My last post to this blog described an experiment in self-review that I planned to embark on in the month of May. The plan was to participate in National Short Story Month by reading a short story each day, and by writing a short story of my own. I also planned to analyze the story I read and reflect on my own writing process.
It is now the first of May, so here goes!
The story I read was actually an excerpt from an autobiographical work entitled Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant by Raul "Tianguis" Perez. It was included in an anthology Crossing into America: The New Literature of Immigration that is edited by Luis Mendoza and S. Shankar. I have had the anthology on my shelf for several years, ever since I took a graduate seminar with Shankar, and felt that with my own book manuscript on the South Asian immigrant experience currently undergoing a hefty revision, this would be an opportune time to delve into the anthology.
My assessment of the story:
1. What was the story I read? Title, author, place where it was published, and synopsis.
The story, as noted, was an excerpt from Raul Perez's autobiographical work Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant, published in 1991. The excerpt I read documents Perez's plans to enter the United States illegally as a "wetback," using the parlance of the late 1980s through 1990s, and describes his efforts to locate a coyote and means of getting across the border.
2. What were three strengths and/or insights that I gained about storytelling and writing from this particular story?
a) Perez tells a story that I am familiar with. Yet he does so in a manner that enlightens me to many aspects of the process of crossing the Mexican border into the United States illegally that I had not previously known. I learned specifically that the border crossing was a village practice more so than an urban one, and that people had gained knowledge of this practice largely by word of mouth.
b) Perez's storytelling style is both timeless and dated. He defines terms like coyote and bracero as if they are new to the American reading public. The publication date of 1991 might explain why. What gives the style a timeless strength, however, is the manner in which he loads explanation and historic detail onto the terms. One understands better how both terms developed in historical and political context.
c) I sense from the story that Perez has crossed the border before. He has not done it with the assistance of a coyote so he himself is embarking on a voyage of discovery in what he documents. I enjoy the narrative voice: it is simple, direct, non-judgmental and straightforward.
3. How do the strengths/insights I gained support my own efforts to improve my writing?
I often am asked to define terms like sari or samosa and I often find myself rebelling against doing such things. I gain a new respect from reading Perez's definitions because they help me see the role of Mexican immigration in post-World War II America more clearly. They help me see how words that have entered the American lexicon came into being.
4. Have I read anything else by the story's author?
At this point, I have not.
The story I wrote is posted to My National Short Story Month blog, which is linked to this site. Here is my assessment of it:
1. What was the story I wrote today? Title, word count, and a 1-2 sentence synopsis.
The story was "Not Indian Like Me." It is 100 words long and is based on a prompt from a site called StoryADay.org to write a "drabble," essentially a 100-word story. Not Indian Like Me narrates a conversation between my mother and myself on Hindus and Muslims following the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid, a sixteenth century mosque that once stood in Ayodhya, India.
2. Where did the idea for this story originate?
The story is drawn from my book manuscript.
3. How did the story develop?
I followed the guidelines for writing a drabble, which were to choose one or two characters, and let a single moment, action, or choice unfold. The drabble is supposed to hint somehow at how the singular moment is more significant than the characters realize at the moment. Because this story comes out of a book manuscript, writing the drabble was not difficult. I did find myself having to distill it, however, from about 350 words in the manuscript to 100 in order to follow the rules.
4. What might I do to this story later to strengthen it?
I chose this particular story because my husband had suggested last fall that it sums up what my entire book is about. The closing line "You cannot understand. You are not Indian like me." hints at the significance. It comes late in the manuscript, in the second to last chapter. But as I consider it, it reiterates tensions that are apparent throughout the manuscript. Because I am writing a non-fiction narrative, the timing of the scene also is significant. It occurs as I am a young adult, and am beginning to look critically at what it means to be an Indian in the U.S. for the first time. In revising, I might replace the text I distilled with this particular story so that it "pops" out of the narrative quite clearly and then step back to analyze the statements and their implications.
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