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Reflection #2

In my past three blogs, I talked about how I could use the things we've read to improve my writing. From Persepolis, I learned a lot about how images in graphic novels are similar to the imagery created in poetry. Through reading the bloody chamber and watching Anita Sarkeesian's video I learned about the subversion of sexist tropes. In the last section, I learned a lot about how I can improve my own poetry by reading the poetry of others. For this reflection, I'm going to summarize my blog posts from the other sections and then discuss how our readings from this unit can all tie into a fractured fairytale.

In my first blog post of this cycle, I covered Persepolis and explained how I took inspiration from the way Satrapi was able to express emotions through her use of some abstract images. Specifically, I was interested in how I could do the same with my poetry. An interesting thing that I didn't discuss in my blog post was how Satrapi was always an active participant in her own narrative. In the three panels, I discussed Satrapi is present, she isn't just a bystander in her own life. She's even present in the panel that depicted the war. She wouldn't have actually been on the battlefield, but the planet included her walking down the stairs and into the basement to show that she was still apart of the story.  This connects with the idea of a fractured fairytale because Satrapi is active in her story, she is never portrayed as an object that is acted upon like women are in the damsel and distress trope.

For my second blog, I touched on the areas of a fractured fairytale and a damsel in distress much more directly. Angela Carter subverted classic fairytale tropes in her story, "The Bloody Chamber", and Sarkeesian discusses the damsel in distress trope in relation to women in video games. I discussed how these pieces of work reminded me to be careful of certain tropes because even though they are classic tropes, that doesn't mean they should be reused without thinking about them critically and realizing their effect. In "The Bloody Chamber", the fairytale is fractured because there is not a classic happily ever after and the heroine is rescued by her mom, not her love interest.  In Sarkeesian's videos, she discusses why we should rethink using these tropes because they work to objectify women.

My last blog post was about the poetry section of the class. As stated in the first blog post of this cycle I'm a poet, so I was able to directly apply things we learned in class to improve my writing. In the blog post, I went through the list that we used to engage with poetry and instead implied the steps to the process of writing poetry instead of reading it. I also used the poems we read in class to demonstrate the steps I discussed. The poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" in particular made me think of a fractured fairytale. Aunt Jennifer is married, so by fairytale standards, she should be in the happily ever after stage of her life. Instead, she is weighed down by her wedding ring. It is also interesting because at first glance she is powerless to stop what she is going through with her husband, so it seems like she is a damsel in distress. However, she isn't an object. She might not have a lot of power but the tigers that she sews do and therefore she still has fight left in her.

To conclude, many of the stories and poems we have discussed this semester play into certain aspects of a fractured fairytale. It is really interesting to be able to read and watch these different pieces in order to learn how to rewrite fairytales in a way that better represent women and other oppressed groups. This concept has been present in the class from the very beginning and we have seen evidence of fractured fairytale influences in The Hate U Give and Home Fire. However, this section of the class, in particular, has allowed me to be more focused on this aspect of literature because of the example from Carter and the detailed explanation by Sarkeesian. Overall, I now have the tools to better examine the tropes that are often used against women and I have gained a new perspective through the readings that I believe will have a positive effect on the way that I write.

[eli-scribbles]

How Engaging with Poetry can Improve how you Write Poetry

In this last section of the class, we focused on poetry. I enjoy reading and writing poetry so this lesson was a very good opportunity to learn more about how to read poetry more effectively. For this blog, I want to talk about how I can use the same strategies we use to analyze poems to improve how I write poetry. I will be going through the worksheet we use to analyze poetry and I will also reference the poems we discussed in class.

The first step to engage with poetry is to summarize what you've read. I find this strategy useful from a writing perspective as well. I usually start writing a poem with an idea of what I want the poem to be about, but it doesn't always end up being exactly what I plan. I might start writing about my struggle with anxiety but it turns into a poem about mental illness in general. Going back through the poem and summarizing what it's about can help me keep in mind the idea that the poem communicates, even if it's different from what I intended. This could be applied to the Adrienne Rich poem, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" because maybe the author didn't intend to imply that Aunt Jennifer was abused by her husband, but some people read it that way. My point here is that we might not always know an author's intent and everybody reads poetry differently, so it is really useful to be aware of that as a writer.

