Week 3 Writing Assignment- Melanie Walton

I lie on my back restless in the dark. This is the third night in the last week that I haven’t been able to sleep. I feel Liam breathing peacefully next to me. I don’t want to wake him up. He has to work early in the morning, and honestly, there’s nothing that he can do to help. So, I gently slide out of bed and creep into the living room. Dropping down on the couch, I turn on the TV and try to zone out. If I stare at the bright screen enough, my eyes will begin to get tired and back to bed I can go. Just 3-4 hours of sleep, but still sleep, nonetheless.

Yet, an hour later, I am still flipping back and forward between channels. In a desperate attempt to make some progress toward sleep, I open Twitter. To my delight, I am bombarded with a constant stream of jokes that cause me to muffle my laughter as not to awake Liam.

I’m not exactly sleepy, but at least I’m in a good mood… Suddenly, a tweet towards the bottom of my timeline captures my attention: “A hospital nearly killed Serena Williams because she was a black woman telling the staff what she needed and the nurses and doctors thought they knew better. Tell me how Medicare for all will stop healthcare professionals from discriminating against us and treating us like fools.” Just as it always is when a serious tweet appears in the long stream of light-heartedness that I enjoy seeing on my timeline, my initial reaction is to ignore it. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want to think right now. I want to sleep. I want a good night’s sleep. With good dreams. So, I do. I keep scrolling. Until I found something else funny.

And it works…until I refresh my timeline. And suddenly, Serena’s name is everywhere. In fact, it’s trending. I can’t ignore it anymore. I scroll through tweet after tweet commenting on Serena’s horrible hospital experience.

As I begin to go further down the rabbit hole, I hear footsteps behind me.

“Can’t sleep again?”

I look up to see Liam staring down at me, a look of concern on his face.

“Yeah. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No, I just turned over and the bed felt empty.” There’s a pause. “You should ask for less hours at the office. You’re overworked.”

“I know. I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow.”

He nods. “Heading back yet?”

“In a minute.”

“What’s wrong?”

I show him the tweet.

He rolls his eyes. “So the doctors made a mistake. It’s not because she’s black. Jesus.” And with an irritated sigh, he heads back into the room.

But I continue to stare at my phone, pleading my eyes to tire.

 

Writer’s Notes: Instead of focusing directly on the issue of Serena (and other African American women) being ignored by health officials, I wanted to focus on the attempt to ignore this tweet, which indirectly means exploring black women’s voices being ignored by the everyday person. It’s hard for the issue to be represented because anything bringing awareness to the issue is pushed to the side. In this piece, both the main character and Liam are dismissive. In my mind, I imagine the main character as African American, but I thought it would be interesting to explore how minorities can ignore voices from their own people that affects them also. I did find it difficult to resist not going into the issue itself.

Week 3 Reading Response- Melanie Walton

Although the events of “Sabrina” are horrific, I found it interesting that there is a sense of “everydayness” that runs throughout the story. This can be seen through the drawing of the characters, the color scheme used, etc. For example, I found that most of the characters did not have very distinct facial features. At first, I found this very jarring because it was hard to tell characters apart. It was as if everyone had the same face with different colored hair. But then, I realized that this could be because Drnaso wanted readers to focus on how the story could happen to anyone. Specifically, there is a focus on becoming desensitized to tragedies because so many occur. It is then very easy for the readers to put themselves in the place of the characters. I think the drawing of the characters aid to this.

Even the background designs and the color scheme are very plain, dull, and not as detailed. It just makes everything feel very normal. I don’t think I’ve seen it done much in any of the graphical novels that I’ve read (which is limited). I find Chloe (M)’s point about the moments in the novel in which the normal color scheme is interrupted to be very interesting also. For example, she talks about how Calvin has a dream about Sabrina’s murderer and it is in black and white (which doesn’t happen for many other scenes) and yet it is not a very accurate description of what happened. I found that the representation of the interpretations of the events of Sabrina’s death was very well done. They all occur through some normal medium (radio, emails, etc) against very normal, dull color schemes/ backgrounds. So, comparing this to Chloe’s point, new information changes our perception of events and this is shown in dreams and everyday settings, but using different stylistic choices.

