There were a few reasons why Now Let Us Praise Famous Men seemed unlike any other book I had read (probably to the delight of Agee), one of which were the pages that listed all of the characters of the book. I was shocked to see that Agee had listed himself and Evans as “spies” and at first did not realize the negative connotation with that word, believing it to imply it was a romantic way of documenting “truth” without anyone knowing. The problem is that everyone knew Agee and Evans were outsiders, or at least, “others”. One line that still sticks with me is “Their faces were… utterly without understanding; and they had to stand now and hear what I was saying, because in that country no negro walks away from a white man, or even appears not to listen while he is talking,” (42) Agee is very aware of the power dynamic immediately placed on those whom he interacts with, and to some extent that does prevent a completely accurate picture of those he tries to describe, at least at the beginning of interactions, but quite possibly does not ever go away. Looking at these images then does feel invasive, but also feels as if there is something unnatural created by the mere act of asking to document someone’s life. When returning to the idea of unknowable histories, they are such because there is no right way to insert ourselves back into that narrative without ourselves experiencing all of the experiences that those we study have gone through. Agee even says that the people he writes about only have meaning through him, and finding a way to change that is still a question which has no right answers.  

Like Lucy, I focused on the different narrative styles that Keene employed to tell Carmel’s story, and found transitions between styles incredibly jarring. We begin with a third person historical point of view, akin to how one writes in academic papers, to a third person narrative, where we lack a complete understanding of what Carmel knows. Then we transition to reading her journals, which help paint a better picture of what she can communicate, to her first person narrative at the end, which is incredibly precise and forces you to realize the depth of the stories she could tell. We slowly become more intimate with her in a way that is almost absurd; she is a mute girl that we can fully understand by the end of the narrative. She, like Hartman explains, is telling an impossible story, and this last section forces you to further grapple with that idea. Like Chloe mentioned, this is further exemplified by the idea that this entire story is written in the space of an asterisk, stating that no definitive records of the school exist, and yet, somehow, we read. In that context, I found this narrative to be incredibly haunting; the idea that we have erased so many people and the only stories we are given are stories of people who have been chosen. More often or not, that choice is because of what has been done to them, rather than as actors with their own agency. These narratives are just our attempt to deal with the idea that we have lost these stories forever,and that we can never lose sight of that.

Islamophobia: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against Islam or people who practice Islam

First known use of Islamophobia: 1923, in the meaning defined above

Your word is Islamophobia.

Can I have the definition of the word?

Islamophobia is— 

Dad told me I should never run for public office. 

While Mom cooked dinner, he was always watching CNN in the living room. Someone was always yelling, someone was always getting criticized, and sometimes the name Hussein was thrown around with vitriol. He told me that he didn’t know if I could take it.

They both told me I couldn’t be like them; that I had to be something more, someone who could make a life for himself, someone who could do something with my life.  

But they told me of course you and him were at the top of the class. Of course I wanted to go to that high school. Of course–

Dad finally converted and got baptized last year.

He never seemed to pay attention to Father during mass, so I didn’t think I needed to either; I just stared at the missal in front of me and pretended to be interested in the texts for next week. I just needed to get through the next 2 hours–

I told my mom that I wanted to bring Lunchables to school instead of the food that she cooked. 

I got so caught up in how they were making weird faces and said that my food stank and I spent the whole rest of the day trying to figure out if my collar still had curry on it or if my shirt still smelled. 

I don’t know why we watched so many Bollywood movies; it wasn’t like we were really from there. Nothing comes from where I’m from. And everyone thinks they know where I’m from. Of course it all made sense to them.

Of course I could win this spelling bee.

I-S-L-A-M-O-P-H-O-B-I-A.

That is correct.

Process notes:

This ended up being more about me than I initially anticipated, which was honestly not the direction that I intended to go with this piece, but I felt like it helped bring everything together in my mind. It also made this super personal and at times felt impossible to finish. I was really happy with how I framed the piece (another implicit of course thrown in there). I had fragments of thoughts that I knew I needed to throw in,and wanted to make it feel like a stream of consciousness, so I needed a nice way connecting all these discrete thoughts together, and feel much more satisfied than I initially anticipated I would be. I don’t know if there exists a space for the voice I was representing just because it is unique to the past 20 years or so and it feels really weird that the voice I end up speaking from is mostly my own, but hopefully enough innocence was conveyed in order to capture the voice of someone who doesn’t quite understand everything that has happened to him yet. 