The second step on the worksheet has to do with analyzing the title. Titles are very tricky for me when writing poetry, it seems like I either know what the title of a poem should be right away, or I agonize over it for a long time. This step has changed how I think of titles. They have always seemed like a way of categorizing a poem, telling the reader what they are going to get, but I'm realizing that the title can be more than that. I usually write titles that are straight forward, like the poem by Bianca Spriggs that we read in class "To the woman I saw today who wept in her car." That title tells you pretty much exactly what the poem is going to be about. However, the title of the poem "Kindness" by Naomi Nye, is much more interesting, because the poem is about kindness, but it's also about suffering and pain. So the title changes how you view the poem. There is something about that approach that is very interesting to me and I think it could be useful for my poetry.

The next step is analyzing the speaker. I never put a lot of thought into who the speaker is in my poetry. Usually, a poem comes from a lot of personal experience so I just believe that I'm the speaker.  But I know that different aspects of my identity influence how I speak in the poem. I'm transgender, so when I write a poem about transgender issues, it's likely to come across as different than if a cisgender person (someone who is not transgender) tried to write a poem about trans people from the outside. For example, in the Spriggs poem, one reason why it works so well is that we get the sense that the speaker is a woman. She can empathize with the woman weeping in her car because she's been where she has been and knows what she is going through by virtue of being a woman. If that same poem was from a man's perspective it might come off as condescending, it might have the tone of "I know what you're going through, even though I have no idea what it is like to be a woman. "

The last step is analyzing mood and tone. These are things that I pay a lot of attention to when I write poetry. Word choice is essential and the form of the poem shapes how the poem is read and received. My favorite poem, out of the ones we discussed in class, in terms of word choice and form was Spriggs' poem. Her choice to use the beehive to represent the emotions that well inside of you was very powerful. She also ended her lines on really powerful words like "splayed" or "typhoon" which helped with the flow of the poem. The free-verse form of the poem also helped it flow and seem very conversational and natural to read. Free verse is a form that I'm drawn to because of this quality, so I enjoyed how it was used in this poem.

I’ve attached an article about how reading poetry can improve you’re writing and you can find that here. It’s not directly related to the ways to engage with poetry I mentioned here, but it adds a lot more to the topic of writing poetry.

[eli-scribbles]

How to subvert fairytale tropes

We spent the last couple of weeks discussing the concept of a fractured fairytale. We read "Bloody Chamber" by Angel Carter and watched Anita Sarkeesian critique the "damsel in distress" trope that is prominent in video games. This topic has been incredibly interesting to discuss because I enjoy retellings of fairytales and subversions of classic tropes. These pieces of media have helped inform the way I will approach writing in the future, especially when dealing with tropes or retellings. 

The "Bloody Chamber" short story was an excellent example of a retold fairytale. It's a retelling of the French folk tale, "Blue Beard".  The story follows a young woman who marries an older man for money and is so enthralled by his expensive possesions that she unwittingly is wed to a serial killer who has murdered his past wives. There are slight differences from the original, for example, in the original, the young woman is forced to marry Blue Beard.  The ending is also slightly different, which I will discuss when I get to how the story subverts the typical tropes. 

 The first thing that Carter does with this story subverts the happily ever after trope. Traditionally, a couple in a fairytale gets married and that's it, they live a beautiful and perfect life together. But it becomes clear, even before the heroine discovers the torture room, that this isn't a happily ever after kind of story. There are multiple ways that she foreshadows the ending and the entire story has a very creepy mood. Dark retellings of fairytales aren't uncommon, most of the original fairytales are often darker than the versions popular today, but this story, in particular, moves in a direction that is much more reminiscent of gothic horror like Edgar Allan Poe than it is of Grimm fairytales.

Carter then subverts the damsel in distress narrative. Generally in a story like this, we would expect a man to save the heroine from peril. In the original story, the woman's brothers save her.  Based on other classic fairytales we might expect her love interest to save her. But instead, in this retelling, it is her mom who rescues her from her gruesome death, it's her mom who saves the day. It is a significant subversion of the trope because not only is it a woman who gets to do the saving, it's a mother-daughter bond that is rarely showcased that way in fairytales.

