Tag: literacy narrative
Literacy Narrative 3, Alqahtani’s
As a child, reading and memorizing Quran (the Islamic Holy Book) was the only book that I used to read and memorize on an almost-daily basis. Despite the encouragement and rewards given to me by teachers and my parents, I never considered reading and writing an enjoyable experience. However, comics growing up and Twitter as an adolescent changed the way I think about what to do for fun, significantly affecting where my free time is spent. Without them, I would have never been who I am today, and to which I dedicate this narrative.
Someday as a third-grader, I went to the school’s field during a break, only to see that a mini-library was brought from Egypt (a country whose dialect is typically used for all Disney Arabic-dubbed movies and comics). I decided to get an Uncle Scrooge comic book for no apparent reason. Little did I know that this would turn into an addiction that would go on for over a decade. At the time, apart from TV movies and animations, my PlayStation 3 was my way to escape from reality. I used to spend hours that I remember having a headache once from playing too much of Modern Warfare 2 (a shooter game that most Saudi gamers have played). Unfortunately for me, consoles were not allowed on weekdays, so I had to play with my neighbors or do schoolwork in my free time. Nevertheless, Uncle Scrooge started a new chapter with me, making me look forward to coming back home so that I could read. The way in which comics affected me is hard to describe. It improved my willingness to read and enjoy every sense of reading that staying late at night is not to play videogames but to read. Reading, once feared and boring, became an enjoyable habit.
In addition, my older brother was a significant influence growing up. My brother has had a successful career in blogging about soccer, widely known within Al-Hilal and Inter Milan Saudi fanbase when it comes to writing. Due to his popularity and influence, I became much more involved in soccer. At the time, I opened a Twitter account, dedicating it to writing about soccer solely to impress him. And to seem just like him, I acted and wrote like an adult. I did not expect much besides having a few followers when I started. Fortunately for me, my account grew more and more to be followed by hundreds, reaching a thousand followers within a year. Having this amount of followers was unusual in 2013 when bots were not as prominent as today. My brother, unfortunately, did not want me to be involved as he is, given the “uselessness” of being a sports junkie. I was not discouraged; I was encouraged when I saw that older fans were following me, and I kept tweeting regardless. Due to Twitter, tweeting became a habit, eventually falling in love with writing. Since Arabic Twitter is luckily not as informal as American/English Twitter, tweeting helped me formulate arguments and write well as a sixth-grader. Writing, following this, became a flow that cannot be quickly interrupted, all thanks to Twitter.
In conclusion, reading and writing have always been dreadful to me, especially when I was addicted to video games. However, comics and Twitter are what made me who I am when it comes to my literacy. They changed how I interact, they changed how I read, and they changed how I write. Without comics, mainly Uncle Scrooge’s, and Twitter, I would have never been who I am today.
Literacy Comic Reflection
Literacy Narrative Comic <The Railway Journey> was the first assignment that I lost the track of time this semester. It was not because it was boring or seemed endless. Rather, it was because I was immersed in drawing. In fact, one day, I went to the library at sunrise and came out at sunset while being unaware that such a long time has passed.
However, at first, I worried about the pages and numbers of the drawings I had to do. I never have drawn for more than 5 hours since I was really young, and did not know that I was able to make such a piece. However, after starting drawing and finishing the first page, I gained confidence that I would be able to finish the whole comic while the panels represent the scene that I wanted to show. I think it was even more interesting as it was about my own story. I was able to reconfirm my burning desire for creation which I haven’t felt for a long time.
In the beginning, I had to summarize my story from Literacy part 1. I chose what to focus in each page and divided the summarized story into 4. Then, I determined how many panels of what shape to use and the angle of perspective(choice of frame) for some specific panels that came into my mind. After, I started drawing as aforementioned.
When the drawing was complete, I used my summarized story which was divided into 4, and started writing text. I sometimes used inside-panel text boxes, to separate from the normal texts and to give emphasis. Also, there is a speech bubble that invades two panels. It was a visual representation of the ear-splitting noise my cousin made at the time. Also, the panel – full of an enlarged page of a book and the highlighted words with their corresponding Korean meaning – was partially inspired by Fun Home.
