off of her worry temporarily. She appears to become even more senile after having another day or two to contemplate and ask about the fate of her son. This is shown by the questions she asks herself about forgetting what her son looks like after only being separated for maybe a week. Fast forward a few more nights, and she becomes (understandably) even more hysterical, screaming. This results in the guards confining her in a small space temporarily, which fails to relieve her angst. The peak of her hysterics occurs when she sees a little boy enter whom she believes to be her son. After embracing him wholeheartedly, another woman informs her that he is actually her son. Given the context leading up to the moment in the story, I am inclined to think that in her desperation, the main character was so desperate to see her son that she projected his image onto another child. When she is pulled away from the child, she screams in solitary confinement. This is the peak of her anxiety. Then, similar to “Good With Boys”, this story ends with a moment of peace and acceptance. Like the petals, she drifts in the wind and ceases to resist the circumstances of her situation. Ironically, now that she is calm, she appears to perceive herself as a monster for not incessantly worrying about her child.
One element of this story that really interests me is the author’s use of sentence structure. Many of the sentences are short, less than five or six words. It adds a punch to the statements and allows whatever is being said to stand alone and sink in. Whenever I read a paragraph I felt was particularly powerful, I would go back and notice it typically had one of these short sentences. The author also had a handful of long sentences, mainly lists, that juxtaposed the short sentences in a really satisfying way. This juxtaposition further amplified the strength of the choppy sentences employed throughout the piece.
This short story is emotional in a very effective way. This mother is deeply traumatized, both by the assault that she has faced and is fleeing from, in fear that it will continue to happen, and by the treatment she is receiving from authorities that dictate the facility in which she is kept waiting for her son, Gabriel. The author gives us a very clear understanding of this woman’s declining mental state as other mothers come and go with their children, and she comes to the realization that she may never see her son again, and also that she may not achieve the peace and recovery that she seeks. This is really powerfully written, especially when she mistakes another young boy for her son and is devastated when she realizes that it’s not.
I think for me, something that immediately jumped out at me was the fact that the author didn’t really give any character’s proper names. Some people might argue that this takes away from all the characters, but for me, this makes them not only more unique, but also it makes you imagine them and visualize them a lot more, especially since the author also uses a lot of detail when setting up a scene. The descriptive language that the author uses allows me to picture what is happening in my head, and it is both incredible and sort of brutal. The word choices used are both heinous and sad. Picturing a women crying over losing a loved one and getting held back and dragged into a plain room, like she’s an animal in a zoo, or a damn prisoner, makes me want to almost cry. This entire story is so heart wrenching, and I believe that was the intention that the author was going for. Also, almost every character in this story goes through something bad or traumatic and that makes me more drawn in and attached to the characters. You want to start rooting for something good to happen to these characters, after seeing all these bad things happen to them. It makes the story more engaging. Towards the end of the story, I notice names coming up more frequently, and at the same time, we see what appears to be a reuniting between the mother and her loved one. It seems that as the story seems to hit a bright light, the characters are given more light as well. Unfortunately, and this actually broke me, the author uses a fake out mechanic, as she describes the woman getting dragged away from her “son” by another woman. She is then dragged into another room and locked in, and the character is back to just being referred to as “She”. It is such a brutal story and the ending just makes me want to cry, and that is all because of the author’s impeccable storytelling abilities.
The plot of the story was well written and has the power to move any person. The elements in this story may or may not be relatable to many people that had come into America through the border. It firsthand shows the struggles that people go through at the U.S. and Mexican border, specifically women. Many Americans turn a blind eye to the border crisis and despise the Mexicans crossing into their borders. These people cannot imagine the reason why so many people are trying to get to America. Just like how Henriquez described that American’s are living comfortably at home without a care. They are unaware of the hardships that lead people to brave the hard journey to get to America. This single mother had lost everything. She lost her husband and got assaulted by the young neighborhood boys- the children of her friends. She was forced to be separated from her son and was put into a small room whenever she showed any sign of extreme emotion. They were all treated inhumanely and did not have basic hygiene necessities. The people are crammed into rooms and beds and do not have enough to eat. People take bribes, which we see in this story. The single mother is desperate to find her son that when a woman tells her she will share some information for her ring, she does not bat an eye in order to get any news about her son. The plot is able to put into perspective the things that the general American population is unaware of. It raises awareness that people need to do better and show some humanity towards the sufferings of innocent human beings.
