Category: Essay 1 Feedback

Feedback from Monroe:

Ashley,

This is a really poetic, detailed narrative about the struggle of growing up gay in a strongly Christian community in Jamaica. I like your writing style—and attention paid to small things—a lot. I would suggest going back over this and reworking some of the details to make sure they all contribute to the reader’s awareness of the conflict you’re dealing with. You might also add sections that could help us see a bit more how gayness was viewed in your community Jamaica—and then, later on, in your communities in NYC (and how this changed you). Thanks for this.

M

Monroe’s feedback:

Danny (is that how you spell it?),

This is an interesting narrative that presents your own subjective experience of the drugs, surgery and other phenomena related to your knee injury.  What’s missing is a bit more detail on the events outside of your mind that actually happened.  What’s going on in your mind is VERY interesting, and I’m glad it’s in your current draft.  But we need also to show the reader what happened to you in the “outside world” so that they can have an even clearer sense of how your “interior world” was responding to this experience.  With that in mind, I’ve made several notes above about where you could expand on the details relating to certain important events in your story.

Thanks,

Monroe