The damsel in distress trope is something that Anita Sarkeesian directly addresses in her video. She approaches the topic in regard to video games, but the issues that she's discussing can be just as easily applied to literature. Sarkeesian breaks down the damsel in distress trope and defines it as, "a plot device where a female character is placed in a dangerous situation from which she can't escape on her own and must be rescued by a male character." She goes on to cite numerous examples from classic arcade games to more modern games that still use the trope. The big issue with this trope is it treats female characters like objects, rather than characters in their own story. This allows women to be seen as weak or incapable of doing things for themselves.

Sarkeesian also points out that female characters in this role are often sexualized or at least seen as someone romantically desirable. In several games, protagonists are rewarded with a "smooch of victory" once they have rescued the damsel. This treats the female character like she is a prize to be won. In some games, like "Dragon Slayer", the damsel in distress is in a highly sexualized outfit. In the game "Double Dragon", the damsel in distress is punched in the stomach and then carried away over a man's shoulder, with her underwear being visible in some parts of the game.

I was already aware of these harmful tropes and I avoided them in my writing. However, I have learned that these tropes are still prevalent among all types of media, not just something that was used in early Disney movies or 8-bit Mario games. I have also learned ways to subvert these tropes so that I can still get inspiration from fairytales without objectifying women in the process. Carter was able to borrow ideas from old tropes and use them as a way to make her story more empowering. That is something that is extremely important and ties in with the concept of who has the power in a story. 

I have attached a research article that goes into detail about the damsel in distress trope and how it affects perceptions of gender. It is a very good supplement to Sarkeesian's video and it can found here. I've also included an article about the bloody chamber and how it challenges reader's views of women in fairytales by subverting certain tropes. That article can be found here.

[eli-scribbles]

Persepolis and the Similarities Between Images in Graphic Novels and Imagery in Poetry

Writing a graphic novel isn't something that has crossed my mind before. I have an appreciation for visual art, but when it comes to my work, it's not something that I have an interest in pursuing. Because of this, the connection between the graphic memoir, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and my writing is hard to pinpoint. Sure, I could talk about the writing without factoring in the illustrations, but that would be doing a disservice to Satrapi since those two facets of the book are so completely intertwined. So instead, I'm going to look at how Satrapi pairs the images with the story and tie it into what I hope to do with my poetry.

I write a lot of poetry that references concrete things that have happened to me, but I also include lots of symbolic images that connect to my life in a far less literal way. Satrapi's images provide a lot to the narrative when they stay grounded in reality and show the events as they are happening, but the best panels of the book are when she uses her art to illustrate a concept more abstractly. A graphic novel is usually easier to read, so people might find themselves rushing through the text and just glancing at the pictures. At the moments when Satrapi portrays things in more abstract ways, the reader is more likely to slow down and really think about what they are seeing.  

One example of this is on page 71 when Satrapi depicts herself floating in space. The image is striking because it takes up the whole page and is mostly dark, except for a handful of planets and star, Marji, and the text. She describes in the textbox that she feels lost because her favorite uncle died. But a reader might not even need the explanation to understand the image. The image perfectly conveys how it would feel to get news like that and have no idea where you are or how you are going to go on.

Another example is on page 77. She was writing about her family's trip to Italy and Spain that took place right before war broke out back in Iran. The image is extremely captivating, it also takes up an entire page and depicts Satrapi and her parents flying on a magic carpet. It is obvious that they weren't really flying above Italy and Spain on a carpet, but the image is used to show the magic and wonder of the trip.

Poetry is an art form that relies heavily on symbolism. So if I were trying to describe a moment that was particularly mystical or powerful in my life, it might not make sense for me to just say, "The moment was magical".  Instead, I would do something like Satrapi did and say "It's as if I were on a magic carpet." The same thing applies to the feeling of being lost in grief. I would probably say something about being adrift in space.

There are a handful of these images that show things symbolically or at least play with reality a little bit. On page 116 there is a full-page image of the war that was happening at the time. The image depicts soldiers getting shot and just an all-around mess of bodies. This is obviously depicting a real event; it was a concrete image of what war looks like. What isn't a concrete part of the war, however, is Satrapi descending from the clouds and going down the stairs to the basement. Satrapi has melded these two scenes together to show that the war was directly interconnected to her life, even if she wasn't actually on the battlefield. This kind of strategy can be used in poetry as well. For example, I once wrote a poem where I started with the rise and fall of my chest when I was a child and my mom taught me a breathing exercise to calm me down, I then pivot to the rise and fall of my chest when I'm older and having a breakdown.  I purposefully intertwined these events, even though they happened independently in totally different parts of my life. Like Satrapi, I wanted to show their effect on each other despite the amount of time that had past.