The setting of this story is haunting. Very quickly, I was able to tell where this woman was. I could tell where she was going, and what she was going to deal with. While she continued to hope her son would come, the description of the setting makes the reader realize very quickly that he is not coming. I’ve heard countless stories describing immigration detention facilities, and very few end well. The mistreatment of the people in these detention centers is haunting, and it’s very evident in the description used in this story. One of the most horrifying parts of the setting of this story, however, was the boxes. The places they put people who were “misbehaving”. The woman explains it perfectly. The guards think the punishment will make the prisoners behave, but they only make them more hysterical. It’s understandable. Nothing about being locked in confinement calms a person down, it only proves to make one’s mental state worse. In this story, the woman described another setting. When she saw the Americans protesting outside of the facility, she imagines their warm, comfortable, safe homes. She describes the privilege they have to be out there, fighting against other people’s right to safety. There’s a sense of rightfully bitterness and disdain for the people who couldn’t possibly understand what she’s been through.
Journal #3: One of the most interesting things in Everything is Far From Home by Cristina Henriquez that particularly stood out to me during this reading was the usage of voice. The story is told with an intimacy as if we’re hearing the main character’s thoughts, her inner voice, but she isn’t the narrator. We aren’t actually hearing things from her perspective, we are being told what she’s doing, we are being told what she’s feeling, we are being told about her past; but the story is never told by her. The main character is detached from the reader, by not hearing her thoughts as the short story progresses, we can observe in the third person. Getting to know her feelings and emotions, her voice, became the underpinning of the story for me. I feel like this could have been a stylistic choice, it added to her feeling of disempowerment and otherness. She can’t even speak for herself as you listen to her story. It asked for your empathy, but also kept you at a distance. Whether that was the author’s intent or not, I really liked that aspect of the story because it was so impactful. It made me think about alienation, it made me feel otherness, through this stylistic device I felt the horror of her situation was emphasized. She has no voice.
Journal #3
I want to talk about the voice Christina Henriquez uses in this short story. As she tells this story our main character is experiencing cruel and inhumane treatment, the likes of which most of us can’t even imagine.. As we watch this woman’s spirit break, the voice remains matter of fact and direct. It somehow makes the story that much more heartbreaking to have it told this way. You aren’t being asked to care. You are simply being presented with a truth, and it exists whether or not you want it to. For me this was a piece of why the story spoke to me the way it did. Because so badly you want to help this woman or you want someone to help her. Yet the narrator’s calm and cool voice contrasted with that of the main character. Her voice is desperate and grows more so as time passes. At one point she asks, “Had she wanted too much? Safety for herself and for him? Was that too much?” Hearing her ask this question, wondering if she deserves something we all likely take for granted everyday: safety for herself, safety for her loved ones. If the story was asking you to be sympathetic, it wouldn’t have the same effect. I believe the matter of fact nature of the narration represents many of us who live in the United States: we know this happens everyday. We see it, we hear about it and maybe we even talk about it. But we don’t feel it. Stories like these become numbers and numbers become statistics: crossings are up or crossings are down.
The element of the story that I enjoyed most and found most interesting was the voice. I think throughout the story as a reader it’s almost like you are with the woman going on the journey that she’s on because of the way that the story is narrated and you’re able to almost be a watcher in the thing that she’s going through. I think as a whole though this story does a very good job at incorporating all of the elements in order to make the story that much better. I think because you get so much information on the character and the setting and what’s happening in such a short story that you can really start to put the pieces together of what’s going on in the story. I think the voice also does a good job at putting emphasis on what’s happening for the character because it comes from the third person and so it becomes more of the reader watching and viewing what’s happening to the character whereas if it was in the first person you wouldn’t get that same vibe.
I thought that this story was brilliantly unique in the fact that it’s real for many, many people and we as privileged people who get to go to college and experience higher education probably haven’t been through. Now take that, and add to it that this is most likely a younger mother with a 5 year old that she doesn’t see again. This is a heavy story of heartbreak that feels continuous and easy flowing because there are almost no metaphors used, which adds to its realism. The characters if they aren’t real feel like it, and you feel beside the mother who is suffering through this just holding onto the fact that maybe her son is still alive. We feel for her when she trades her ring for information, and we are broken beside her when she ultimately doesn’t find her son. I appreciated the scarce dialogue and time skips, it all felt natural. The opener was strong, and pulled the audience into her reality. The audience felt stuck and beaten alongside hearing her experiences, and a part the stuck out to me was when she corrected her lawyer when he called the boys men, because real men wouldn’t do that to a woman.