After finishing 4 pages, I felt that the ending was too weak with no lasting meanings. I wanted it to have something metaphorical like in the ending of Stitches. However, I was not able to find a satisfying method. After a few days, while talking with a friend about a totally different topic, I said something like “effort does not always fairly pay off. Although we think it does, after achieving something, although we think we have been always going straight, we all took a detour to some extent at some point. At least for me, it was.” On the way back to my room, what I said resonated within my mind. From then, it did not take long for me to take the idea and metaphorically combine it with the train rail which has twists and turns however we think we are going straight while riding a train.
If I were to work on a similar assignment in the future, I would like to put more time into paint colors and include light and shade. I believe it would facilitate a more vivid delivery of the story. Also, I would use more variety of panels. After finishing it, the shape of the panels in the first two pages looked too monotonous.
Overall, it was a very exciting assignment. I was able to actually apply the concepts of comics that I read and discussed in class. I believe it was very different from the previous activities which focused on analyzing the given comic. It was an opportunity to be in the shoes of the author, which may help me understand the author’s motives and even the comic itself when reading them in the future.
Literacy Narrative 3 Reflection
This literacy narrative project has helped me improve my writing skills and made me re-think many of my strategies regarding writing. Making a comic made me think of many ways I could improve my essay. Once I visualized my narrative I realized that I should express some of my thoughts differently. I also added some events that completed my literacy narrative such as my acceptance to Emory and how this writing course has had a small change on my writing abilities. Looking back at my initial literacy narrative I can see that there was a lot to improve on and a lot of things that I could do better. My thinking process regarding this narrative was very different and I think what helped me was drawing it in the form of a comic.
Literacy Narrative 2 Reflection
This was my first time drawing a comic and I really enjoyed myself. This assignment allowed me to use visual representation to show ideas that I had in my head. I also realized the different aspects that there are to making comics compared to writing essays. I used the gutters to my advantage by explaining the storyline so that the audience could interact with the comic. I really enjoyed doing this assignment and I am looking forward to creating other comics in the future. It made it easier to express my thoughts and ideas when I could present them visually. I was initially very skeptical of this process because I am not a good artist but I discovered that I could portray my story using stick figures as well.
Literacy Narrative Part 2 – Reflection
Having finished this entire process, I feel relieved. Not because the assignment is over or that I did not enjoy the process, but because making a comic is a long and arduous process that, though tiring, is an extremely gratifying thing to accomplish.
Completing this assignment helped me reach the learning outcome pertaining to practicing writing as a process. The comic was preceded by a full-length narrative that was the backbone of this comic. The first Literacy Narrative assignment allowed me to put my ideas to paper and pen and revise them as I saw fit. That process in itself required many steps that built off of each other and this assignment was only a furthering of those steps. Making these many iterations of my essay in every step of the process benefitted my comic greatly.
Going back to the difficulty of making a comic, one thing I heavily underestimated was the visual aspect. As obvious as it was, I did not give much thinking to the details of my drawings. The biggest problem about the visual aspect of my comic was choosing what I wanted to put on paper. I had a million ideas for how to show eight years passing by or what scene from my favorite comics I wanted to depict to demonstrate their sneaky complexity. I was trying to do something profound on every page but I think realizing it was probably better keeping everything simple was the right choice. The storyboard assignment helped slightly with this but even then, I was not entirely happy with my decisions and felt they were made too hastily.
With this in mind we can take a look at my comic and see why I kept in what I did. The first page is highlighted by three comics I used to read early on in my childhood. The first panel consists of three covers of each comic that I distinctly remember from my head. I did not search up images to prompt my memory, I took what I vaguely remembered and drew them out. I did the same thing for the next three panels on the first page with scenes that stuck out to me from each series. On the second page, I decided to show eight years passing by through the height markers from every year in our family room wall; again keeping with the theme of simplicity. The last panel on the last page was the one that involved the most brainstorming. I wanted to end my comic with a visual that aptly summarized my experience with texts from high school and my childhood and shedding it in a positive light. I did this by drawing characters or symbols that represent the texts that I have read (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Amar Chitra Katha to name a few) and surrounded them around a comical version of myself with a light switch substituted for my brain. I wanted to really capture what it felt like for me when that switch “flicked” in my head.
Literacy Narrative Part 2 – Reflection
Having finished this entire process, I feel relieved. Not because the assignment is over or that I did not enjoy the process, but because making a comic is a long and arduous process that, though tiring, is an extremely gratifying thing to accomplish.