This might seem like an odd connection to make, but the use of imagery in poetry is incredibly similar to the use of images in graphic novels. Both are tools that allow the audience to be able to picture what you want them to picture, and feel what you want them to feel.  I've attached two different sources, one about imagery in poems and the other about graphic novels. They address the purpose of each in a more comprehensive way than I did by just comparing my poetry to on specific graphic novel. Those sources can be found here and here. 

[eli-scribbles]

Reflection #1

Each of the three books we read demonstrated how Adiche's danger of a single story applies to a variety of people from different identities. In my blog posts, I discussed each of the books from my viewpoint as a writer who is trying to improve his stories through examples of good writing. This journey completely stems from not wanting to fall into writing about a single story; instead, I want my characters to be as deeply complex as the groups they represent.

In my first blog, I discussed what I learned about character development by reading The Hate U Give. I noticed how as Starr developed, the other characters also became more well-rounded in her eyes. I used Iesha as my main example because Starr was forced to examine the assumptions she had about her based on the single-story she had heard. This causes readers to examine their beliefs about Iesha's character, as well, and demonstrates why readers can't trust one person's viewpoint or another: it causes us to fall into the trap of believing a single story.  But that's not the only single story in the book. The media pushes the narrative that Khalil was a thug and that he was acting violently towards the police officer who shot him. The readers aren't led to believe this side of the story, but some character's within the book are. Many people don't see Khalil as a complex person who had to go down a dark path to support his family. This makes it easier for the media to not show his story sympathetically and for the grand jury to choose not to indict the officer that killed him. This can directly apply to real-life situations and shows that the danger of a single story isn't just a problem in literature, it can have dire consequences in real life.

My second blog discussed the book Home Fire, specifically how the author was able to tell pieces of the story in different ways through 5 different perspectives. This connects quite clearly to the danger of a single story because there are five distinct and important stories within this book. The way that Aneeka sees Parvaiz is fundamentally different than the way Karamat sees Parvaiz, and it is this way for every character throughout the book. The way Shamsie uses this writing structure to include every character's point of view and to give them each time to show the reader who they truly are is crucial to plot and character development in the book. It also allows for the readers to know a more complete version of the media within the story. The media is not generous to Parvaiz or Aneeka, because they don't see them as people who's lives are worth respecting, Parvaiz's body isn't worth being buried in British soil in their eyes. Home Fire challenges the concept of just having a single story about someone and has the potential to impact readers long after they put the book down.

Most recently, I discussed the shortcomings that Station Eleven experienced while trying to show us multiple people experiencing life in different parts of their lives. At its core, Mandel's novel strives to show it's characters' unique stories in a similar way that Home Fire does. Kirsten only knows so much about Arthur, and Clark and Miranda have their views of him, but of course, Arthur thinks about himself differently from everyone else. My main criticism of the book stemmed from the fact that I found the structure to be messy and not as easy to follow as Shamsie's clearer structure. This may have been the author's intent because life isn't always clear-cut (especially in the chaos of a post-apocalyptic world); the narrative keeps you on your toes by changing the scene rapidly. But, as I mentioned in my blog post, I tend to prioritize clarity, and for this reason, I think this book is the weakest of the three. While I can make the case that it shows the danger of a single story, it doesn't do so as powerfully as the previous books. 

Overall, each of the books taught me important lessons about writing and more specifically how to write in a way that doesn't limit a character to a single story. I'm a white transgender man so there's a lot of perspectives that I don't have experience with; I need to read books by people of color, women, and just about any identity I can. These books can help me diversify the experiences that I can write about because even if I've never lived those experiences, I'm not completely ignorant. Adiche's Danger of a Single Story is so important to writers because we need to be sure that we aren't telling narrowly constructed stories, and that we're writing complex characters from a variety of backgrounds. The Hate U Give, Home Fire, and Station Eleven all demonstrate this concept perfectly and helped give me direction and techniques for storytelling that will be very helpful in my storytelling.

