Post by Robin on Feb 26, 2006 21:01:52 GMT -8
Lately I've been trying to write something Toni Morrison-y - kind of like a story that gives different backgrounds and point of views on one big event. Like...in The Bluest Eye, the main point of the story is Pecola wanting to have blue eyes so she'll be beautiful and ending up getting pregnant by her own father, but the story isn't all about Pecola. We hear about Frieda and Claudia, and Soaphead Church, and Maureen Peal, and Pauline Breedlove, and Cholly Breedlove, and others as well as Pecola Breedlove. I really liked that, and I was trying to model this story I'm working on after that. I don't really know what the main plot will be, but I suppose what I'm asking is does this sound even a little like Toni Morrison. So...here goes.
I'd probably slow it down a bit...but this was just a sample, basically, to see if I could do it.
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Small town girls inevitably grow up to live in the big city. Imaginations run wild at any age and any place, and for the small town girl, the logical place for her imagination to run is to the city. For most of her childhood, the small town girl will wallow in her dreams of the city: she will revel in it and use it to nurture the shallow roots that she digs into the soil of her homeland. Like a flower, she will grow from it. As the eighteenth birthday draws nearer, the thoughts of cities grow bolder and clearer in her mind. She will feed them; she will polish them until they shine brighter than the actual cities. Her chores will go undone; her bed unmade. Her clothing she will pick more carefully than she ever thought to before, and she will demand powders and paints for all holidays at which the giving of gifts is tradition. Her old dresses she will scorn, and instead she will buy new clothes from outlets outside of their town: tee shirts and ripped jeans and lacy, frothy undergarments that she will buy with no shame, thinking that city girls do not blush when they buy their underwear and bras, no, city girls brazenly slap the merchandise on the counter. The thought of money does not occur to her, nor does the idea of shoplifting. Despite her best efforts to modernize and glamorize herself, she will remain, at heart, a small town girl. But she will not see that. She won’t see it until she sees the corruption of some city girls. Ripped jeans and fitted tee shirts cost more money than she would like to admit, than anyone would like to admit, and petty theft is the friend of many a fashionable metropolitan.
Eventually, the small town girl, Pamela, will turn eighteen, kiss her mother and father goodbye, and take a flight to New York City, never expecting that she will want to see Minnesota again, never expecting that she will miss cows. And she doesn’t. When she arrives in New York City, she feels at home, which she should. She has spent the last seven years of her life conditioning herself to think, eat, and breathe metropolitan, and she has been successful. Her hair, once always a long braid, she has chopped off to her shoulders, and she has taken great pains to get rid of the freckles that the sun cursed her with. Her lips she has painted red; her eyes she has made seem to leap out of her face, courtesy of eyeliner and eye shadow. All eyes will be drawn to her when she steps off the plane, hair and makeup immaculate, and she will swell with pride at the attention, but it is not the right kind of attention. Despite all her dreaming about the city, she has little understanding of a city at night. While walking to check into the hotel room she had booked, she will be dragged into an alleyway, and raped. It is not so shameful to her that she was raped than that she did not foresee it. City girls, she will reason, are always on their toes. City girls, she will say, never let their guard down. And so she doesn’t. She stays in New York, rents an apartment, and hardens herself to the truth about her new world.
And hardening is something that she must do. Because eventually her parents stop sending her money to pay her bills with, and Pamela has to find a job. The only available work is as a stripper, and even that barely pays the bills.
I'd probably slow it down a bit...but this was just a sample, basically, to see if I could do it.
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Small town girls inevitably grow up to live in the big city. Imaginations run wild at any age and any place, and for the small town girl, the logical place for her imagination to run is to the city. For most of her childhood, the small town girl will wallow in her dreams of the city: she will revel in it and use it to nurture the shallow roots that she digs into the soil of her homeland. Like a flower, she will grow from it. As the eighteenth birthday draws nearer, the thoughts of cities grow bolder and clearer in her mind. She will feed them; she will polish them until they shine brighter than the actual cities. Her chores will go undone; her bed unmade. Her clothing she will pick more carefully than she ever thought to before, and she will demand powders and paints for all holidays at which the giving of gifts is tradition. Her old dresses she will scorn, and instead she will buy new clothes from outlets outside of their town: tee shirts and ripped jeans and lacy, frothy undergarments that she will buy with no shame, thinking that city girls do not blush when they buy their underwear and bras, no, city girls brazenly slap the merchandise on the counter. The thought of money does not occur to her, nor does the idea of shoplifting. Despite her best efforts to modernize and glamorize herself, she will remain, at heart, a small town girl. But she will not see that. She won’t see it until she sees the corruption of some city girls. Ripped jeans and fitted tee shirts cost more money than she would like to admit, than anyone would like to admit, and petty theft is the friend of many a fashionable metropolitan.
Eventually, the small town girl, Pamela, will turn eighteen, kiss her mother and father goodbye, and take a flight to New York City, never expecting that she will want to see Minnesota again, never expecting that she will miss cows. And she doesn’t. When she arrives in New York City, she feels at home, which she should. She has spent the last seven years of her life conditioning herself to think, eat, and breathe metropolitan, and she has been successful. Her hair, once always a long braid, she has chopped off to her shoulders, and she has taken great pains to get rid of the freckles that the sun cursed her with. Her lips she has painted red; her eyes she has made seem to leap out of her face, courtesy of eyeliner and eye shadow. All eyes will be drawn to her when she steps off the plane, hair and makeup immaculate, and she will swell with pride at the attention, but it is not the right kind of attention. Despite all her dreaming about the city, she has little understanding of a city at night. While walking to check into the hotel room she had booked, she will be dragged into an alleyway, and raped. It is not so shameful to her that she was raped than that she did not foresee it. City girls, she will reason, are always on their toes. City girls, she will say, never let their guard down. And so she doesn’t. She stays in New York, rents an apartment, and hardens herself to the truth about her new world.
And hardening is something that she must do. Because eventually her parents stop sending her money to pay her bills with, and Pamela has to find a job. The only available work is as a stripper, and even that barely pays the bills.