When I was young, the first house I remember living in had a single big tree in the driveway. We had a long driveway leading up to our little trailer home, and you passed by that big tree right before you parked. When I was four, a tornado hit late one night and tore up […]
Category Archive for 'Essays'
Dear Dhaka
Posted in Essays on Sep 13th, 2019
Dear Dhaka, As I am writing this letter, I am thinking about you. It has been years since I last saw you. Are you still the way I left you? You change so fast, a little too fast. I don’t know what to expect from you anymore. Are your sky still a little grey […]
The Chronophobic
Posted in Essays on Sep 9th, 2019
509 South Main Street, Blackstone, Virginia. 23824. I don’t remember what the kitchen looked like, other than the tacky black and white linoleum on the floor. I remember that the dining-room was where my mother kept the hundred-gallon fish tank and that I had one of those bottom-feeding eel things that I named Jojo. I […]
Bellocq’s Ophelia
Posted in Essays on Sep 1st, 2019
In Bellocq’s Ophelia, Violet has high expectations for herself because she was light-skinned and had an education. She cannot find employment, but, she sees “dark maids ambling with their charges” (p.7). She is forced, by having no money and being evicted from her hotel, to take work as a prostitute. She writes,” please do not […]
The Awakening
Posted in Essays on Aug 25th, 2019
A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!” He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mockingbird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his […]
The Awakening
Posted in Essays on Aug 25th, 2019
Edna Pontellier is a 28-year-old woman who lives an unsatisfied life void of any passion. She is married to a man she does not love. “Her marriage to Léonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in the respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of fate” (p.27). She loves her children, but she […]
Sample Post
Posted in Essays on Aug 22nd, 2019
The post below was written by Maggy O’Donnell on an essay by Sarah Gerard from her collection Sunshine State. Your aim in your posts should be to offer observations and analysis that might be useful in our discussions of the texts we’re reading. You don’t have to compose a formal paper of critical analysis (although it’s fine […]
Losing My New Orleans
Posted in Essays on Aug 22nd, 2019