Journal #4: Writers feel despair. They feel despair and worry and slowly go insane, and then they write awful crap and tear their hair out- and then they edit the hell out of it. The important thing is not to let worrying about being perfect, worrying about writing something brilliant the first time you sit down, or worrying about what you’re going to say, keep you from sitting down and writing anything at all. While we all need breaks sometimes it’s important to get back on the proverbial horse and write everything that comes into your head, no matter how bad or stupid or ridiculous, onto the paper so that the little good you find in it can flourish in your next draft. I think this is good advice. I enjoyed reading this, I enjoyed how playfully the author approached the stereotype of the tortured author. I’m interested to read the other chapters, because reading this also made me think of some of Ray Bradbury’s advice to writers. I’ll have to paraphrase, but basically he explains that if writing makes you miserable you should consider finding a different career. Writing should make you happy. This was true of Ray Bradbury, but it doesn’t seem to be true of most writers, so I’m trying to reconcile these two points of view. I’m not sure I want to be a writer if I have to lose all my hair.
16 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 3”
Journal 3
I liked the way this author used the dialogue in this particular piece really helped bring alive the character development. This made the story move forward the way it was used. It made it more realistic than just solely the descriptions. It interested me because it purpelles the story forward. There is a big difference between thinking you want something and saying it. It touches my senses as a reader. You can hear the despair in the mothers voice and in her vocal voice in the story. Like when she thinks the new boy is her son and it is not. The kid is a different boy that looks like her son. And what the other mother says to her is so sad and it really empathizes how she is feeling. And what she has said and been doing through actions and thoughts. She refuses to leave the place she’s been imprisoned in when the lawyer comes to her. The dialogue is used to show why she won’t leave the place.
Overall, I think that this is one of the best short stories I have ever read. What caught my attention immediately was the author’s use of voice throughout the story. The tone of the story was dampening at points, but was also hopeful during others. The author chose to use different types of vocabulary which made the story seem so real. By using modern day language, we as readers were left with the impression that something like this could very much happen to us, or could be an ongoing issue throughout the world today. The author included dialogue throughout the story, which further adds to the main character and her own point of view. As I continued reading, I truly felt like this was an experience I was actually living. Cristina Henríquez had great awareness of the five senses, further submerging readers into a sense of body awareness. One specific section I was most intrigued by was when she thought the boy who arrived back at the facility was her son. Henríquez writes, “Her nose in his hair, the smell of him almost unbearably sweet. Her hands cupping his shoulders, the same slight shoulders, as small and breakable as eggs” (Henríquez, p. 155). As human beings, we can truly feel the same emptions as this character. When we miss something so much, we are more aware of how that particular thing smelled, felt, and changed our emotions when we were presented with it again. Her descriptive language of his shoulders also makes us picture a very small child, most likely undernourished, and so fragile that we may not want to touch them. Henríquez’s third person perspective (with uses of He, and She) was yet another brilliant choice she made. With this perspective, we feel empathy for the mother and hopeful when she thinks her son has finally come back. In the end, the descriptive voice this author used as well as her continuous flow throughout the entire story were results of her amazing use of tone.
The short story “Everything is Far from Here” by Christina Henriquez is now one of my favorite short stories. The plot of the story is so powerful to me of a woman having hope of finding freedom in America with her son but getting separated along the journey. She ends up in a detention center and waits to see her son everyday, scanning every new face that walks in. This to me represents the mind of a mother and shows how mothers don’t rest until they know their children are ok and to me that’s so powerful to show how someone can care so much for another person. The plot of the story highlights the mistreatment of women, race and people who decided to leave their home to find a better one. This story gives awareness of what is happening to people now. The mistreatment of women, in the story was powerful when the protagonist left her home and was raped by boys and was scared to still live there. She ends up talking to a lawyer about what she has gone through which he responds with “Boys will be boys” which to me is the most aggravating words someone could say because I look at it as an insult to boys and I wish others did too.. But the most powerful thing to me is the loss of hope that the protagonist went through after being brave enough to leave home and find better for her and her son and it not working out is something that saddens me.
