Literacy Narrative Part 2
Title: From a Young Age
Author: Shaan
Tracing Pages Reflection
The thesis that I came up with was : Both novels employ black and white illustrations, blending contemporary color schemes with a retro art style connecting the anecdotes to their respective eras. However, “Stitches” adopts a darker and grayer color palette, reflecting the intensity of David’s internal and external conflicts, and the pages of “Stitches” exude tension and drama throughout the story, partly due to David’s constant hardships. Overall, this assignment was a lot of fun and different from any other assignment I have done throughout my high school academic career; it was a great assignment to do amid midterms to get myself out of the grind of studying for a couple of hours. I enjoyed tracing the two pages of the comics, and the racing paper was also a very cool part of the experience. However, I found writing the ABT format more difficult than the “traditional way” I was taught to write an essay. Throughout high school, I was taught that the thesis statement comes first in the essay, and that was how the whole essay was built, so constructing this essay was a lot different and required more time to create. I do believe that this assignment did help me to understand the secret language of this way of writing and how each detail on the page can symbolize something about the mood the narrative wants to take on or the character development of the protagonist in that given moment. The biggest insight I gained was just the dark tone that Stitches took on and how the experiences that Tillie and David faced throughout their childhood shaped how they view that traumatic time in their life today.
Tracing Pages Assignment
Although Tilie Weldon did know of and read David Small’s novel several times before constructing her novel “Spinning, there are still many differences between the two stories, and both depict two drastically different images and messages, targeting different audiences in their deliveries. While both novels are based on autobiographical experiences and describe how their childhood played a huge role in the person they have become today, they have two different perspectives on the world and the struggles they endured during their childhood years. The difference makes them present themselves differently through comics.
Spinning and Stitches are semi-autobiographical works in which both authors express how they overcame traumatic experiences early in their lives and were crucial to becoming the people they are today. But where these two differ is the situations the two main characters of each novel had to endure. For example, the primary themes of Spinning are that Tillie struggles with her self-identity as a lesbian female, making her have a tough time making friends with other girls and trying to fit into the social norms of that period. On the other hand, in Stitches, the main issues that David experiences are family dysfunction or how one of his family truly loves him, how his family had no care for him when he had a critical illness, and how his family never really cared for his presence or interests, which create different audiences for each novel.
These differences in childhood trauma cause Tillie Walden and David Small to use different storytelling methods. Both novels use mostly black and white images and illustration to depict their narratives, I believe the authors do this because both novels are memoir that uses a contemporary color scheme and retro art style. They implore this kind of retro style for readers to match these anecdotes’ in this era.
In contrast, Stitches had a darker, grayer color theme than Spinning due to the conflict David was facing. Although Tillie had a very tough childhood, she did have people around her who cared for her, such as her Chello teacher, her brother at the beginning of her life, her friend Lindsey, and her father, who supported her. But when Tillie started to come out as lesbian, she still had some support for her identity, like the cello teacher and Lindsey, and her father, in his funny way, also supported her decision. But David did not have people to fall back on. He was not close to any of his immediate family members; in fact, his mother had some sought-out hatred for him, and his father never felt and respected him either, and he wasn’t particularly close to his brother. This is why I believe the pages and delivery of Stitches are much more gloomy than Spiining, as David had no family or friend support.
In addition, the pages of Stitches just felt a lot tenser and more dramatic compared to Spinning. Although this may have been due to the parts of the story that I chose, Stitches has a more dramatic feel overall. Furthermore, the delivery of Spinning is a lot more light-hearted than Stitches because there are many positives in Tillie’s life. For example, she had a lot of success in the ice-staking arena and had a positive romantic relationship for a little while. But again, on the other side, David really had nothing going for him throughout the story, and it seemed like he encountered new problems every time we flipped the page, hence the more dramatic and tenser feeling of the pages and delivery style.
In the pages I chose to analyze, both authors went into depth in every event; for example, they slowed down time on these pages for the reader to better understand the events. Both authors use time manipulation for readers to delve into the characters’ emotional states. They can show a character’s thought process, hesitation, or inner turmoil by extending a moment, giving readers insight into the character’s psychology and motivations.
In conclusion, while Tillie Walden and David Small both drew inspiration from their own life experiences to create the semi-autobiographical graphic novels “Spinning” and “Stitches,” they presented vastly different narratives and messages, ultimately targeting distinct audiences. Both novels employ black and white illustrations, blending contemporary color schemes with a retro art style connecting the anecdotes to their respective eras. However, “Stitches” adopts a darker and grayer color palette, reflecting the intensity of David’s internal and external conflicts, and the pages of “Stitches” exude tension and drama throughout the story, partly due to David’s constant hardships.