[eli-scribbles]

Station Eleven and the Danger of Stories that Lack Clarity

Station Eleven by Emily Mandel is a novel that details the lives of numerous people, who are interconnected through a series of complexities, as they figure out how to live and hold onto their humanity in a post-pandemic world. The novel is fresh in its subject matter; it doesn't simply focus on the blood and guts of this new world, it zeroes in on different forms of art and ways to remember what's been lost. It's a beautiful book and does many things well in how it tells this story about humanity. However, there was one issue I came across that I wouldn't want to repeat in my writing.

Mandel's world is expansive and it can achieve what it does by focusing on a variety of characters at different points in their lives. The problem is that she switched between these different characters, settings, and times at a breakneck speed. Just as you get comfortable with one scene she yanks the rug out from underneath you and transports you somewhere halfway across the world 7 years ago. Discussing stories that are both in the before and after is a hallmark of any kind of post-apocalyptic fiction, but I believe there is a way to do it clearly and Mandel just doesn't achieve that. 

The problem I have with this writing, isn't that is expansive and wide-reaching, I think that part of it is very cool actually. My problem is that it comes across as cluttered. The book has 9 parts, but those parts do not separate who is telling the story, like in Home Fire, or even just the progression of chronological time, like in The Hate U Give. The parts encompass multiple character's experiences and multiple points in time. This is very confusing to a reader, who now has to figure out and adjust to the person, place, and time the story is now focusing on. 

There are a few examples of what I am talking about that I would like to touch on before I discuss the lessons that I'm taking from this book. The first example takes place at the very beginning of the book. For the first 3 chapters, we follow Jeevan, a paramedic who tried to save the life of an Arthur Leander who was performing King Lear on the night he pandemic began. Then it switches to a short chapter about the executive producer of the show telling the actor's lawyer about the actor's death. Next is a chapter about one of the actor's ex-wives getting the call that he is dead. And then we get a glimpse of post-pandemic life.  That is the entirety of the first section. Something about the way the author chooses to move through those events is hard to process for me. Some readers might like the jumps between action and think that is spices things up but it only comes off as disorganized to me and gives me a bad first impression of the book.

Another section that bothers me is section 3. The first 3 chapters follow Miranda, more or less chronologically, pre-pandemic. Then it jumps to an interview with Kirsten, an actress, that occurs 15 years after the pandemic. Then it jumps to Clark, the best friend of Arthur Leander, a year before the pandemic before we're back to the interview. The choppiness of it is hard to get used to and I wish for clarity's sake she at least had some kind of pattern. But as it stands, it's a frustrating section to read. 

As the book progresses this issue improves a bit, all of the pieces begin to drift together and so the action moves more coherently.  I really appreciate that it all comes together in the end and everything feels more clear, but I just wish I didn't have to trudge through most of the book to get there. 

What I am taking from this story is that, as a writer, if I want the scope of a story to be as big as Mandel's I have to be very careful with the organization to avoid confusion.  Clarity is something that is very important to me because I think it is integral to keeping a reader actually interested in your book. So this book was a very good study for me into what I feel like doesn't work from a clarity perspective.  I will admit that I have been a little harsh with my feelings on this book, but I want to make it clear that I don't hate the book. There is even a lot about the different points-of-view that I love, but I really wanted to pay attention to this one problem. My intention wasn't to nitpick, I only wanted to keep the issue in mind for my future writing projects. An article that does a good job of echoing my positive thoughts of this book can be found here.

[eli-scribbles]

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie: Writing from the perspective of a variety of characters

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie is a novel that follows the lives of five British Pakistani characters as they navigate what holding both of those identities means. The book switches perspectives every couple of chapters so that the reader gets a closer look into every piece of the story. I could go on for a long time about how much I appreciate that decision and what I think it adds to the story, but I would like to focus on one particular aspect of the writing.

                What fascinated me the most about Shamsie's writing style was the way that the way she deliberately tailored her writing to fit the character. Each section of writing was distinct and I learned a lot about from the seemingly minute decisions like word choice and how different scenes were described. I'd like to breakdown each section and explain what stood out the most in each instance.