How this author was able to generate this piece is unfathomable. A tormented mother by the absence of her son is portrayed so elegantly. There is so much delicate yet muddy imagery woven throughout the story. We see the mother in this warehouse for refugees adorned with advertisements, while she can’t even afford a one-dollar tampon. How dire her situation is, all the while worrying about her missing son, who she fears she is overlooking. The idea of leaving the building is treacherous, for fear of leaving Esme behind and never seeing him again. The reader sees the weary and exploited people surrounding this mother, feeling their hurt and suffering in all corners of the building. She is frantic and desperate for a glimpse of her child, asking anyone who will listen if they have seen him, but all are dead ends. The reader also feels the fear of the abuse of power many of the “authority” figures exhibit. Despite that, these “authorities” are merely boys taking advantage of women who are alone. We see how she has been beaten down and degraded in no way someone ever should have to experience. Yet she partially blames herself for wanting too much – survival and asylum – a basic level of protection for herself and her son. Viewing the Americans who see themselves as righteous heroes for protesting the refuge of others in such obscene circumstances, meanwhile, they live a life of luxury in the mother’s (and all refugee’s) eyes. This piece captures a heavy subject with such distinct details and imagery, transporting the reader into the mind of a grieving mother.
In her short story, Henriquez uses intense details to create the setting from the beginning and helps the reader live in the moment with the woman. We can feel her pain and everything she has lost to get to where she is. As the reader, we can feel the woman’s relief when she reaches the safe place, and yet we can understand the need to search for perhaps the only thing that kept her going: her son. As the story progresses, the reader can visualize how little this woman has. The author gradually tells more details about what this woman has gone through. She has lost her husband; she fled her home; she was threatened at gunpoint and raped by multiple boys that she knew, and upon arriving at the safe place, they took many of her belongings and only source of protection, and all she wants is to find her son. The reader can feel this woman’s desperation when she gives up her only valuable possession, her ring, to get information about her son, hopefully, only to be disappointed. We can feel her agony from waiting daily for something that may never come. And then, finally, the reader can see her son in the boy who arrived; the reader can feel the joy and relief with the woman, only to have that happy ending ripped away because she was so delusional she convinced herself this boy was hers. The reader is brought back to reality as the story ends in a less-than-pleasant way, as this is merely an example of real stories that happen daily.
One aspect of this story that is worth noting is the character development of “she”, the main character of the story. Throughout the story, her overall attitude towards her place of confinement changes from relief, to increasing anxiety, to, finally acceptance. She feels the relief directly upon her arrival, after what appears to be a very harrowing journey. Finally, she will have a place to simply rest. However, during the third paragraph, she inquires about the location of her son, and becomes worried when she does not see him. During the fourth paragraph, she starts to become senile, cracking up about an absurd possibility. This likely has the effect of taking her mind off of her worry temporarily. She appears to become even more senile after having another day or two to contemplate and ask about the fate of her son. This is shown by the questions she asks herself about forgetting what her son looks like after only being separated for maybe a week. Fast forward a few more nights, and she becomes (understandably) even more hysterical, screaming. This results in the guards confining her in a small space temporarily, which fails to relieve her angst. The peak of her hysterics occurs when she sees a little boy enter whom she believes to be her son. After embracing him wholeheartedly, another woman informs her that he is actually her son. Given the context leading up to the moment in the story, I am inclined to think that in her desperation, the main character was so desperate to see her son that she projected his image onto another child. When she is pulled away from the child, she screams in solitary confinement. This is the peak of her anxiety. Then, similar to “Good With Boys”, this story ends with a moment of peace and acceptance. Like the petals, she drifts in the wind and ceases to resist the circumstances of her situation. Ironically, now that she is calm, she appears to perceive herself as a monster for not incessantly worrying about her child.
One element of this story that really interests me is the author’s use of sentence structure. Many of the sentences are short, less than five or six words. It adds a punch to the statements and allows whatever is being said to stand alone and sink in. Whenever I read a paragraph I felt was particularly powerful, I would go back and notice it typically had one of these short sentences. The author also had a handful of long sentences, mainly lists, that juxtaposed the short sentences in a really satisfying way. This juxtaposition further amplified the strength of the choppy sentences employed throughout the piece.