Reality of Camping (Quadriptych)
In the beginning, I thought that this version of making a comic would be easier than the triptych, but in reality, it was more difficult. Because in the triptych, you knew that each comic frame represented something, the beginning, middle, and end, but there was just an extra frame for the quadriptych. For me, it was quite difficult to find a use for this frame, as it was difficult to find a use for the extra frame because I did not want to be repetitive and I also wanted to avoid starting another plot, knowing that there was no way I could fit another story in just four frames. I decided to do my comic about camping because this fall break, I am going camping for the second time ever in the Great Smoky Mountains, but the first time I went camping, it was not the greatest experience. We took a 3-day trip, and the first day went great because the sun was out all day and the weather was beautiful. But the next day was terrible, as there were thunderstorms all day, dramatically worsening the whole experience. The rain sucked all the fun out of the experience, and the first thought that entered my mind was that I wished we had just booked a hotel.
The College Nomad’s Necessities
The things I carry in my bag are fairly simple and understandable for any college student. A MacBook Air, notebooks, sunglasses, folders, loose-leaf paper, pens, pencils, a calculator, and a water bottle. I only carry a few items because I like to travel light, and I do not enjoy carrying around extra material and items that have no use because this will make walking around campus that much more of a pain. The two odd items I have is an Aleve bottle because I believe you never know when you will get hurt or have a migraine in class, so having Aleve to the rescue is a must. In addition, I also carry a paper calendar/agenda planner with me because I like physically writing my to-do list. Most of my peers in this generation use an electronic calendar platform like Egenda or Google Calendar. However, I find satisfaction in writing down everything I want to accomplish for the day and crossing them out as I go through the tasks.
Street Ball (Triptych)
The composition I made has to do with a street basketball reference. I like to play basketball a lot with my friends, and sometimes the games get very competitive, and we start throwing trash-talk and insults around when the games get intense. One of the main phrases we say when somebody when they miss a shot or when we know that they can’t shoot is “brick.” This insult means you can’t shoot and is often used when playing games at LA Fitness or parks. I just thought this comic was funny because the main character was working on his shooting and basketball game and went to play with his friends, but then the character realized that he was in the same place as before and still could not make a shot. This Sunday’s sketch was very enjoyable because the topic I wrote about was one that I experienced a lot. I chose the paper-pencil method because it was easier to draw pictures and have a more comic-like feel than doing the assignment digitally. The only really difficult part of the assignment was creating an entire plot that was only three panels long. The crafting of this comic was similar to the Sunday Sketch assignment (Sk2), as we needed to draw a picture that describes a situation or story. But it was also very different because we could explain a story using three different panels, and we did not have to tie in a real-life object to our panels either.
Money Ball
The two images I combined for my combo photo are an NFL backup quarterback and a stack of money. The meaning of the photo is pretty straightforward, demonstrating the amount of money that is actually in the NFL and that players who are 3rd string players and barely see the stage of an actual NFL game are still receiving excellent pay and are in much better financial shape than 99% of Americans. This photo also demonstrates how quickly NFL players and other players throw away their money on useless items, have some financial problems later in their lives, and even have to declare bankruptcy in some rare conditions. During this assignment, I found it challenging to combine the two images and discard the parts of one image that didn’t look good when the images were combined. In addition, it was difficult to blur the images together to make it look like one image, not two images obviously edited together. In the end, I was able to figure out the solution, and I am sure I will be more efficient the next time I perform a similar task.
Visual Note Taking
The visual note-taking experience was much more enjoyable than I believed it would be initially. I thought it would be one of those assignments that would just be a drag and a “filler assignment,” which had no value to the course or my learning, but I was truly mistaken. I had a lot of fun making these notes and felt like I understood the concepts better. I discovered that I retain the information better when I do these styles of letters because now I feel like I am more on top of the beginning information in my sociology class. I also believe that the picture drawing of these notes made retaining the information much more enjoyable because I had not drawn it for fun. I forgot how much I enjoyed doodling, which explains why this process was so satisfying. Although this process was very beneficial, I will probably do this note-taking technique in class, as it was very time-consuming. I will most likely use visual note-taking better to understand more complicated processes and lessons in lectures.
Literacy Narrative Reflection
Image Credits: Photo by Huynh Dat from Pexel Photos
I discovered the power of personal connections and experiences influence my interests and identity as a reader. My passion for reading and writing reflects my upbringing and heritage, from bedtime stories that inspired my love for fantasy narratives to essays that celebrated my heritage. The writing process was very different because I have never written an essay or report analyzing my own behaviors or interests in reading and writing. It did feel strange to do the free-writing exercises at first because it was challenging to go into such depth on activities that happened ten years ago. Still, the free-writing process did help me a lot to construct my essay, as I included the bedtime anecdote, which played a massive role in my essay. What I found surprising is that I like to write about myself a lot, which was strange to me because whenever a person in a job interview asks, “Can you tell me about yourself?” I always struggle to respond. I believe that the most exciting sentence from my essay is: My reading interests in quarantine were similar to that of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and Little Red Riding Hood, an action-packed story with a hero protagonist vanquishing evil.
