Week 10: First Writing Memories (Essay)

From an early age, my parents have little art books with stories in them that I wrote, but I don't have any solid memories of writing those. However, this last summer we went through a lot mine and my brother's old projects like that and it was really fun to read the little stories I had written.

 And through school, I learned cursive in third grade and had little papers and writing projects due throughout schooling. But to me, that was always just school work I had to do. I don't have any distinct memories of school writing before fourth grade.

My first memory of writing often outside of the required school work was when I began fourth grade.

In fourth grade, we had just moved to Colorado and  I was enjoying school for the first time in years. One of the teachers decided to set up a writing club for the fourth and fifth graders. I joined with a friend and once a week we would go to the club on our lunch time and talk about stories and write.

This is when I first thought that I wanted to write for a job when I grew up. I had read books all through my childhood (but that's a different essay). But with this writing club I wanted to make my own. I wanted to make other people feel the escape that I felt when reading.

One of the most vivid memories of this club was the first day, the teacher brought each of the students in the club a Lisa Frank pocket folder.For anyone who didn't go to school somewhere where there was a Lisa Frank craze, those folders and notebooks were like the riches of the class. They were designs of cartoon animals and sometimes people with bright rainbow colors. The girl with the most and best folders may as well have been the queen of the grade.

Lisa Frank Dalmatian Design. Source

The folder I got had two dalmatians with colored spots and paint brushes in their mouths. I'm pretty sure I still have that folder in a box somewhere. But anyways, one side of my folder was crammed full of poems and little stories and the beginnings of longer ones that I never finished. The other side had print outs of writing tips the teacher had given us.

I wrote so much that year that I now have permanent writing callouses on my hands for the first time and one of my fingers had a graphite tint there the pencil lead would rub it.

This is when my passion for writing really began. This is when I began collecting notebooks and folders that would all have random scribbles and poems and stories. While I know I did write earlier. For me, this club in fourth grade was when it all started.

Week 5: Names in Arabian Nights (Essay)

First I would like to say, I really enjoyed the Arabian Nights reading unit. I thought the stories were cleverly told and interwoven, as well as fun to read. I am very glad I chose this unit for week 5.

Throughout the Arabian Nights stories and the other fairy tales I have read, many characters are never named. They are simply known by their occupation or role in the story. But even fewer of the named character's are women. The main exceptions to this are, of course, Scheherazade and her sister, Dinarzade. However, in the main stories, the women are all known in terms of 'the wife', 'the enchantress', 'the fairy', or 'the princess.'

While this is not always a bad thing, there were some female characters in this unit I would have liked to be named. I understand that when most of these stories were written, they were made by men for children. They wanted them to focus on the lessons and morals of the tales. In that way, I think it's fine for the stories to not name characters. When no characters are named, it makes it almost more mystical. What I don't like is when they name the main male character, but not the main female character, who has an equally large part in the story.

The main story I'm talking about for this unit is Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp. In the story, the princess who Aladdin marries is central to many major plot points and is the constant motivation for all of Aladdin's actions after the second part of the story. Yet she is only called 'the princess' or 'Aladdin's wife' or 'the Sultan's Daughter'.

I will admit, after seeing she didn't receive a name in the story, I mentally assigned 'Jasmine' to her to keep in line with my Disney roots involved with this story. However, I would have liked to see the princess be officially named in the story.

As I said, I understood not naming many of the characters in the smaller stories, but I feel like the princess in the Aladdin story was very important. And in such a long story, it would have actually been easier to name her than to continuously refer to her in terms of other people or her title.

Still, I liked reading the story quite a lot, and am very glad I read the unit. This really is a small detail that shouldn't matter much. However, it was something that bugged me throughout the Aladdin story that I felt like I should mention.

By Walter Crane. Princess in Aladdin

Week 3: Women Saints Unit Review (Essay)

For this week, I read the Women Saints unit.

Overall I liked this unit. I thought that some of the stories were very interesting. My favorite stories were of Theodora, Christine, and Mary of Egypt.

I loved Theodora's because it went into more detail than many of the stories. It talked about her life before she became holy and about her feelings. It also went into more detail about her life while living in the monastery and what led to her being accused of adultery as a monk. Also it talked a lot about her life on the streets with the boy and how she fought demons who kept trying to trick her. I think I could connect more with Theodora than any of the other women saints in the stories.

I liked Christine's story because of the amount of detail in the story also. However, the detail in Christine's story was much different than Theodora's. While many stories just say that the saints were tortured, Christine's story talks about the fate of the men who tortured her and the hardships they put her through to try to convert her back to pagan religion.

Finally, I liked Mary's story, mostly because it was so different from any of the other stories in this Unit. Many of the stories had similar messages and basic plots for the stories. For example in many, a woman runs away dressed as a man to become a monk, or a woman refuses to marry a pagan, or a woman is kept in a tower by her pagan father to keep her pure for making offerings. Mary's story was not like any of them. Her story was unique in that she was alone for most of her life, and she preferred it that way. Also, the fact that she lived naked in the desert for years was quite unique.

While I did like the unit, I also wish there hadn't been quite so many similar stories. A couple of them I felt like I was just rereading with some details and names altered. I think that's why Christine's and Theodora's stood out, also. While they were two stories that fit into one of the reused plots, their stories still felt more unique than others because there was more focus on the women and in Theodora's case, her emotions, not just what happened to her.

I would chose this unit again, knowing what I know now about it. I do think it would have been helpful to include a few more definitions, as the language is a bit hard to understand at first. The words that were linked to Wikipedia articles and definitions were very helpful. And after I looked up some words it got easier as I adjusted to the older writing style.

My favorite picture from the unit was in Saint Martha's story.
By Andre Abellon, "Saint Martha and the Dragon"

Week 2: Bible Women Unit Review (Essay)

The reading Unit I chose for week 2 was the unit which focused on Biblical Women.

I enjoyed this unit a lot. Most of the stories I was at least partially familiar with, since I grew up in a Christian household. However, some details of each of the stories surprised me, either because of details that I hadn't heard before or of aspects I had heard but weren't actually in the story.

My favorite of the stories were the story of Esther, Susannah, and Bathsheba. I had heard Esther's story many times, but it was always my favorite growing up. I had never heard Susannah's story before, but I thought it had a great message and I wish it was taught more. Bathsheba was another story I liked. I hadn't ever realized that the King George and the Ducky was based off this. That was my brother's favorite VeggieTale when he was little (mine was the Esther one). That may have been a big reason why the story of Bathsheba stood out.

I didn't like the Witch of Endor as much. I thought that the story didn't focus enough on her. The story just didn't seem to fit into the unit as well as all of the other stories. Besides that, I thought they were all great and fit well together.

I don't have any regrets about the unit I chose. The only thing that some people may want to know is that the stories are in the original King James Bible, and not one of the more modern translations. I didn't mind the old version at all but some people may not want to read the old English.

In this unit, I learned about two new stories, but I also learned a lot about how the women and stories I had learned about as a kid fit together into a timeline. The stories went in such an order where I could see more of a family history and timeline than I ever had with these stories before. That was really interesting to me. This was especially applicable in the first half's old testament stories where they went in order through a families generations, like Sarah to Rebekah, to Leah and Rachel.

By Dante Rossetti, "Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah"

Overall I thought this was a very good unit. I enjoyed the stories and think they will work well with the mythologies and ancient stories that we will be studying in this class. I would recommend this unit to anyone who is interested in women's stories from folklore.