This short story is emotional in a very effective way. This mother is deeply traumatized, both by the assault that she has faced and is fleeing from, in fear that it will continue to happen, and by the treatment she is receiving from authorities that dictate the facility in which she is kept waiting for her son, Gabriel. The author gives us a very clear understanding of this woman’s declining mental state as other mothers come and go with their children, and she comes to the realization that she may never see her son again, and also that she may not achieve the peace and recovery that she seeks. This is really powerfully written, especially when she mistakes another young boy for her son and is devastated when she realizes that it’s not.
I think for me, something that immediately jumped out at me was the fact that the author didn’t really give any character’s proper names. Some people might argue that this takes away from all the characters, but for me, this makes them not only more unique, but also it makes you imagine them and visualize them a lot more, especially since the author also uses a lot of detail when setting up a scene. The descriptive language that the author uses allows me to picture what is happening in my head, and it is both incredible and sort of brutal. The word choices used are both heinous and sad. Picturing a women crying over losing a loved one and getting held back and dragged into a plain room, like she’s an animal in a zoo, or a damn prisoner, makes me want to almost cry. This entire story is so heart wrenching, and I believe that was the intention that the author was going for. Also, almost every character in this story goes through something bad or traumatic and that makes me more drawn in and attached to the characters. You want to start rooting for something good to happen to these characters, after seeing all these bad things happen to them. It makes the story more engaging. Towards the end of the story, I notice names coming up more frequently, and at the same time, we see what appears to be a reuniting between the mother and her loved one. It seems that as the story seems to hit a bright light, the characters are given more light as well. Unfortunately, and this actually broke me, the author uses a fake out mechanic, as she describes the woman getting dragged away from her “son” by another woman. She is then dragged into another room and locked in, and the character is back to just being referred to as “She”. It is such a brutal story and the ending just makes me want to cry, and that is all because of the author’s impeccable storytelling abilities.
The plot of the story was well written and has the power to move any person. The elements in this story may or may not be relatable to many people that had come into America through the border. It firsthand shows the struggles that people go through at the U.S. and Mexican border, specifically women. Many Americans turn a blind eye to the border crisis and despise the Mexicans crossing into their borders. These people cannot imagine the reason why so many people are trying to get to America. Just like how Henriquez described that American’s are living comfortably at home without a care. They are unaware of the hardships that lead people to brave the hard journey to get to America. This single mother had lost everything. She lost her husband and got assaulted by the young neighborhood boys- the children of her friends. She was forced to be separated from her son and was put into a small room whenever she showed any sign of extreme emotion. They were all treated inhumanely and did not have basic hygiene necessities. The people are crammed into rooms and beds and do not have enough to eat. People take bribes, which we see in this story. The single mother is desperate to find her son that when a woman tells her she will share some information for her ring, she does not bat an eye in order to get any news about her son. The plot is able to put into perspective the things that the general American population is unaware of. It raises awareness that people need to do better and show some humanity towards the sufferings of innocent human beings.
The setting of this story is haunting. Very quickly, I was able to tell where this woman was. I could tell where she was going, and what she was going to deal with. While she continued to hope her son would come, the description of the setting makes the reader realize very quickly that he is not coming. I’ve heard countless stories describing immigration detention facilities, and very few end well. The mistreatment of the people in these detention centers is haunting, and it’s very evident in the description used in this story. One of the most horrifying parts of the setting of this story, however, was the boxes. The places they put people who were “misbehaving”. The woman explains it perfectly. The guards think the punishment will make the prisoners behave, but they only make them more hysterical. It’s understandable. Nothing about being locked in confinement calms a person down, it only proves to make one’s mental state worse. In this story, the woman described another setting. When she saw the Americans protesting outside of the facility, she imagines their warm, comfortable, safe homes. She describes the privilege they have to be out there, fighting against other people’s right to safety. There’s a sense of rightfully bitterness and disdain for the people who couldn’t possibly understand what she’s been through.
