Narrative.ly Literary Profile Response

"The Simple Science of Mary Roach" 

By Kyria Abrahams

(www.narrative.ly)

 "These days, “Mythbusters” is a wonderful show for young girls. It makes you realize that science is the world around you. Science is your life. Science is your body. Science is your backyard. Science isn't some dry thing in a book."

This piece is a profile of an explorer, researcher, and all over love of science, Mary Roach, told in the first person. Roach is a very popular science writer in the literary world, even though she is not a scientist. What fuels her writing and her interest peaked in school and on her own, as a little girl exploring in her backyard with her neighbors. Roach's love of writing also stemmed in grade school where she wrote and illustrated  graphic novels. In the pieces Roach talked about "Mythbusters" being inspirational for young girls to get them interested in science, a field seen as predominantly male.

Roach says, "Generally, the Internet drives me nuts, the ease with which people accept things as fact." This was a strong quote because it  shows her true nature. In this quote you realize that she is someone who goes against the grain, or the givens, to find a different meaning of things, which rings true for scientists and explorers.

"We'd go out and catch fireflies. We were endlessly absorbed by this little world around us. It was just this magical time. I was very much out in science." Roach really shows her inquisitive side here as she recollects a time where she viewed the world scientifically through a simple pass time. This also goes together with her beliefs that science is all around us in the simplest of things.

  

  

Personal Profile- Outline

For my exploration of a personal profile, I chose to interview a new friend of mine, Samali. She is a few years older than I am, but we get along nonetheless. She is a San Francisco native who came to New York to explore a career in photojournalism and perfect her craft. She is currently studying at LaGuardia Community College as a fulltime student and is active many activities. For this interview I would like to get yo know Samalie the Californian, and got some insight on her transition between these major cities.

Questions:
1) What was a typical day like for you in your home town? How has it differed now that you live in New York? What was your childhood like?
2) Why did you originally move to New York?
3)What got you interested in photojournalism? What else are you interested in?
4) Do you have any interesting stories from working as a bartender or waitress?

Angela's Ashes Response

    Frank McCourt writes about his childhood and experiences growing up in Ireland with his improvised family in his personal memoir, Angela's Ashes. In the excerpt I read it seemed as if the McCourt family, although poor and struggling to survive, made do with what they had while Frank and his brother tried to live a normal life.

      One descriptive paragraph explains a comical time when his father tried to use a jam jar to hang a photo ultimately getting blobs of blood on it. McCourt uses some foreshadowing here as he recalls his mother telling his father he's "talking a lot of bloody none sense" where afterwards he gets blood all over the picture. Another section of the story that shows off McCourts descriptive style is when he tells of how he had to carry a pigs head through the streets to his home. In that section he vividly describes his endeavors with this pig and reading about him waking through the town being heckled, evokes your sympathy for this kid and gives you the sense of second hand embarrassment he endured. The school boys call out, " [Do] you know the only part of the pig the McCourts don't ate?[...] The only part they don't ate is the oink."


    Besides from using humor based stories to retell his past, McCourt also uses some literary elements that categorizes this piece as both creative and non-fiction. There are experimental aspects in this piece that are not typical to the ordinary novel. The dialogue between the characters unconventional as they are told on narrative style instead of split dialogue. There are also song lyrics through out different sections of the piece, from little girls singing to his fathers singing.

"Heads erect, eyes to front, stepping proudly together, / Sure freedom sits thrones on each proud     spirit there." 

These two lines from one of his fathers song really embodied who he thought his father was and how exactly he wanted to portray his character in the novel. He constantly spoke of his father as having a lot of pride for a poor man.

     Although this family was in terrible living conditions with little food and no access to luxuries, McCourt does not portray the story of his boyhood in a melodramatic way. He uses comical phrases and cheerful anecdotes that make light of a hard situation. While reading you get a sense of who the author really was a child. He chose to make the focus of this memoir the world through the eyes of a naive child who knew nothing other than the life he lived. Because the story is told being told through a young boy the language used is simple but still powerful in its description, which works for this type of memoir. The tone of the writing, written in laymans tone, gives the reader more of a sense of how life was in Ireland at that time. There is little education, so most of the references is to biblical figures and the area is cold and worn, so the lack of enchantment is embodied in McCourts simplistic words. I think the novel was so successful because it transported people back in time, placing them next to this little boy as he tells his story.