Completing this assignment helped me reach the learning outcome pertaining to practicing writing as a process. The comic was preceded by a full-length narrative that was the backbone of this comic. The first Literacy Narrative assignment allowed me to put my ideas to paper and pen and revise them as I saw fit. That process in itself required many steps that built off of each other and this assignment was only a furthering of those steps. Making these many iterations of my essay in every step of the process benefitted my comic greatly.
Going back to the difficulty of making a comic, one thing I heavily underestimated was the visual aspect. As obvious as it was, I did not give much thinking to the details of my drawings. The biggest problem about the visual aspect of my comic was choosing what I wanted to put on paper. I had a million ideas for how to show eight years passing by or what scene from my favorite comics I wanted to depict to demonstrate their sneaky complexity. I was trying to do something profound on every page but I think realizing it was probably better keeping everything simple was the right choice. The storyboard assignment helped slightly with this but even then, I was not entirely happy with my decisions and felt they were made too hastily.
With this in mind we can take a look at my comic and see why I kept in what I did. The first page is highlighted by three comics I used to read early on in my childhood. The first panel consists of three covers of each comic that I distinctly remember from my head. I did not search up images to prompt my memory, I took what I vaguely remembered and drew them out. I did the same thing for the next three panels on the first page with scenes that stuck out to me from each series. On the second page, I decided to show eight years passing by through the height markers from every year in our family room wall; again keeping with the theme of simplicity. The last panel on the last page was the one that involved the most brainstorming. I wanted to end my comic with a visual that aptly summarized my experience with texts from high school and my childhood and shedding it in a positive light. I did this by drawing characters or symbols that represent the texts that I have read (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Amar Chitra Katha to name a few) and surrounded them around a comical version of myself with a light switch substituted for my brain. I wanted to really capture what it felt like for me when that switch “flicked” in my head.
LN Reflection
When writing this narrative, it wasn’t too hard to think of memories of reading or writing because that is what I spent most of my childhood anyways. I never realized how reading in general effected me but especially the memory of the school library room. It did not feel strange having to free write because that my go to writing method but I had to go back and make sure I included core details that were necessary to the memory. Looking back, I know I was always reading but it surprised me that when I reflected on why it didn’t click in my brain that it was because I was an only child and books introduced me to a new world. The most interesting sentence from my narrative would be “As a child you become so curious about the world and books provide a lot of insight and new ideas for the hound mind to store and interpret in their own way.” Most children are taught through videos or being on their iPad and its honestly sad to me that a lot of children have lost the amazing opportunity reading brings, to expand your knowledge and imagination.
The Link to it: https://comiccommotion.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative/
Ethan Cohen – Reflection on Tracing Stitches and Fun Home
My essay was about how both Allison Bechdel and David Small employ several similar stylistic strategies as well as similar thematic ideas, but have varying ways of depicting such, therefore we can conclude that there is no clear cut best way to express oneself through comics. The two show the weirdness of time as well as all-at-onceness through showing four David’s sliding down a tube, or as Allison depicts showing scenes depicting different moments in time all sanctioned as one. Allison resorts to more word heavy, clear cut observations within each panel, while David takes advantage of the freeing art of abstract expression of real ideas through his panels’ images.
The process of tracing the pages as a brainstorming analysis, was a helpful and rich process for me. It inspired closer reading than most would gather from either page, and the act of comparing one to another made it that much more fruitful, especially implementing the works of Hilary Chute as an argumentative backbone. As I was drawing, I was in close attention to the style of everything: the furniture, the emotions on the faces of the characters, to the flow of the page more literally. This was useful for me, as it forced me to interact closely with the text.
Typically, I have started with theses in the introductory paragraph. Some of my strongest writing has sprouted from me writing the introductory paragraph last, even after the conclusion. Thus, having the last paragraph functionally operate as the typical introduction, this was a very natural writing process for me, that felt much more established.
Although my overall argument was how Allison employs less secret language strategies on the surface level, I was surprised how many intricacies she is able to accomplish through the a semi-typical comic structure, such as the framing and literal drawing elements that help to convey something that otherwise would not be possible under a captured photograph or a written work, in addition to how ever-present Chute’s all-at-onceness as well as fragmenting of time is in the totality of every page and panel: it is truly a conscious and important decision to be implemented into every successful comic.
