I don't know what to do about the Reading Response, since I already wrote a response to the last chapter in Steering the Craft, and there are no more reading assignments. So in lieu of reading responses, I'm going to do three classmate responses instead of one. I hope that's okay.
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Yeeva Cheng: Plain Jane
This is the story we covered in class, and I'm so glad to have a chance to comment further on it. It's such a beautiful story; you really did an amazing job. Something I thought was particularly effective was the use of stream-of-consciousness, which was a wonderful framework for the narrator's journey through several memories as they faded in and out. I think a more concrete structure to the narrative would have made the memories seem static and out of place, like exposition, but weaving the narrative in and out like that without clear cuts made the whole experience feel alive and fresh. I also loved how subtle you were with characterization, how you used character to establish settings rather than describing the settings and characters separately like blocks of information. Character, time and place all flowed together to create the atmosphere. Really well done. Aside from the topics we covered in class, I think the only thing I would mention is that perhaps the paragraph that starts "I blink a few times and frown..." could be cut down or even left out, maybe. That paragraph and the line "Before I could complete the recollection of that 'previous night,' " are the only places in the story where the transition from one scene to the next felt jumpy or displaced. Maybe they call too much attention to the shift? Anyway, this is a wonderful story. I love the language you use to describe everyday sights and sounds; you have a great grasp of just how much to tell and how much to leave to the imagination. Great job!
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