Final workshop Refection

Teaser to " A Lady's War hero"

On a blistering hot day in a little town known as Nola, located in the southern half of Naples, Italy. My grandfather was born. He was the eldest out of four sisters; Pasqualina, MariaGrazia, Orsulina, and Saveria. He was given the name Francesco Pecchia. His father Gennaro Pecchia was a butcher and his mother MariaFelchie was a housewife, both cam from a family of farmers. On October 1922, Italy had been slipping into a political crisis. This giving Benito Mussolini the advantage to march him and his black shirts into Rome, presenting himself as the only man capable of restoring order. He overthrew the King Victor Emmanuel and 1925 Italy transitions

from a monarch to a Facisit Italy, as Mussolini proclaims himself as dictator, using the title as " Il Duce" ( The King). Francesco was six at the time and had just begum school.

However under the reign of Mussolini, school was where he shaped and molded the minds of the future fascist's in children. Mussolini took a keen interet in the state's education system and the youth organizations that existed in Italy and anyone who did no obey Mussolini and his black shirts were suitably punished. You can say that the people's daily lives as they could. If anyone would resist or disobey Mussolini's authority were preferably tied to a tree, and was forced to chug down a pint or two of castor oil, down the victim's throat and force him to eat a live toad/frog etc. This was enough of an example to keep their opinions to themselves. With this being said my great grandparents, for the sake of their family, followed the rules.

Reflection:

I have grown as a creative writer from this class because usually I do things very poetically, but from this class I learned how to turn it on and off.  How to give facts and for the facts to be factual but creative. This genre of creative writing was different for me because I'm normally so used to doing things poetically, using  similes and metaphors. I also am not use to doing blogposts or journalistic mannerism such as going out and exploring. I would usually just write from memory, my thoughts, or of inspiration of something. What I found most challenging at first was how to make my words sound beautiful without the use of poetry and what I found liberating was that I could have said my opinion and how I felt straight with no chaser. The reading that I enjoyed most was The Joan Didion piece because as a Feminist myself I always enjoy another strong woman writer. For their are very few and all need to be celebrated.

Personal Narrative

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/11/story-behind-infamous-sophia-loren-jayne-mansfield-photo

Teaser: 

It’s hard to pinpoint when, exactly, the first documented instance of side-eye appeared. But many credit this 1957 photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield. Newcomer Loren had just skyrocketed to stardom in Europe when she became the most photographed performer at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. The Beverly Hills party two years later was meant to officially welcome Loren to Hollywood. But the Italian bombshell found her spotlight unexpectedly stolen by Mansfield. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Loren confirms that, yes, she was thinking exactly what it looks like she was thinking.

This is about the two-time nominated academy award winning actress Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield. They are both amazing a well-known actresses. Who both share a leading amount of fame and success. We also cannot forget how incredibly beautiful and sexy they are, because they were known in that industry as "Sexpots" or " Bombshells". Sophia's was always in the shadows of the press and her movies. However Sophia never chose to speak on her personal life because it wasn't anyone's business. What's intriguing about Loren's life is how although she was a sexpot she did lead her life like the others. She started off as a mistress and turned into a wife. She stayed with her husband to this day and has two sons with him. Also that although her acting/modeling career was very important, she still did things in a respectful and traditional manner. 

The Afghan Girl

She's a girl, a beautiful girl in that fact. The colors are as vibrant as her beautiful features. The background is an emerald green and her dress is green also to match the background. Her headdress is a  rusty burgundy, that looks like its old and has been not treated will. Opposite from the vibrancy and smoothness of the emerald green dress and background. The rusty, old burgundy headdress acts as a contrast, but a comparison to her distain look in her beautiful green eyes. It also compares to the snarl on her lips. From this photograph you can tell that this Afghani girl's life has been well off but has been stripped from her riches. Riches in the sense of family, home, land, and happiness. Her life was one of good but as times went on, her life became the opposite. She is about 16 to 17 years old, which in this culture is the age wear they are arranged to wed a man of any age (17-80).  The social class that she is from based on her headdress would be the lower class and like they are from the rural area, where its desert. This is important to the photograph because it was to show how women are subjected to very little things. A woman so beautiful here in the U.S get paraded off as models on magazines and what not. But this young lady, in this culture women are hidden away and not to be seen or heard. Her father or brother would have had to been there for the taking of the picture and her head had to be covered. She can't show any emotion because it would have shown her beauty or as if (in her culture) she was lusting over the photographer or any other man. If these rules were not followed she could have been stoned to death.

  

Assignment_2_ Author's Note

Teaser:

Its August 4th 1998, she was four. She was a short scrawny thing, with strawberry blonde hair and porcelain skin. Very different from her brother, her sisters, her parents, cousins, grandparents, etc. As a matter of fact in the family portrait you can point her out and say “Where did she come from?”, "Was she adopted? ", “The mother must have had an affair with the red-headed mailman.". People in my family always whispered, they all sounded as crickets in the high grass. The jungle we lived in was concrete, and the interior of the neighborhood she lived in was as tough as the exterior. Brooklyn. Not the greatest area she in lived in. But that neighborhood was always known as the 'old neighborhood'. Where the first thugs lived, so they can be "available" to everyone. But thats not what this story is about. Its about a pink dress.

Author's Note:

    I was writing my memoir in my fiction class, and although it was for a fiction class it was based around the "I", so everything I wrote was all truth. The only thing fiction about it, where names where changed. So I had forgotten to do the Vignette for this class (my creative non-fiction class), so I used my other piece as guideline. When workshopping, my classmates found it particularly interesting about my quick short statement about "The pink dress", and they wanted to hear more about it. So that's where my inspiration stemmed from, not doing the assignment. One thing that needs to be understood about this piece is that, I am not bashing any female who is girly and likes the color pink, it was just how I felt and what my opinion is. I will be revising this piece for my final portfolio by being more personable and more open ended because I have noticed that just like my personality, I'm a bit closed off.  I have written short stories before but I'm a very poetic writer because thats where my strengths and love lies. In Poetry.