Hey y’all!
I hope you had a good Fourth of July! My blog post today is partly a bit about my life, partly an old piece of writing I did for my English class in eleventh grade. To give you some context, this is the first (and only!) piece of creative writing I’ve done since I was a kid; I’m more of a research paper kind of gal. My English teacher was a really cool, really progressive woman who I actually had as my English teach three out of my four high school years (grades 9, 11, and 12). In fact, the classes I took with her in senior year were one-semester senior electives called “African American Literature” and “Race and Gender,” to give you at least a basic idea of the kind of person and teacher she was. She also focused a lot on metacognition, and learning about how we learn and do things so as to learn and do things more effectively. She encouraged us to think critically about everything, but also to be open to ideas we didn’t necessarily feel open to, which is why we were given the assignment to write a short story in our AP English class.
That being said, I am partial to research and analytical essays or persuasive works, or even writing personal reflections; I am much more comfortable making a claim about something and backing it up with evidence than thinking up a narrative and everything for a piece of creative writing. Furthermore, at that point, I was very passionate about a lot of social justice issues, and they were often the topics of my essays or other pieces of writing we did in the class, which could be thought of as similar to open-ended blog posts. Although I still am quite passionate about many issues, two and a half years ago, my 16-year-old self included them in nearly everything I wrote or researched. So naturally, one specific theme comes up in the story. However, I am not going to say it outright here, because the way the story is set up, it’s something of a subtly-hinted-at reveal. Although I’m assuming this crowd will probably figure out the general topic pretty quickly, I will say that as the story goes on, more becomes clear about this particular family’s experience.
The story is told from the point of view of an approximately 4-year-old girl, and was partially inspired by the sentence “I am an only child, but I’m not my parents’ only child.” I was very proud of that sentence when I wrote it, but unfortunately I was unable to include it in the story, which is why I’m stating it here. I would also like to say that I did a lot of research for this piece, so the places mentioned do exist, although my versions may not be perfectly accurate representations. Also, the doll is named after a doll I had as a kid, but this experience is not like any I have ever had.
You can read the story (as a view-only google doc) here. The title is Only Child, it’s a pretty quick read, and I hope you enjoy it! Please do leave a comment if you have any questions or thoughts about the story or anything else I mentioned in this post.
