Month: February 2019

Pavel Nunez

Dr. Carrie Hall

English 1101

2/2/19

Well after reading  Gilyards story I’ve noticed that  he writes similar/differently than any other people that also write stories . Similarly he did a type of writing called a “autobiography” which is basically a person talking about his/her life(not all stories  do this).But what he did different was making the reader feel mixed emotions for him(I almost never see this). For example, he first told us that he did drugs(which is bad thing obviously), then he told us that he scored an average above the 80’s which is impressive and tried to discouraged his family from doing heroin, then proceeding to tell us that he steals other people cars…. This was easy to read because I didn’t know whether I should feel bad for him or just hate him, Although he did keep the story entertaining by keeping me interested on seeing the outcome of his life which was that  he “was out of the drug life” and ended up passing most of his classes. Also I liked the imagery he used on pg 157 which says” the truth of that proposition was as clear as the bright caps of angry oceans wave hurtling toward a shore in clear darkness. But he did use a lot of foul language which I’m not really use to when it comes to reading a normal story.

Planning ahead, I think I might add a chain of good or bad events in my story because it seems to keep me interested on what is going to happen and I’m going to use imagery to express feeling.

Ife Ajayi
Prof. Hall
Eng 1121
1 February 2019

Throughout my reading of Gilyard’s book I noticed that his style of writing isn’t too similar to other authors. He wrote this book in a way where people who read it can understand it easily. I feel like some teenagers could probably relate to some of the things that happened to Gilyard when he was younger in a way. With that being said, the way he wrote this is similar to how some teenagers express themselves in writing. When I read some books I usually have trouble understanding points that the author is trying to make because of how sophisticated the language is. While reading some of Gilyard’s book, I could picture some of what he went through because of how understanding his writing is.

Throughout his writing, Gilyard openly expressed some of the things he went through when he was a high school student. He went into detail about certain things that other people would be ashamed to even talk about. This is one thing that I liked about his writing. If you’re going to openly write about something you should go into detail as much as possible or you shouldn’t write about it at all. In the book he stated, “I stole some more, did a little dealing, shot the highest dosages of dope I ever had. Jail was a more likely destination than a university.” These are some things that he did the summer before starting at a university. Things he planned on never doing again.

In future writing, I plan on being more specific especially when storytelling. It’s important to grab the reader’s attention in the beginning of your writing. And it’s just as important for the reader to still be engaged while reading the rest. Gilyard did a good job keeping me interested while reading his writing. Not many authors can do this. I get bored easily while reading. The subject matter of Gilyard’s writing is honestly what kept me going. He wrote about the lifestyle he use to live and how he was involved in drugs and jail. He also wrote about young people of color and how education in America works for them. In a way I felt that I needed to read about this because it related to me.