               The book starts with Isma, a PhD student who has decided to study in America. Isma's chapters are a fantastic introduction for the reader who doesn't know anything about this story and need the groundwork laid down for them. What I mean by this is, she's very observant and her intelligent analysis of situations are really helpful to a reader. Her visual descriptions of the setting are the most striking parts of her chapters. “The woods were slushy, but the light piercing through between scrabbling branches was a pleasure, and the river, swollen with snow-melt, roared.” That description is so vivid and fits in very well with Isma because it is something you know she would notice, while another character might not.

               The next section focuses on Eammon, who is very different from Isma. He is still intelligent but he comes from a more privileged background than Isma and her siblings. His section is written in a way that makes it clear he doesn’t see things as clearly as Isma, he’s a little bit more oblivious and less analytical in his descriptions of people or situations. He is also much more focused on winning people over, he is very self-conscious of everything he says and does, and what affect that will have on people. Not in the political way we see his dad demonstrate later in the book, but in a more earnest, eager to please way. “He had no idea if that last detail was actually true, but he wanted to something interesting so the girl would see that he might be the kind of person her sister would choose to have coffee with, not just the posh toff who seemed out of place in this kitchen and in Isma’s life.” This is just one instance of him trying to impress Aneeka and it makes the reader see his action of tracking down Isma’s house to meet her sister, as charming instead of creepy.

               Next we focus in on Parvaiz, Isma’s younger brother who left Britain to join the media wing of ISIS but then realized it wasn’t what he thought it would be and now wants to come home. Parvaiz’s section comes at a really good time because readers have just gotten to the point where they really want to know more about him. Isma’s section doesn’t treat him too sympathetically but through the lens of Isma and Eammon we are able to see that Parvaiz’s twin, Aneeka, is still holding on to hope that her brother will come home. His chapters take us right to the conflict of the story and shows us that this is a 19-year-old boy who was wooed by a terrorist organization but really he just wants to focus on his recordings. The writing about his perspective is obsessed with how things sound because he has a good ear and that’s what he’s passionate about.

               When we get to Aneeka’s chapter everything is crumbling down around her. We find out early on in her section that Parvaiz has been killed and from then on the writing in the chapter is chaotic. Sometimes it’s just giant run on sentences and sometimes it leaves Aneeka’s perspective entirely and showcases news articles or twitter feeds about the situation. Even admist all of the chaos that comes with not even able to grieve over her brother properly because his body is not allowed back into England, the section is structured like an outline. Aneeka is a law student, it makes sense that she would think in outlines, in sections that are clear and distinct.  What’s so shocking about the section is that Shamsie takes a very rigid and structured form and uses the emotion in the content to kind of break the form. Outlines aren’t emotional, they’re factual and organized, the juxtaposition here makes the chapter, in my opinion, the best one of the book.

               Finally, we finish the book with Karamat’s chapters. Karamat is Eammon’s father and the home secretary who has used his political platform to try to separate himself from his Pakistani heritage and Muslim upbringing. His chapter is an interesting one to end on because he is the only main character of the book who seems very detached from the others. Sure, he’s Eammon’s father but even when he talks to his son he seems on guard. He is also consistently critical of his son, for not being as objective and analytical as he perceives himself to be. The writing of this chapter makes the tragic events that occur within in even more heartbreaking. Aneeka has traveled to Pakistan to sit with her brother’s corpse as protest and he doesn’t see this pain as a result of his direct actions, he only sees a political chess move he must retaliate against. He spends his entire chapter trying to be one step ahead of everyone in order to save face and maintain his political career. He denounces his own son when he diverges from his image and politics and then realizes at the very end that his son was blown up along with Aneeka when he traveled to Pakistan to be beside the woman he loves.

               As a writer, I am fascinated by the differences in writing style to reflect character and see it as a great exercise in trying new perspectives in order to branch out our writing. There is also much that can be said about the genius of foreshadowing and playing with themes throughout the book but I wanted to focus on what I thought was most interesting as a reader. For further reading on what worked and didn’t work with the structure of the book I recommend NPR’s review of the book, which you can find here.

