August 3, 2011
Lucy Grealy
Lucy pinpoints her focus immediately in her title, Autobiography of a Face. Lucy’s autobiography is not where she describes everything that she ever experienced throughout her life, but instead she narrows her frame around a very specific part of her life-her face. Through her face she describes her struggle with happiness.
Losing a third of her jaw to cancer at the age of ten left Lucy Grealy alive, but scarred for life. Not only did she have to go through difficulties with eating and drinking, but after her surgery she never felt pretty. Referring to herself as ugly in her autobiography, she struggles with these concepts of self beauty and self love. Her internal battle of whether or not she deserved happiness is described masterfully in her book: The Autobiography of a Face. Poignant, her voice sharply points out the rough road map of her story. She never leaves a hint of doubt of her point of her internal struggle to find self-worth even though she thought herself ugly. Even at the end while she’s on a date, after revealing to her readers how she’s been avoiding mirrors, she catches a glimpse of her reflection off of the shiny table. This enforces the idea that her image will always be there right in front of her.
Before reading Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, I read Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett. Truth and Beauty details the twenty year friendship of Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett. In this book, Patchett mentions Lucy Grealy’s biography. I enjoyed seeing the two different perspectives on Grealy’s life, because it gave me a better understanding. When I read, Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett revealed Lucy Grealy to be strong and confident. Over the twenty years of their friendship, she was not be able to explain why Lucy Grealy felt self-depreciating towards her own appearance and how it had affected her life. The second biography on Lucy Grealy was written by Grealy herself. The author’s honesty offered a behind the scenes point of view that only she could give.
Lucy Grealy explains in her own words how the aftermath of having cancer affected the rest of her life, “I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I’ve spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.”
This experience taught her how to view the world not from the cancer attacking her but the pain felt by the varied reactions of the people around her. She restrains what she writes when she talks about the surgeries and the hospital visits. The surgeries she pulls back and reports them as if they were a clinical report about someone else rather than herself. When her mother takes her to the appointments, she sits next to Lucy, telling her to be strong at nine years old and not to cry. Lucy only cries once and then remains strong.
When her father takes her to the hospital, Lucy recalls how uncomfortable her father is as they enter the doctor’s office, that he can’t fix her cancer. He says that he’ll go get the car and leaves her to face the chemo on her own. She also describes the appointments to the hospitals as visits instead of appointments except for the harsh chemotherapy sessions. These “visits” she goes on adventures with her friends in the hospital through the hallways and through the park outside. With perfect clarity Lucy points out her many battles with cancer and within herself. From the painful recounting of the old chemo treatments to the focus on the emotional side of fighting for her life and self-acceptance. She focuses on the aftermath of the physical disfigurement left from surviving cancer.
Even though she survived cancer, she never felt pretty, always referring to herself as “ugly” questioning whether she even deserved happiness.
Lucy Grealy has a sharp style of writing, including only the necessary points. Her sentences are clear and concise. I can apply it to my piece, “Leaving the Playground.” In her book biography Lucy Grealy writes about how the disfigurement caused by cancer treatment changed her life. She pulls in many events from her life, wrapping them together to show how all of the scattered scenes affected a common theme-her face. Through her writing, Lucy Grealy was able to show multiple struggles around one idea. I can apply this same technique to my own piece of writing by focusing on an event that changed my life because of my hearing impairment. By editing the structure and detail of the piece like Lucy Grealy was able to do, I can change my writing so that it focuses on the reaction of the ignorance of others caused more damage than the disability itself.
August 3, 2011
Joan Didion
“Life changes fast.
Life changes the instant.
You sit down at dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.”
That was the first thing that I read of Joan Didion’s bibliography The Year of Magical Thinking. This beginning outlined the entire book. Joan Didion writes this way not only in an outline for her entire book, but inside each chapter as well. The first chapter she describes the importance of the moment. That in a moment everything could and did change for her. She continues this thought in the next chapter. One minute she and her husband are sitting down to dinner and the next he is falling on the floor in pain and she is calling the ambulance with a number she never intended to use for any of her own family. They had just gotten back from the (name) North Blue ICU visiting their daughter, , who lay unconscious. How could another tragedy hit her so soon?
Joan Didion describes these events in a restrained way. She describes them as happening to her and that she is losing her husband, but she doesn’t overly describe her feelings. She uses a repetition style in her sentences and phrases to keep you actively involved in the story. This shows her distance in the situation. She keeps referring to her husband as dead, but that he might come back. That’s why she’ she hesitant to go through his clothes and give away his shoes, because she says that “John would need them when he comes back.”
Even the first night that she has to sleep alone without any other people, she had to make sure that she was alone so that, “he could come back.” This is her denial in her husband’s death.