Journal #3: One of the most interesting things in Everything is Far From Home by Cristina Henriquez that particularly stood out to me during this reading was the usage of voice. The story is told with an intimacy as if we’re hearing the main character’s thoughts, her inner voice, but she isn’t the narrator. We aren’t actually hearing things from her perspective, we are being told what she’s doing, we are being told what she’s feeling, we are being told about her past; but the story is never told by her. The main character is detached from the reader, by not hearing her thoughts as the short story progresses, we can observe in the third person. Getting to know her feelings and emotions, her voice, became the underpinning of the story for me. I feel like this could have been a stylistic choice, it added to her feeling of disempowerment and otherness. She can’t even speak for herself as you listen to her story. It asked for your empathy, but also kept you at a distance. Whether that was the author’s intent or not, I really liked that aspect of the story because it was so impactful. It made me think about alienation, it made me feel otherness, through this stylistic device I felt the horror of her situation was emphasized. She has no voice.
Journal #3
I want to talk about the voice Christina Henriquez uses in this short story. As she tells this story our main character is experiencing cruel and inhumane treatment, the likes of which most of us can’t even imagine.. As we watch this woman’s spirit break, the voice remains matter of fact and direct. It somehow makes the story that much more heartbreaking to have it told this way. You aren’t being asked to care. You are simply being presented with a truth, and it exists whether or not you want it to. For me this was a piece of why the story spoke to me the way it did. Because so badly you want to help this woman or you want someone to help her. Yet the narrator’s calm and cool voice contrasted with that of the main character. Her voice is desperate and grows more so as time passes. At one point she asks, “Had she wanted too much? Safety for herself and for him? Was that too much?” Hearing her ask this question, wondering if she deserves something we all likely take for granted everyday: safety for herself, safety for her loved ones. If the story was asking you to be sympathetic, it wouldn’t have the same effect. I believe the matter of fact nature of the narration represents many of us who live in the United States: we know this happens everyday. We see it, we hear about it and maybe we even talk about it. But we don’t feel it. Stories like these become numbers and numbers become statistics: crossings are up or crossings are down.
The element of the story that I enjoyed most and found most interesting was the voice. I think throughout the story as a reader it’s almost like you are with the woman going on the journey that she’s on because of the way that the story is narrated and you’re able to almost be a watcher in the thing that she’s going through. I think as a whole though this story does a very good job at incorporating all of the elements in order to make the story that much better. I think because you get so much information on the character and the setting and what’s happening in such a short story that you can really start to put the pieces together of what’s going on in the story. I think the voice also does a good job at putting emphasis on what’s happening for the character because it comes from the third person and so it becomes more of the reader watching and viewing what’s happening to the character whereas if it was in the first person you wouldn’t get that same vibe.
I thought that this story was brilliantly unique in the fact that it’s real for many, many people and we as privileged people who get to go to college and experience higher education probably haven’t been through. Now take that, and add to it that this is most likely a younger mother with a 5 year old that she doesn’t see again. This is a heavy story of heartbreak that feels continuous and easy flowing because there are almost no metaphors used, which adds to its realism. The characters if they aren’t real feel like it, and you feel beside the mother who is suffering through this just holding onto the fact that maybe her son is still alive. We feel for her when she trades her ring for information, and we are broken beside her when she ultimately doesn’t find her son. I appreciated the scarce dialogue and time skips, it all felt natural. The opener was strong, and pulled the audience into her reality. The audience felt stuck and beaten alongside hearing her experiences, and a part the stuck out to me was when she corrected her lawyer when he called the boys men, because real men wouldn’t do that to a woman.
Journal #4: Writers feel despair. They feel despair and worry and slowly go insane, and then they write awful crap and tear their hair out- and then they edit the hell out of it. The important thing is not to let worrying about being perfect, worrying about writing something brilliant the first time you sit down, or worrying about what you’re going to say, keep you from sitting down and writing anything at all. While we all need breaks sometimes it’s important to get back on the proverbial horse and write everything that comes into your head, no matter how bad or stupid or ridiculous, onto the paper so that the little good you find in it can flourish in your next draft. I think this is good advice. I enjoyed reading this, I enjoyed how playfully the author approached the stereotype of the tortured author. I’m interested to read the other chapters, because reading this also made me think of some of Ray Bradbury’s advice to writers. I’ll have to paraphrase, but basically he explains that if writing makes you miserable you should consider finding a different career. Writing should make you happy. This was true of Ray Bradbury, but it doesn’t seem to be true of most writers, so I’m trying to reconcile these two points of view. I’m not sure I want to be a writer if I have to lose all my hair.