[eli-scribbles]

The Hate U Give and how to develop characters from a first-person point of view

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is a piece of Young Adult fiction that tackles the subject of police brutality towards African Americans through the lens of 16-year-old narrator, Starr Carter. Early in the book, Starr witnesses the murder of her friend, Khalil, at the hands of a cop during a traffic stop. Starr then finds herself conflicted on whether or not to speak up on Khalil's behalf or stay hidden to protect herself. On top of that, she is faced with an internal struggle between the lower-class majority-black neighborhood she lives in and the high-class majority-white high school she attends. The book covers a very heavy and real topic with amazing deft and does a great job maintaining tension and captivating readers. The focus of this blog, however, is the way that Thomas wrote and developed characters from the point of view of her narrator.   Something that I immediately noticed was the way that characters are described to us as readers by  Starr. For most of the book, we get one-dimensional and not very nuanced introductions to characters. This is part of Starr’s character at the beginning of the book, she is constantly labeling other people, and herself but I’ll come back to that, as a way to make sense of existing in what she sees as two extremely different worlds, Garden Heights where she lives and Williamson where she attends school. A consequence of this is that the readers are led to feel the same way that Starr does about certain characters. For example, when we are first introduced to Iesha, the wife of infamous gang leader King, it’s not in a very sympathetic light. The first description we get of her is, “King has his arm hooked around a lady in a tight black dress that barely covers her thighs. She has way too much weave in her head - for real, it comes to her ass - and way too much makeup on.” She doesn't even have a name in this description of her, she is viewed more like an object that King owns, that's dressed to appeal to the male gaze. A couple of paragraphs later we get a bit more description and background on her, "Iesha walks alongside him, all proud and shit, not realizing she looks a hot mess." This sentence reveals more about Starr's negative perceptions of Iesha. Readers find out on the following pages that Starr's opinions are heavenly influenced by the drama Iesha caused within her family. She slept with Starr's dad for money and as a result, gave birth to Starr's half-brother Seven. It makes sense that Starr wouldn't think very highly of someone with such a compilated relationship with her family, but as a writer, I got the idea that Iesha was a more complex character than Starr was giving her credit for. We had already found out that her relationship with King was abusive, so I wanted to believe that she was being manipulated into behaving the way King wanted her to. Starr didn't seem to see her that way. It was at this point that I became apprehensive about Starr's ability to provide readers with accurate introductions for all of the people in her life. She tended to refer to people based on who they knew or were related to as opposed to who they were as people. She also labeled people based on skin tone, not just race but the lightness or darkness of their skin, and socioeconomic status. I was worried that by creating Starr as her narrator Angie Thomas was setting the stage for lots of one-dimensional characters who didn't contribute much to the story but were just there to be evaluated by Starr. Now that I've finished the book, however, I realize that this is the point and there is a lot of writers who can learn from Thompson and the way that she handled her narrator's biases. Going back to our Iesha example, towards the end of the book there is a scene where Starr and Seven have to rescue DeVante, a young ex-drug dealer who got jumped for trying to leave his King's gang, from King's house. While they are trying to get him out, they are interrupted by Iesha. At first, she acts nasty towards them and it's clear that Starr's opinion of her hasn't changed.  But then she lets them take DeVante out of the house and even distracts King so that they can slip out of the house easily. She does this for them, even though it is going to make King very angry and quite possibly lead to her being beaten by King. This is when Starr realizes that she was wrong about Iesha. I really appreciated Iesha being reframed as a mother trying to protect her children the best she could. Domestic violence is a serious issue, it’s hard to get exact numbers but a review of studies done by Wilt and Olsen shows that in a study of 6,002 women showed that 30% had experienced domestic abuse in their lives, and showing a woman who wasn’t only a victim but also a mother and a survivor is something that’s very important for people to see.  This realization coincides with Starr's character development as she also stops labeling herself so harshly. Throughout the entire book, Starr had been heavily moderating her own behavior so that she would act a certain way in Garden Heights and a certain way at Williamson, but never truly be herself. As she grows as a character and slowly accepts herself, she also stops being so quick to judge others by her old standards. The way that Thomas was able to develop the other characters through the process of developing Starr is something that I found very interesting and thought worked very well from a writing standpoint. I love writing complex characters but struggle with getting that complexity across when using a first-person POV.  Thomas's method of doing this doesn't work every time and is best suited for when you have a character like Starr who's opinions of herself heavily influence her outlook on the world. But this tactic is one that I think writers would benefit from paying attention to. I wanted to mainly focus on one aspect of writing in this blog post but Ryan Reudell came up with more lessons for writers based on The Hate U Give and you can find that article here.