Reading Response - Week 4

I'm going to focus on the two pieces we read from Literary Journalism for my response.

I really loved LeBlanc's "Trina and Trina" piece. I thought that LeBlanc did a really great job of being in the piece herself without taking the focus away from Trina (though I'll admit that I was a little confused on the occasions when she would reference herself as identifying with Trina), and the piece was successfully about this huge cultural phenomenon without LeBlanc ever having to say that at all. She did a great job balancing telling and showing--I really felt like I could see it, like I was there (there was so much description and detail--it was great)--she did a great job with transitions, and I was so impressed by how much of her life she'd obviously devoted to Trina in order to be able to write this piece. In short, I was incredibly inspired by this--I would love to be able to do it as well as she did. I did wonder, though, if she overstepped in terms of being too much a part of the subject's life. Maybe the rules are different with Trina (like, you have to decide based on who your subject is), or maybe there isn't a line(?), but I wonder if becoming so involved and invested in your subject's life can cause a loss of outside perspective that change's the piece. It doesn't seem to have had a negative effect in this piece, but it's something to keep in mind, I think.

I had a very different experience with Orlean's "The American Man at Age Ten" piece. I liked the piece, I thought it was interesting and that she'd obviously spent a lot of time with him (some of the details and stories were really cool), but it lacked the coherency and center that I felt with LeBlanc's piece. Orlean did, at times, seem to be making a statement about gender (which would make sense given her title), but it didn't seem to resonate throughout the piece, so I was confused about whether or not that was the point. And while I enjoyed all the detail and description she gave, I also had a harder time following her organization; I know that LeBlanc's was clearer because it followed more of a timeline (the piece spanned years), but there were times that I just felt really lost within Orlean's piece (and maybe that was intentional to a degree(?), but if so, I don't think it was very successful). Part of me was also very inspired by Orlean, but the piece itself didn't resonate with me the same way that LeBlanc's did (though I believe that it could have). Both pieces, though, gave me really great ideas as I begin to plan my own profile, so I really enjoyed them both in that sense.