Like Mikey, I found reading Sabrina akin to watching a movie. One of the ways that this format is different from the movie is the power given to the reader about the passage of time: you are allowed to make time pass as quickly or slowly as you desire. There were a few moments where I think Drnaso effectively used this aspect of the graphic novel to heighten tension: where Calvin has to tell Teddy about Sabrina’s death (73), where Teddy is about to hear that the video of Sabrina’s murder had been leaked (107), and where Calvin and Teddy, with a knife in his hand, stand next to opposite sides of the bedroom door, juxtaposed (139) are three frame sequences that come to mind for me. In each of these sequences, Drnaso has planned that the last frames you see on the page, before you have to turn it, are where tension is the highest, and that positioning makes the suspense even greater. Even when the videotape is sent out to news outlets (68), I refuse to believe that it isn’t intentional that you have a frame as lighthearted as finding a Barney tape on the page to the left of the frame where it finally is confirmed that the video is of Sabrina’s murder; I found my eyes jumping past the former frame and to the latter upon turning the page because of the increasing tension and the suspicion of how this connects to the story, which only made the Barney comic even more horrific and foreboding, because you definitively know where the story is headed. Being able to choose the exact time frame you live in that is a powerful thing and adds so much to the experience of reading Sabrina.

“Fuck.

I know that we all are shocked and probably wish we didn’t have to report on yet another senseless tragedy, but this is what we signed up for. The news isn’t always good; hell, it’s never good, and our feel-good stories are there just to make sure people don’t completely lose faith in the world. Good news isn’t news. No one cares if things are working the way that they’re supposed to.

And it isn’t senseless; there have to be reasons behind this, and we need to lay them out for our readers so that they don’t become hysterical. The last thing we want is to make people panic. What makes him different? What are some things that we should be aware of? We want to be very, very careful about generalizations, because those are what people latch on to. There might be commonalities somewhere, but we should err on the side of caution at all times here. Don’t make any bold claims if you can’t back them up. 

This was an fucking despicable act. I get that. 

But not everyone is evil. There have to be reasons behind this that we don’t understand yet, and our job is to get to the point where we can. I’m not fucking defending his actions. I just think that this used to be someone who couldn’t have done this. Something had to change. Our job is to find out what.”

The editor in chief stopped pacing the room and looked up at the newsroom. Scanning his eyes around the room, he saw carbon copies of reporters: hands on their heads, like they had a headache that had suddenly flared up, people staring down at their fingernails and biting their lower lips, eyes violently clenched together and abruptly opened. His monochrome painting was only interrupted by the new intern that started only two weeks prior. He wasn’t disaffected, no, he was grasping at his hair and blankly staring in front of him, but his eyebrow was slightly raised because of a stupid thought he couldn’t shake.

Why did something feel off about this speech?

Process Notes: 

I feel like I have this habit of having a good idea of what the last line of my piece is going to be, and I started writing with that in mind, only for that first attempt to be just dialogue, with a gut punch at the end, and I wasn’t satisfied with that. This version does also have the same structure: opening speech from the editor in chief, and looking at the reactions of those around him dealing with the tragedy, but I spent a little more time developing the latter than saying something arguably more of a gut punch (at the price of being probably a bit more inaccurate). I ended up pulling ideas from thoughts I’ve seen about coverage of tragedy, real and fictional, including Sabrina (and even maybe a thought or two from Lippman’s Liberty and the News). I think the words you don’t say are just as important as the ones you do, if not more important, and so highlighting a potential discrepancy without painfully attempting to construct one I think ends up being effective.

I found myself entranced by the definition of the word azhigwa in Counter-Desecration, which I ended up looking for a “standardized” definition afterwards, which I found to be “now, at this time”. The image of focusing on the now in nature is a very poignant one and one that I think Calvino would be satisfied with, both with the imagery and length of the definition. Calvino states that the problem with language is that it either will have “a certain amount of noise that alters the essence of the information” (Calvino, 91), or “it always says something less than the sum of what can be experienced” (Calvino, 91) Yet, because this was a word I had seen for the first time, there was no prior experience to compare to, and it highlighted just how powerful our choice of words are in the images that they invoke, something that both Calvino and Lippman address, albeit from different perspectives. Lippman decries the use of catch-all words like socialism that mean anything the writer wants it to mean: “If those words are meaningless lumps charged with emotion, instead of the messengers of fact, all sense of evidence breaks down” (Lippman, 85) Instead of sticking to a specific definition and set of images, vague words allow writers to manipulate readers into believing anything could be an example of anything else, and therefore can push their own personal agenda in the news, something we would want an objective point of view from. Adding on to Chloe’s point, as we see the definition of culture evolve as time passes, it can vary with ideology as well (as I suppose a definition of azhigwa from an organization focusing on traveling would not be the same as this one). Lippman does show concern regarding this, but the question of what the exact definition of a word would be still remains at large. It seems unsatisfying to find that the objective definition of a certain word is that of the majority, so I am left pondering what a good solution to this problem would be. 