Week 2 Writing Assignment- Melanie Walton

Revision #1: To be beheld in its endless tangle of fabric, one is not flattered. Expanding with a single motion and sometimes semi-translucent. Ill-fitted. Achromatic most of the time… or with azure dots dashing across it. Or light green. But it’s not the hue that preoccupies you. This garment…this garb…signals a malfunction… within you. A diagnosis embedded in between its fibers. A reconstruction of your life. It scratches at your skin. Ownership is not really yours. Or hers. Or his. When you leave, you will have to give it back and some other unfortunate entity will soon adorn it. Some who have worn it have walked out the doors of the infirmary. And some have not. For some, this is the last garment.

Revision #2: Draping below your knees, it hangs despairingly. Rectangular and semi-transparent. Prosopagnosia. Hemi spatial neglect. Aphantasia. The diagnosis could present itself in any of these forms. Where does the fibers that stitch together this gown come from? Gossypium arboretum, G. herbaceum, G. hirsutum? These terms rush into your head faster than you realize. When did you store them? And why are you recalling them now? This is your defense mechanism. The reciting. Your head is an endless encyclopedia and yet, this garment is your final verdict.

Writer’s Notes: I found this assignment to be very difficult because I usually tend to lean more towards using simple language when writing. During the first revision, it was hard for me to get rid of the everyday words. I started off by trying to use synonyms to give me some inspiration. Unfortunately, I think my first revision comes off as a weird mixture of “wordy,” but still includes everyday words from my first free-write. During the second revision, I wanted to highlight the fear of diagnosis while wearing a hospital gown. I imagined a character that knew a lot of random, unique terms sitting nervously in a hospital room awaiting her diagnosis. So, I looked up really specific diagnoses and similarly, looked up different cotton hybrid varieties to describe the fabric of the hospital gown. Overall, this assignment definitely challenged me to begin to think about “exactness” and it’s something that I want to continue to improve on.

Week 2 Reading Response- Melanie Walton

I found the stylistic choices of the Counter-Desecration glossary very interesting, considering the entries were very different from normal glossary entries. In particular, each entry seems to be unique in its own way. The first entry for “attention” seems to be most traditional. The description used seems to be what one would typically expect to find for attention in a standardized dictionary: “directed mental, physical, and spiritual awareness.” However, as you move down the list of entries, there is more liberty taken with the language used. For example, the definition for “atoll,” is presented through a historical lens: “Nation-states in atolls preemptively insulate themselves by building walls of increasing heights. The goal is a state where no one can see out and realize the need to get out, and where no one can see in/ come in.” I found this to be very interesting given the topic of the glossary: counter-desecration. The author of this entry is choosing to focus on describing a nation’s defense against desecration or a change in attitude to prevent it from reoccurring in the future. By framing the definition in this way, the reader is better able to understand the purpose of this term being included for this particular topic. I think it’s also a good way to offer perspective from those impacted from land being desecration.

In contrast to the entries for “attention” and “atoll,” the language used for the “azhigwa” entry is more free-flow. It comes across as very conversational: “now is not the time for grief or silence…listen to their songs.” This is made apparent also by the use of “we”: “we are alive.” The author is directly talking to the reader.  It makes the reader pay attention and to visualize growth after destruction.

The entry for “betweenness” also evokes a sense of intimacy with the use of “I”: “I think of that hyphenated space as a “trans-poetics…” It a transfer of experience. I also find it interesting that this entry connects back to the first entry for attention: “Attention to being between is one way to locate the murmur of our intersections with place, that one is somewhere, not everywhere.” So although these entries were written by different people and take on different formatting, there is still a conscious decision for them to be connected.

The presence of the “now” is focused on throughout the descriptions of the entries. This is hinted at with the title: “Writing within the Anthropocene.” Anthropocene is defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” In his discussion post, Sham also mentioned the focusing on “now” in nature and with the standardized definition of azhigwa: “now, at this time.” I think that by doing this, desecration is described as active and the change that occurs because of this is highlighted. Overall, by playing around with the formatting of entries, the reader’s attention is captured more and seems less like a lecture.