When Joan Didion is in the waiting room in the hospital earlier the day before she explains, “There was a line for the admittance paperwork. Waiting in the line seemed the constructive thing to do. Waiting in the line said that there was still time to deal with this, I had copies of the insurance cards in my handbag, this was not a hospital I had ever negotiated…” Here with just two sentences repeating the first phrase, “Waiting in the line”, pulls you into the importance of the line. Even though normally waiting in a line would be mundane and a waste of time, here it is a sign that she can still help. She can still wait in line with the insurance card’s information. Even though she might not be able to save her husband, which the doctor’s are trying to do, she can remain sane and wait in the line.
While still finishing this book, I have noticed and appreciated Joan Didion’s style of repetition and parallel structures in her sentences and phrases. I can apply these techniques to my essays. Reading over my essays, I noticed that I used this technique sparingly. I have tried to apply this technique more in my Feature Article and my lengthened personal narrative piece. When I try to use this technique I notice it spot lights one thing in the sentence like the “waiting in line” sentences. This is where the master of repetition, Joan Didion would realize what she wants to repeat and bring notice to in her writing. I am just beginning to appreciate that there is a technique of repetition and how Joan Didion has been able use this technique to bring notice to certain ideas in her writing.
Lucy Grealy’s Poignant Writing
Lucy pinpoints her focus immediately in her title, Autobiography of a Face. Lucy’s autobiography is not where she describes everything that she ever experienced throughout her life, but instead she narrows her frame around a very specific part of her life-her face. Through her face she describes her struggle with happiness.
Losing a third of her jaw to cancer at the age of ten left Lucy Grealy alive, but scarred for life. Not only did she have to go through difficulties with eating and drinking, but after her surgery she never felt pretty. Referring to herself as ugly in her autobiography, she struggles with these concepts of self beauty and self love. Her internal battle of whether or not she deserved happiness is described masterfully in her book: The Autobiography of a Face. Poignant, her voice sharply points out the rough road map of her story. She never leaves a hint of doubt of her point of her internal struggle to find self-worth even though she thought herself ugly. Even at the end while she’s on a date, after revealing to her readers how she’s been avoiding mirrors, she catches a glimpse of her reflection off of the shiny table. This enforces the idea that her image will always be there right in front of her.
Before reading Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, I read Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett. Truth and Beauty details the twenty year friendship of Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett. In this book, Patchett mentions Lucy Grealy’s biography. I enjoyed seeing the two different perspectives on Grealy’s life, because it gave me a better understanding. When I read, Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett revealed Lucy Grealy to be strong and confident. Over the twenty years of their friendship, she was not be able to explain why Lucy Grealy felt self-depreciating towards her own appearance and how it had affected her life. The second biography on Lucy Grealy was written by Grealy herself. The author’s honesty offered a behind the scenes point of view that only she could give.
In her biography, Lucy Grealy first sets the stage with her struggles with cancer. She explains the painful surgeries, the exciting adventures with the other kids in the hospital, and the long solitary days at home. Although Lucy Grealy has survived chemotherapy and cancer, she spares readers from identifying the cancer as grueling or harsh. Instead, she focuses on the aftermath of the physical disfigurement left from surviving cancer.
Lucy Grealy explains in her own words how the aftermath of having cancer affected the rest of her life, “I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I’ve spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.”
This experience taught her how to view the world not from the cancer attacking her but the pain felt by the varied reactions of the people around her. From her mother telling her to remain strong at nine years old and not to cry, to the agonizing silence in the car as her father
drove her to and from the hospital for a childhood malady that Daddy couldn’t fix. With perfect clarity Lucy points out her many battles with cancer and within herself. From the painful recounting of the old chemo treatments to the focus on the emotional side of fighting for her life and self-acceptance.
drove her to and from the hospital for a childhood malady that Daddy couldn’t fix. With perfect clarity Lucy points out her many battles with cancer and within herself. From the painful recounting of the old chemo treatments to the focus on the emotional side of fighting for her life and self-acceptance.
Even though she survived cancer, she never felt pretty, always referring to herself as “ugly” questioning whether she even deserved happiness.
Lucy Grealy has a sharp style of writing, including only the necessary points. Her sentences are clear and concise. I can apply it to my piece, “Leaving the Playground.” In her book biography Lucy Grealy writes about how the disfigurement caused by cancer treatment changed her life. She pulls in many events from her life, wrapping them together to show how all of the scattered scenes affected a common theme-her face. Through her writing, Lucy Grealy was able to show multiple struggles around one idea. I can apply this same technique to my own piece of writing by focusing on an event that changed my life because of my hearing impairment. By editing the structure and detail of the piece like Lucy Grealy was able to do, I can change my writing so that it focuses on the reaction of the ignorance of others caused more damage than the disability itself.