Object: My Driver’s License

First Revised Version:

The piece of plastic is as thin as a filament, and yet it tells all. A minute, rectangular sheet with a rounded outline near where vertices used to be resembles a phone, but perhaps the phone takes after the license. The words are miniscule, but they always say the same thing: Month Month Day Day Year First Name Last Name Month Month Day Day Year, but the way they say it holds significance: sometimes, it builds up in a crescendo by the middle of the phrase and gradually breaks itself down, as if it had recognized its own self importance but then realized the err in its ways only halfway through. In other places it camouflages behind what one would dare call a signature, in text so teeny you weren’t even sure it was text, but it was, lurking. The transition from an ocean blue with Lady Liberty peeking over the horizon, thoughts of yes you do belong here, surrounded by squiggles that could be microscopic cells in another universe, to green nonexistence: crisscrossed faint lines trapped in bars where, yes, if you hadn’t noticed the intimidating blue writing and the timid red letters below it at the apex of the license, you would be shocked to find that this person calls New York his home, and that he is under 21. It’s astonishing they don’t try to hide the phrase drivers license just to make sure that you know what this is. Then back to blue, but richer this time: an image of Liberty and Justice in striped dresses of sky blue and sun yellow and scarves that are the opposite color, tied around their waist, with a red robe draped over each of them. Scales in the hand of one and a crown at the feet of the other, while between the two an eagle sits perched on a globe, on the entire world mind you, above a picture of the rising sun, emitting concentric rays as it climbs above a mountain, as a ship sails down the Hudson River, looking for a place to expand to. The only words they dare say are self-important, those that are engraved in plastic are the day you were born and the day you can buy alcohol and the day you cut up this card and your ID number that means nothing to you, but something to someone, somewhere, right? And your signature: of all the salient words on this document like your name and your address and what sex you were assigned at birth and what color someone saw when they gazed into your eyes, these were above the rest, somehow.  The contradictions run rampant when the phrase USA and Not for Federal Purposes are written, juxtaposed with barely any breathing space between them, and where your month and year of birth somehow is not significant anymore when shadowing the day you are now an adult.  

The TSA agent takes one look at the black and white portrait, and asks if he could do an extended search.

Rewritten Version:

Lady Liberty peeks out from the delicate, handwoven blue tapestry that surrounds the intimidating, darker shade of blue words yelling New York State in your face, and the more reserved black and red ones calming stating this was a driver’s license and that he is under 21. USA hides in the uppermost right corner of the plastic, perhaps because paradoxically it is immediately overshadowed by the phrase Not for Federal Purposes to its right. A miniature signature followed by minute, ornamented words that mean nothing to you is followed by a dull gold line and a blue dotted one as you make your way downward to green nothingness. Or that’s what it appears like at first, but bars streaking diagonally rightward are filled with criss crossed waves that bob in and out as they move forward, subtly filling the space you once thought to be empty. Just in case you forgot, words whispering this boy is from New York State and he is under 21 are thrown in there too. Everything you need to know is here: the ID number that means nothing, the date of birth and the day this card gets cut up that must mean something, as they are bolded and etched into the card, and the color someone would see if they took the time to stare into his eyes. And who could forget the fade to white before you hit the black and white portrait of this boy. He looks at you as if he was told not to smile, as if he knows this is the first thing that the TSA officer at LaGuardia Airport will see when he asks for his ID. A nanoscopic line follows, could these be words? The phrase Day Day Month Month Year First Name Last Name Day Day Month Month Year lurks behind what one dares call a signature, but yet this scribble seems important: it is engraved after all, and not many things on this card are: not his name underneath, his address neither, and yet the days he could buy a lottery ticket and when he could buy alcohol are. And lest you think you understand what they deem important, his date and year of birth are not bolded again, even if they were once, but appear to wish to be anywhere but on the bottom left, desperately hoping no one would see its faint gray ink. The spotlight then falls on the same black and white portrait, cutting out a piece of Justice as she holds a scale in one hand, dressed in a striped yellow dress with a blue robe belt, mirroring Liberty, who proudly steps on a crown with her sandals. They both wear a delicate red robe over everything else, and surround a painting of the ascending sun over a mountaintop, illuminating the voyage of a ship barrelling down the Hudson River, looking only for a place to expand into. An eagle sits perched upon a globe, upon the entire world, proudly spreading its wings. And yet his picture is on top of this image, with our beloved phrase that, instead of lurking, rises and falls and curls and shrinks before vanishing. His picture is the only thing that they see.

It took me a really long time to pick an object I felt comfortable enough with to say that this was part of my story, and when I first picked my license it seemed like a boring choice: what was so interesting about describing a document that was all words? But I spent a long time staring at it and seeing everything else that I honestly had not noticed before, and I felt like the only way I could describe this piece was through a structure that told various stories about myself and bureaucracy and a little but of history as well. I think I leaned too much into a narrative structure when I first wrote my description and went for a more methodical way of navigating the license the second time around. The images that I try to invoke are, of course, about the text and the design, which the uncommon descriptors greatly helped with, but I think there is benefit in going beyond a surface level description of the words. I tried to be as intensely detailed as I read from Mr. Palomar, and this allowed me to also manufacture tension in both cases. Both pieces are meant to be intensely charged, even if they are just about a boring drivers license, and I think I managed to get that point across.